Beautiful winter

Winter is not my favorit season, but I sure love its beauty! Here are a few random snow pics from this winter. I'm a busy Instagram user these days, so all these pics are also on: http://instagram.com/nadjamariina/

Behind the scenes

My fiancé Asko is a photographer and I get to pose a lot for his photos (lucky me!). Most of the times I accompany Asko on his photography trips. Sometimes I just hang around and sometimes I might actually have some good (or even brilliant :P ) ideas for a shoot. It is it's great to have a creative partner! Asko also gives sometimes ideas for my paintings and he tells me honestly if a painting sucks ;) This summer we had some very fun photoshoots with amazing finnish burlesque performers. Here are some behind the scenes photos from recent shoots.

You can see Askos photos here:
https://www.facebook.com/askojonathan

Helping out the master thief :) facebook.com/bent.vanderbleu

in tropical mood with beautiful Cherry freelancersfashion.blogspot.fi

Showgirl stencil

I'm back working on my stencil paintings :)
They are just fun to do, since it's sort of graphic design and painting mixed. The newest one is again of my friend Cherry Dee Licious, also known as the Blogger behind freelancersfashion.blogspot.fi.

My fiancé Asko had a photoshoot with Cherry last summer and I helped out a bit. Here are some behind the scenes pics from our photoshoot:freelancersfashion.blogspot.fi/2014/07/shooting.html

and here is the previous painting of Cherry.

Showgirl stencil, 40 x 50 cm acrylic paint on canvas, year created: 2014, model:Cherry Dee Licious

Glory

I've been extremly busy lately and I've had very little time to paint. But now I have the feeling that painting is coming back to me after a short absence. Here is a new painting I did. It's my biggest "portrait" so far. First I was painting this drowning lady in the river...but it looked like sh*t, so instead I started to paint this big blue portrait. I didn't plan much but just went for it (and modern society...during painting I just had to take a mean looking selfie?)... I stared at the painting for a week and did some minor improvements. Then I decided that it was ready. So here is "Glory", tadaa!

Glory (70cm x 100cm, acrylic paint on canvas, year created: 2014)

Vigeland park

When I was 18, I went to the Gustav Vigeland "Eros" exhibition in Helsinki. I was deeply moved by the Vigeland statues portraying the power and emotion of people. In the exhibition I saw a short documentary about the Vigeland park (Frogner park) in Oslo, Norway and I promised myself that one day I'd visit the park. This week I went to a business trip to Oslo with a nice co worker of mine, and indeed we found the time to visit the park!

It was amazing! I was really happy to fulfill this little promise to myself, and the statues were so beautiful and impressive. Statues are often quite dead, just shells of people sort of...the Vigeland statues are different. They seem to radiate with life. It must be the fact how much emotion they have. I can't really decide which statue was my favorit...there are so many to choose from. Below are some random photos from the park.

part of the Vigeland park "tower"

Abandoned places in Estonia (2)

I love abandoned places and I always take my camera out when I see an intruiging old building. For several years me and my fiancé Asko have done roadtrips to Estonia with our friends. Again this year, it was a perfect vacation and we saw a lot of beautiful places. Here are some of the abandoned buildings I came across. The white old manor is Riisipere manor, the other places are random buildings I came across.

Here's a link to some of my last years photos:
nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2013/07/abandoned-places-in-estonia.html

Edvard Munch exhibition

There is a Edvard Munch exhibition in Helsinki at the Didrichsen art museum. I was invited to the exhibition opening through a friend of mine, and I was really happy to be at the gallery opening of such an exhibition! Edvard Munch is one of my favorit artists. I tend to like dark and symbolic art and some of Munchs gloomy paintings have always appealed to me. Before this exhibition I've seen a Munch painting  here or there at different art museums, but I've never seen this many paintings at once, so it was great to really dive in the world of Munch.

