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It is nice to get emails. And I did get a notification about that I hade got one right now ... but when I check the inbox on my site - it is no one there, no email? So strange.
It was a very nice one, wanted me to provide information about how to purchase one of my prints, (though he or she actually wrote "artwork" maybe intending the paintings, the originals.)
I sell prints, Fine Art Prints.

ps. or maybe it was just a phishing ... tragically. Who knows these days

If you have a chance to attend to a Pecha-Kucha as a visitor or presenter - take it! Check out on https://www.pechakucha.com/
Marica

There was something my friend and mentor said about changing the size of the original image. "Then the brush strokes does not match your size, it distorts your perspective and therefore the picture".
She meant that the size of the brush I chose for painting represent what I actually see in the moment of attention to the leafs, trying to catch them as truthfully I can with color on a flat canvas. When enlarging or diminishing that moment of attention which is possible in a print, the strokes will be of a giant, in a giants perspective or of a midget in a midgets perspective. The leaf will become incredible large or small as well. The proportions, the perspective on the world from a human scale will be distorted.
Yes, she really has a point.
But this can be a part of the expression too, of course.
And, personally I am quite fascinated by scaling up painted pictures in order to see the brushstrokes in large. To discover other worlds, unintentionally made by the strokes mix of colors. Worlds that can only be visible when enlarged. And I am particularly fond of seeing the grains in watercolor come out evidently. Revealing their behavior in the water while dried out on the paper. Beautiful little mini worlds will become visible by enlargement.

It is really hard to decide "the true color" on the camera display, then on the computer screen and then in the print. The color pigment shifts in the oil on the canvas, the water spreading them over the watercolor paper, depending on the stroke of the brush, the structure of the paper, the light reflecting in them.
The camera catches one of all these shifting settings. Which painting will I choose? The cooler, brighter, brittle, softer, harder, more yellow and blue or more green and red. Some color relation is impossible to mimic on display, screen. Impossible to catch with the camera eye.
So, they will be, slightly altered.

Then, resolution - in my case I first used my little digital camera, Fujifilm, FinePix F480. I have never liked the distortion of the colors it gives neither the strange outdrawn perspective. But I thought it could be useful photographing landscapes and even for indoor interior design. But it is almost impossible to catch what interests me in something I saw when this camera - the lens has another "view" in fact. So my photographing became more and more scarce. But, the first paintings to this site I took with this camera. My gesture drawings I scan.

Then I started to use my cellphone, my mobile, for taking pictures. It is a very small and simple camera in it, but it began to feel fun again, even if the pictures still did not get overwhelmingly sharp, bright and the lens distorted the view. It was a Samsung Galaxy S4 mini, and hardly any possibilities to change the settings. Before these two cameras I had a really good one, actually I have had two - first one old fashioned analog camera with glass lenses of different kinds. A bit clumsy, yes - but good pictures - and it is snappy. Then I got my first digital camera a Nikon coolpix 950. Now, this really set me off. Handy to bring, suddenly I had photos from all kinds of situations and environments, dark, light, watery ... I lend it out to a friends son - who was too hard handed with it ... sad.

Anyway, the next camera I used to try to catch my paintings into the digital world was another friends camera -high resolution, sharpness and possible to vary its settings (a real digital camera) - but, not so much time for helping me and a season when it is quite dark up here in the North of Scandinavia. The result was, to put it short, that it is possible to make an art print that can be printed out to up to 1 meter from this website.

Next, my mothers camera (a real digital camera) for loan. Better than my small one but not especially high resolution max 60 x 60 cm as outcome on print on this website.
Then an iphone 7, not so bad- resolution and sharpness alright and good for 70x70 cm outcome as print on this website.
Next now - I will try to loan my friends camera again - when it is still light.

A new approach to update my images and tags!
Right now I am quite busy writing - one of the outcomes from that work is a text about how far back in time the study of the human body stretches in our western culture - back to ancient Greece. It shows in the sculptures at Akropolis, Athens and reach back into our contemporary art. I will put the text in this blog when I am done with it.
... But I forgot to do so ..., therefore the following text has been delayed a couple of years...
The sculpture you see next to the text stands in "Glyptoteket" in Copenhagen Denmark.

