My other hobbies.

[Painkiller]

I have never taken classes, so it was a proggession from small schetches I di when I visted my old girlfriend I had. She and her friends were in an art class and Before going out, they decided to kill some time by drawing Pictures. I draw something that reminded the beautyful scenery I saw on my trip to her Place. They liked it and back home I bought some sheets of paper and started from there. After Learning to draw, I experimented a bit and after moving up here (not far away where my by then ex lived) I wanted to give paining a try. At school the stuff I did was just rubbish, but at 28, all in sudden I could draw. I did three exeriments with the paint, first an eagle and couple of Norwegian landscapes before I started with a view of the narrow fjord of Geiranger in Norway. And it turned pretty great allthough the trees look much like sponges...

Well in average it takes some 80 hours for a painting some takes more time than others though. They are all 60 cm x 80 cm in size as I paint on gouache it takes alot of attention to drying process and sometimes the dryed up colors does its tricks. That is why on the fishing boat it took days to get the water on lwer right corner right. Tree making is a pain and takes a lot of timeas you need a few dryed up brushes to paint a few trees or a field. I do some stuff with a pencil as well and it is kind of funny how opposte things are. Something like rocks takes a few minutes to do with paint while on pencil it takes quite along time to get it right.

I do things in layers. Like the wood on the fishing boat I had something like 7 layers in all on each board. That way I could add details like marks from branches on it. I painted every second board on one time and following ones, once the previous were dry, the unfinished boards next. So it has 7 plus 7 layers in all. I guess the photography have helped me to get the scenes right and the colors comes from weathering the model railroad equipment.

The Eureka came from a photo on one issue of MR way back I even added the enginner from the photo who I guess it is the owner as tribute for his restoration of the real thing. The rest is pure fiction though I have reread Silver San Juan a loads of time so I had an idea how a typical old water tower looks like. The scene with the horses are just pure fiction and I did have the cunning idea of having the mountains from Norway as a pay back for "stealing" Colorado Mountains on the Norwegian fishing boat scene.



Painting is fun and I guess I am a detail freek as I was painting a city scene of the well preserved mining town of Roros in Norway which is located some 350 km.s from my house. I ended up with a White spot on the center of the painting as I could not figure out how those small timbered ware houses looked like. So I filled some gas and took the car there to just to watch the wall, shot a few photos and headed back and finished it. I did a few Changes as felt that if I back dated the house to early 19th Century by having it timbered wall it would ad more interest. I felt that the warehouses needed an extra detail, I added a small window to it. The punsch line of the story was a couple of years after I added it to my web site I visited the spot and somebody had placed an allmost identical windoe on the same spot as I had... lol The odd shaped short end caused me some problems as I thought that the sides end of end was like mirrow image. While at the spot I learned that was not the case as there was an add on which I guess are stars to the second level. One lesson learned, allways take few spare Pictures, that is cheaper and takes less time compare to a 700 km round trip.

Thanks for your comments and don't stop painting, it is fun!