One of my favorits is the painting "Puberty", and I've also attempted to copy it. My copies are alwyas pretty loose...and in this painting I wanted to make the girl a modern day teen with smudged make up (inspired by the teenage girl from this music video: Kent - Kärleken väntar).

Copy of Munch painting "Puberty" 2009

purple

This summer I have continued my little hobby of photographing insects :) Here is my favorit photo so far. A busy bee and some beautiful purple flowers.

And here is a link to the photos from last summer:
http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2013/09/the-smaller-things-in-life.html

Cherry tree painting

Here is another flower painting I recently did. These paintings require a certain state of mind, that can usually be achieved at midnight. Most of my attempts of doing these kind of paintings fail, but that's ok since you learn from every try.

I just started to use Instagram, so my first pic was the pic below of this painting.
More of everyday this and that on Instagram: http://instagram.com/nadjamariina

Cherry tree (50cm x 61cm, acrylic paint on canvas, year created: 2014)

detail of the Cherry tree -painting

http://instagram.com/nadjamariina

flower painting

For the first time in my life I live in a house that has a garden! When we moved into this place I thought it's really nice for the dogs to have a garden, but I've realised how nice it is for us too! I especially have found a love for planting flowers. I don't think it's much of a surprise that I now paint flowers too. I've done a few experiments with some rather abstract flower paintings and here is one of the first that I'm pleased with.

Apple blossom (50cm x 70cm, acrylic paint on canvas, year created: 2014)

and here is my inspiration...flowers from our garden :)

sixties golden dress

Last weekend, I was visiting my parents and we went through old photo albums from my moms childhood and youth. My grandfather was a photographer so there are a lot of photos of my mom. So below is my mom Anne getting ready for New Year. I'm not sure exactly which year, but it's sometime in the late sixties.

western photoshoot

We recently did a western themed photoshoot with Asko. We might do a few more sometime later.
Asko is a real big Clint Eastwood fan and in the past I have done this western style painting of him: http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2013/03/el-terror.html

Fun fact is that, I don't really like guns, but when I lived in Germany as a teenager my hobby was air rifle shooting and I was part of a "Schützenverein". So in real life I'm more of a rifle girl than a revolver person. Just kidding ;) in real life I hope I'll never be near guns at all!

Just sayin'

Do I have to do everything myself? ;)

Abandoned car in the forest

A friend gave us the tip that there is an old (late) fifties car burried in a forest. So what did we do? We went there as soon as we could to see that beauty! Me and Asko have a thing for old things, especially if they are beautiful and haunting :)

Here are a few photos by Asko. We will later sometime have another photoshoot at this location.

Here are a few other beautiful locations I've come across:
http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2013/11/like-haunted-house.html
http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2013/07/abandoned-places-in-estonia.html
http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2012/11/latvia.html
http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2013/01/harilaid-lighthouse.html

and below is a little "making of" image of Askos photoshoot :)

Portrait of Tinttu

Tinttu, 40cm x 50cm acrylic paint on canvas, year created: 2014

 

The model for this painting is Tinttu, who is a rope artist and photographer. You can see her work here: https://fi-fi.facebook.com/KoysitaiteilijaTinttuHenttunen

Me and Tinttu met each other about a year ago and started to collaborate a lot together, since our artwork is sometimes similar (we have both done for example "mermaids in ropes" without knowing of each others works). Here is a rope photo that Tinttu took of me last summer:
http://www.nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2013/06/rope-photo.html
I'm sure we will collaborate more in the future too :)

I'm planning a series of these kind of nudes. The first image of this series was in fact this self portrait: http://www.nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2012/10/self-portrait.html

My next models will be some girls with tattoos. Let's see how I deal with painting tattoos ;)

flowers and paint

Recently it was my birthday and I got a lot of beautiful flowers so I had to take a picture of them! I've started to do a new series of paintings last weekend and the next few days are dedicated to paint! Hopefully I'll be able to post some of my new paintings soon! They're quite different form my usual paintings...