1 143 words / Oktober 18, 2015
Changes made December 3, 2016 are italicized - which can be seen in the text on my site skepnader: https://skepnader.wordpress.com/2016/01/17/kroki-och-modellteckning-ett-2-500-ar-gammalt-grekiskt-kulturarv/

We talked about how to make more sketchers come to the Saturday sessions in figure, gesture and life model drawing, when one of us exclaimed how surprised she was over the Swedes overall descending attitude to art and design, yes on the whole, studies of human expressions as well as the actual expressions themselves shown in paintings, theatre, film, music and so on, are so neglected.
” It is such a difference only between England and Sweden. At the school I went, the teachers in math and art, they were” the Gods”! We students ranked them to be the highest.”
I come to think of the art teacher who had emerged out from the shadows at the school were I last held a class in design. How disregarded and neglected the whole subject of art and design was in my time at school, during the 1960-, 70- and 80. How art, design, painting, yes cultural expressions overall were and still are seen as something superfluous and only in the best of worlds seen as the icing on the cake.
How did this happen and has it always been like this? No, it has not always been like this.
Still we claim our roots to the antique and classic Greek legacy with some pride, and it is within the sciences it mainly is considered to be held and developed. But it is not only the Logic from Aristotle and Plato’s view on how social structure should and could be shaped, organized and executed, the way we got to know them through the Macedonian and Roman inheritors (Alexander the Great and the Roman emperors) and thereafter in Christianity and Islamic philosophy, wherefrom the science of today springs and is shaped; it was also something else, something more, which, due to Roman elitist rule and Christian struggle to be acknowledged as logically defendable, came to be submitted to the shadows or diminished to copying, mimicking and imitating – the creative tools and expressions.
The Greeks where seen as bold of their contemporaries and of the after coming Romans, since they neither were ruled by any god nor any gods, but in a democratic order, it is true that self appointed rulers grasped the power forcefully sometimes, so called tyrannous. Still, the Greeks ruled without gods, deserted solely to themselves and their humanity, successfully. In this lies what is so unique with the greek legacy, an individual freedom to create and express oneself in speech, paintings, drawings, sculpture, writings and so on. There was a point in doing so since what was said or showed could make a difference, contribute to a change of attitudes and social structure. The Greeks fascination over the human body, which is strikingly profound in their art, may be an expression of this attitude and view. Even in their faith and beliefs were a freedom. The Gods of the Greek where not perfect, the stories about them – intertwined with the Greeks own history – was every man’s right to interpret, develop and express in drama, theater, and other forms of art or performance. The concept behind a word like ”heresy” make no sense in such a culture or social structure. A culture and social structure, where every man has the right to express her or his voice of history. Were a different view is considered to be enriching.

