Winter painting

I went outside my comfort zone and tried to do a landscape painting. Me and Asko went to take photos a week ago by the sea and the view was so spectacular that I decided to give it a try and do a landscape painting. So here it is :)

Below is also a little phone video I made from the beautiful seaside view. Asko made a video of the noise the waves make when they are underneath the ice.

During painting I made myself a "Winter soundtrack". Here are some songs that have a winter feeling to them (just my opinion). I like influencing my art with music. Some people like to cut off everything while they paint...I don't quite like that myself. I like to get inspired by music, movies, photos...anything :)

Tori Amos, Winter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VQiYC8T-lw
Nick Cave, Lovely Creature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh16adWqI10 
Goldfrapp, Felt Mountain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlsHIdhkBbM  

Winter (60cm x 80cm, acrylic paint on canvas, year created: 2012)

Me taking photos with my phone...can you tell I'm freezing? It was -16ºC ...by the sea it always feels colder though...

Asko taking photos and videos.

Winter photos

Winter is not my favorit season. I hate dressing up in layers and layers and layers of clothes and still feeling cold....but it sure is beautiful! Today we went to the pittoresque Fiskars village to have some excellent cake and chocolate at Petris chocolate room. 

Merry Christmas! :)

Language study logo

I came across this logo on my PC. I did this language study logo a few years ago for my counties education center. What I love most about graphic design is designing logos. I normally do very "scandinavian" simple logo designs, but in this me and the client felt that there was no need to be so strict about it. So here is here is my playful cliché language logo. And by the way...I myself speak finnish, german, english and swedish. 

Library gallery (1)

I have currently a few paintings on display in a library in Vihti . I don't know what it's like in other countries, but in Finland you can have galleries in almost every library and it's usually for free (or for a very low cost). The galleries are available for both professional and hobby artists. The galleries are about art, photography, handicraft or even fashion. It's really nice that libraries support culture in so many ways :)

My little gallery is running throughout December. Today I stopped by at the library with my friend Ulla (she's model to many of my paintings). Ulla took some phone cam pics of me that you can see below. My next library show will be in June 2013. 

Beautiful old library from the outside

black and white photos

Here are two photos from last summer. Photos are taken by my partner Asko .I'm again wearing my favorit dress "the Rita dress" by bettiepageclothing.com.

I hope I get some new paintings done soon! I have for example one new painting coming up with a naked girl and some planets ;)

Latvia

Last week I visited Latvia for the first time in my life. My parents moved to Riga a few months ago. Riga is a beautiful city and we spent our days walking around the city sightseeing. Apart from Riga we also had time to visit Jūrmala. Below are a few pics from our trip.

I really enjoy the old architecture in Latvia. I was a bit surprised by the amount of abandoned houses and took a liking to photograph many of them since they look like haunted houses to me.

Abandoned (?) house in Jūrmala with a soviet looking star in the yard. I told my dad to stop the car so I could take a picture.

Me and my parents at Jūrmala beach.

park in Riga

Mermaid pencil drawing

Here is an old mermaid drawing of mine. I did this almost 10 years ago in my early twenties. When I look at this drawing I can't believe the patience I had when drawing all those scale and rope details. I can vaguely remember that I did this drawing in 2 days. Sitting Saturday and Sunday alone at home and drawing for 8 hours a day...drawing like according to working hours.

A few years ago I sold this to a friend. Whenever I visit my friends home, I see my drawing in their living room nicely framed :) It's really nice to sell artwork to friends, since that way you don't completely depart from your work. 

mermaid (year created 2003, size A3)

Mountain ash

Here is a new painting I did this week. Usually I work on my paintings for months and months...This one I started on monday and finished a few days later. I think this painting suits the time of the year. November is grey and depressing so I felt like using likewise grey scheme colours. I already got a suitable frame for the painting! I love seeing my artwork framed :)

Mountain ash (50cm x 50cm, acrylic paint on canvas, year created: 2012)

My gloomiest painting - clown

Happy Halloween! Here is my gloomiest painting - the clown

I have some art that I call "dead artwork". Those are paintings that I have destroyed in some way. Usually they are paintings that I have painted over. Sometimes there is something completely new on top of the previous painting and sometimes the old painting resembles the new one. Here is an example of my "dead artwork" that became something new.

So the first painting is a drowning face. I actually got the idea in 2004 when I was floating in a swimming pool alone. There had just been the horrible tsunami in 2004 and I was thinking of the events. So I ended up painting this floating face...(oh and I used myself as a "model" for it).