In that time, in the shift between an >>oral and literal culture, where the Greek is situated in the antique, the tools that the inventing of the writing make possible to develop, develops in a higher sense, the documentation, the analyse and the formal logic.
The logic of Aristotle and its introduction ”Isagoge”– our legacy, brought to us, westerners, through the Islamic philosophy. Isagoge, an introduction to Aristoteles formal logic made by one of the main personalities of neoplatonism, Plotinus disciple: Porfyrios at the end of the second century A.D., about 500 years after Aristoteles lived. ”Isagoge” constituted a main part in the artes-faculties basic education in all universities in Europe still in the 15th century. Added to that, considerate the fact that Thomas Aquinas used aristotelian logics when merging the by neoplationism dominated western christian teaching with Aristotelian view on nature in his major work ”Summa theologiae”.
But, the tools used in an oral culture is there simultaneously. The memory technics, the rhetoric, the expressions, but all together with these new tools the overall natural and self-explanatory attitude to the creative is still there. Because, creating is what the speaker does when he or she seeks the word aimed to catch the listener in the moment, creating is what the sculptor does when she or he seeks the expression in the posture of the model, creating is what the play writer does when she or he is seeking the best way of showing the dilemma of the drama or the tragedy, creating is also what the philosopher does when (she mostly it was men, it was not a truly democratic society, that is yet to come.) or he ponders over how the structure, the attitudes and the organization of the public rule should or could be shaped, and so on.
Then the speech was not subordinated the writing, the thinking not subordinated already thought thoughts formulated in texts, knowledge not yet reduced to the printed word, as it is today. Today there is an unawareness about the tools of the mind, the tools of the thinking, >>the metonymical transition and the metaphorical condensation.
(See José Luis Ramírez thesis “Om meningens nedkomst” och ”Skapande mening- en begreppsgenealogisk undersökning om rationalitet, vetenskap och planering” (About the ..of the meaning and ” Creating meaning – a genealogical investigation over the concepts of rationality, science and planning”) if you are interested. The thesis is in Swedish only.)
That the study of the body, one’s own reflection over one’s own perception and experience of the body, is the first step in understanding the world, the foundation for creating knowledge, is an insight very few have today. >> a pecha-kucha about figure, gesture drawing
But the sessions in gesture-, figure drawing and life model sketching gives a possibility to this. That it was self-evident and obvious to the ancient Greeks that knowledge was gained in such ways, is not impossible. No matter if so, because when seeing sculptures and paintings made throughout the centuries it is obvious that the human body with its expressions has been studied- at least by artists. Sculptures from 500 B.C in Attica, ornaments on ceramics and pottery, roman copies of Greek sculptures, paintings with motives from the Greeks world of Gods made in more recent centuries by Botticelli, Rafael, Tizian, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Monet, and so on … That it is the Greek legacy that comes back over and over again in renaissance, new renaissance and new classicism is nothing but obvious, or?
Humans urge to create can be suppressed but is not possible to exterminate it, since it is what we all are – living – and therefore creating, even if the awareness about it has diminished.
Today when we attend the Saturday sessions in gesture-, figuredrawing and life modell sketching we can consider that we hold this 2 500 years old legacy at trust.
References:
• Diarmaid MacCulloch ”A History of Christianity” (2009)
• Ingemar Hedenius ”Tro och Vetande” (Belief and Knowing), (1949, nyutgåva 2009)
• Rainer Carls ”Om tro och vetande” (About belief and knowing), (2001)
• Walter J. Ong ”Muntlig och skriftlig kultur” (Orality and Literacy), (1991)
• José Luis Ramírez ”Skapande mening – en begreppsgenealogisk undersökning om rationalitet, vetenskap och planering” (Creating meaning – a genealogical investigation over the concepts of rationality, science and planning), (1995)

936 ord / words 2015 04 12 (scroll down for english version)

Idag lärde jag mig verkligen något. I vår dansande modell som var otroligt duktig och inspirerande, såg jag tydligt hur uttrycket skapas av rörelsen och att det jag försöker fånga på pappret är en bild av ljus- och skuggfläckars spel över modellen och rummet. Orden och tanken leder lätt till att säga att det är en ”fryst” bild, men det blir fel även om de former jag tecknar blir beständiga och är dokumentativa men de är inte enbart det. Illusionen jag vill ge är dessa fläckars rörelse. Att de en tusendelssekund innan hade en annan form, och genom sin rörelse och förändring av formen beskriver inte bara kroppen som en solid form utan kroppens rörelse – uttrycket som kommer från modellen som person.

Eftersom jag ser våra kroppar som manifestationer av rörelse så ser jag också tänkandet och kännandet som en rörelse då det är något vi gör med vår kropp.
Det går att iaktta om man koncentrerar sig och fokuserar riktigt noga på var t.ex. pekfingrets rörelse börjar, genom att sitta stilla och bara röra pekfingret och försöka hitta dess rörelses början. Jag kallar rörelsens ursprung för andlighet eller det levande.

I den rörelsen så rör vi oss, vi tänker och vi talar. Orden hittar vi på för att peka på något speciellt för andra och även inför oss själva i tänkandets evigt pågående rörelse. De blir som stopp, i rörelsen, referenspunkter. Det jag kom att tänka på under tecknandet var att jag kanske försöker hitta motsvarande ”stopp” eller referenspunkter? Det är inte ord jag letar efter utan form och deras relationer till varandra i bild. Även ord har omfattning och utbredning, och precis på samma sätt som i mitt tecknande utgår de från kroppsliga erfarenheter. Språket och orden får mening genom sin relation till det kroppsliga. Det blir särskilt tydligt när det gäller prepositioner som i, på, ovan, under, etc.. Kanske är varje ord en metafor för något av det vi uppfattar i verkligheten, audiella metaforer ? Kanske är mina ljus- och skuggfläckar visuella metaforer?
Oavsett om det finns någon motsvarighet mellan det tecknade och det talade så är Kroppens rörelse ett uttryck för en evigt pågående rörelse (vari tänkandet ingår), levandet som jag försöker fånga genom att teckna ljus- och skuggfläckars spel.
Jag är glad att jag gick den här gången.

Today, I really learned something. In our dancing model, who was incredibly talented and inspiring, I clearly saw how the expression I try to capture is created by the movements and what I try to put down on the paper is spots of light- and shadows playing over the model and the room. The words and the thought easily lead me to describe it as a “frozen” picture, but it is wrong even if the shapes will last as spots on paper and that they are in that sense documentative, but it is not all. The illusion I chase is these spots movements and changes. For just a part thousand second before I put them down, they had a different shape and by their movements and changing shapes it does not only describe the body as a solid form but the body’s movement – the expression that originates from the model as a person.
Since I view our bodies as manifestations of movement I also consider the thinking and feeling as an act and a movement since it is something we do with our bodies.
It is possible to watch by concentrating and focusing really careful on, for instance, where the beginning of the move of the appendix finger starts. By sitting still and trying to move only the appendix finger and try to find its beginning…
I call this original move for spirituality or the living.

In that movement we act, we think and speak. We make up the words to point at something special for others to notice and for ourselves in this eternally ongoing move of thinking. The words becomes stops in the move, spots of reference. What hit me while I was sketching is that maybe I try to find and make stops or references in the picture? It is not words I am looking for but shapes and their relations to each other in a picture. Even words has extensions and a profilerations, and in the same way as in my sketching they emanate from bodily experiences. The language and the words get their meaning through their relationship to the bodily. It is evident when it comes to prepositions like in, on, above, under, etc … Maybe every word we use is a metaphor for something we attend to in reality, audial metaphors? Maybe my spots of lights and shadows are visual metaphors?
Nonetheless there is any correspondence between sketching and speaking the Movement of the body is an expression of an eternally ongoing movement (where the thinking is a part), the living which I try to capture by sketching spots of light and shadow playing.
I am really glad I attended today!

So far my pictures have held a low resolution, limited to what my mobile camera and my scanner can do. Once I had a "real" camera and finally now I have asked a sketcher friend with a "real" camera to help me take good, sharp, high resolution photos of my paintings. My scanned gesture drawings are slightly better than the photos of my paintings so - they will be improved but I will concentrate on the paintings first.
Our first shot did not deliver sharp enough pictures so we will give it another go.
Än så länge har mina bilder varit lågupplösta, begränsade av mobilkamerans och skannerns förmågor. En gång i tiden hade jag en riktig kamera, en systemkamera och vet vilken skillnad det blir. Nu har jag frågat en tecknarkompis som också ägnar sig åt att fotografera om hjälp att ta högupplösta, skarpa bilder på mina målningar. Mina skannade krokier har något högre upplösning, de ska också bli bättre, men jag koncentrerar mig på mina målningar först.

There has been some progress in my sketching since last blogpost. I have selected some of them and replaced the old ones here on this site with them. Now I have stashed up some so I can log in and refresh this site with new drawings more often.
Most of my time is still spent on writing "red gloves", a story about I how I got well from pain in neck, knee and back - and a rather long reflection over why alternative medicines are so awkward for the western established scientifically based medicine.
Som links around that you can find on one of my websites.

Our three new models (male and female) are really good, wich is promising for the autumn. Unfortuantely, one of them are leaving for studies in France for two years. I�ve been negelcting this site for a couple of month and will not put any time on it until a month or so. To watch new pictures and pictures made of other sketchers go to www.modellteckning.se.

Welcome to gesturedrawing in "�ster� bystuga" outside Falun, Sweden May 23, June 7 o 20, August 1 o 15 between 18.00-20.00.
We have a great model. Beautiful, inventive and inspiring - and reliable. Still she might get ill or break a leg. So this spring we�ve been busy figuring out how to find out suitable models to hop in, in case it happens. So during summer we�ll try new models.