I photographed the painting but always felt that it was lacking something. Sometime in 2006 I ended up painting the clown over it. All the layers of paint underneath the clown just adds up nice texture to the painting and the clown became a quite scary painting. It is until today my gloomiest painting. It's in fact one of my own favorit paintings... but for some reason it's not hanging on my wall... I guess it's too depressing :/
I need a bigger apartment so that I could hang it somewhere in a corner. 

Oh, and I'll post  more "dead artwork" sometime in the future ;) there is more and most of them are dead for a reason ;)

oh, and talking about Halloween...here are some nice vintage Halloween costumes: link

Self portrait

Here is a self portrait I did.  I use myself a lot as a model in my paintings, but it's mainly anatomy reference, reference for light and shadow and perspective. Eventually the painting turns out whatever it turns out. There are some paintings that turn out a lot prettier than me link and other hardly look human anymore link. Aren't all paintings eventually reflections of oneself?

I wanted to make this portrait realistic by painting my moles and mismatch boobs. As a Photoshop loving shallow person I didn't like to paint my flaws, but sometimes you just have to be honest with yourself. 

Self portrait (40cm x 50cm acrylic paint on canvas, year created: 2012)

estimated real size detail

Mushroom forest

My favorit hobby on autumn time recently has been picking wild mushrooms. In Finland you have plenty of forest to do so. Here are a  few of my forest pics. Below them are some of my childrens illustrations just to show why I find the forest so inspirational in general :)

(the illustrations are from a whole book I once did. I kind of still seek a publisher for it...)

Medusa painting (unfinished)

I found a foto of this painting on my PC. I guess I did this somewhat 5 years ago and never finished this painting. Now when I look at this I think this painting had a lot of potential but somehow I struggeled with the eyes and never finished this :/ 

Anyway I thought I'd post this since there is something I like about it. 

Maybe I finish this if I find the painting... I'm not sure if A) I've thrown it away B) I painted over it C) I have this somewhere in my basement.

Frog king

I don't just paint stuff for grown ups ;) I also do childrens illustration. Here is a little sample :) I really enjoy drawing frogs :D

Bellydance

My hobby among others is bellydance, here is a pic of me performing. The dance outfit was last years Christmas present from my sister, who dances as well :)

Nereid

Here's my newest painting called "Nereid". In greek mythology Nereids are sea nymphs. I wanted to paint a dancelike pose underwater...and I'm actually quite happy with the end result :) the painting is a bit bigger than my usual stuff.

Nereid (70cm x 70cm, acrylic paint on canvas)

Tribute to Gustav Klimt

Google reminded me today that it's been 150 years since Gustav Klimt was born. I love his unique work and once I have attempted to do a copy of one of his paintings. Here is my version of the famous "Mäda Primavesi" painting. It's a learning experience for me to do copies like this... in this I learned to paint with brighter colours and more loose than normally. Also it was different to paint such a childlike face. 

Mäda Primavesi copy by Nadja Mikkilä (2009)

Summer roadtrip to Estonia

Me and a couple of friends did recently a nice roadtrip to Estonia. We visited the cities Tallinn, Kuressaare and Haapsalu. The only thing we had planned beforehand were the hotels/hostels. Otherwise it was just driving around and visiting nice places spontaneously. All in all it was a perfect trip. Beautiful sunny weather, great company and awesome places. There is not much else you could ask for :) 
I don't know what else to say. I guess pictures say more than a thousand words...so here are some pics :)

here are some spider pics from Estonia that I posted previously: link

Me and my travel companions :)

Kuressaare beach

Saaremaa

Haapsalu

Haapsalu

Haapsalu castle

Kuressaare castle

old harbour in Saaremaa

old drugstore sign in Haapsalu

New painting "Anguish"

I did this new painting ...I do not want to name my paintings something like "witch" or something that gives it too much direction. I want the viewer to see whatever he/ she sees in the painting.

Figure (46cm x 53cm, acrylic paint on canvas, year created:2012)

Spiders and castles

Last week we did a little roadtrip to Estonia. We visited the cities Tallinn, Kuressaare and Haapsalu. I will be posting more photos later but here are a few very gloomy photos to start with (although actually our trip was extremly sunny and happy).

As a child when I lived in Germany I used to collect  spiders. I used to search the nearby area for the biggest orb weaver spiders (European garden spider: link ). If I didn't have a bucket with me I used to carry the spiders home in my fists. When I look back as an adult to my childhood hobby I have to shudder a bit. Spiders still fascinate me but they also give me unpleasant goosebumps.

Anyway...here is a little photo series called "spiders and castles". We visited the castle area in Kuressaare (Kuressaare castle: link ) at night and there were a lot of orb weaver spiders on a bridge. I took these pics with my mobile phone. I was so fascinated by all the spiders that my travel companions eventually had to drag me away from them ;) Apparently nobody else liked the spiders as much as I did :D