Roses and a peony (from Asko). Notice that the flower matches the wallpaper!

Getting prepared to paint! (But not on this old beautiful russian table!)

Me and the model

Last year I did this painting of the beautiful burlesque dancer Cherry Dee Licious. Here is a picture of me and Cherry and the painting. For some reason I just love having these kind of me-and the model- and the painting pictures. So in the future I'll try to take more of these :)

Nowadays Cherry (along with her duo partner Tin ker Bell from The Ravishing Shangri-La Rubies) is also my burlesque teacher and I love going to their dance classes! I'm working on a painting of Tin Ker Bell right now and I'm sure I'll do another painting of Cherry in the future as well!

Stencil-series exhibition

Currently I have an exhibition of my stencil-series at the mbar in Helsinki. The mbar is an atmospheric bar, terrace & café in the heart of Helsinki founded by media artist and theorist Tapio Mäkelä. The mbar hosts regularly visual art exhibits. I'm happy to present my own artwork this month :)

Red stencil

Here's a new stencil painting I did a while ago. 

My stencil paintings take strong influence from street art. I love the rough surface of aging walls and I’ve created the backgrounds of my stencil paintings to be uneven and rough, distinctivly resembling those rough old graffiti filled walls. On top of the abstract painting I then place a portrait. Painting portraits is something that I’ve done for over 10 years and this time I combined it with my passion for graphic design. I try to minimize the facial features into a logo style image. Even a minimalistic portrait can express a lot of a persons inner emotions. 

I did the first stencil image in 2004 and last year I started to do a series of similar paintings. Who knows how many more I'll do in the future ;)

Red stencil (50x70 cm, acrylic paint on carboard, year created: 2014)

Blue

I seem to have a thing for blue right now. An overdose of blue it seems ;)
Here is my latest painting called, well...Blue (tadaa!) ;)

This was supposed to be a detailed, realistic painting but it took it's own course and turned out like this. Looks like a calm serene paintings...but wait a minute, is there something behind her?

I'm actually quite pleased with the end result :)

And here is something to the subject of blue...
one of my alltime favorit songs "Symbhony in Blue" by Kate Bush: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8jL_FAAVsg

Swan princess

Last year there was an exhibition in Helsinki with russian art from the Tretjakov art gallery (link). I really liked most of the artwork and I decided to make a copy of one of the paintings. I chose the beautiful Swan Princess by Mihail Vrubel. Vrubel has a very special painting style and his "unfinished touch" is quite impossible to copy. As I tend to do with my copies this copy turned out pretty "loose". With that I mean that it's not a 100% copy of the painting...it's something similar and I try to learn something from the other artist brush stroke methods, composition and colour use.

I don't regard my copied work as high as my other art, but I love doing copies since it's such a learning experience. It's a common art teaching method that's been used for centuries. Unfortunately it's not possible for me to sit next to the original painting and copy from tha, so what I usually do is that I buy a poster of the artwork. Throughout the painting  process I have the poster next to me. Sometimes I look very closely to the "original" and sometimes hardly at all and I add my own thing to the painting.

Some of my earlier copies are:
Frank Frazetta - Thuvia maid of mars: 
http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2012/05/thuvia-maid-of-mars-frazetta-copy.html

Alphonse Mucha - The moon
http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2013/08/the-moon-drawing.html
http://nadja-mariina.deviantart.com/art/the-moon-115608267

Gustav Klimt - Mäda Primavesi
http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2012/07/tribute-to-gustav-klimt.html

Below is my version of the swan princess. The beautiful original you can see for example here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Swan_princess.jpg

In honor to the artist Mihail Vrabol I also added a photo of the artist. Next to him is his wife Nadeshda who was a famous opera singer in her time and it is assumed that she is the model for the swan princess.  

Swan princess - Copy of a Mihail Vrubel painting

(50cm x 70cm, acrylic paint on canvas, year created: 2014)

Mihail Aleksandrovitš Vrubel &

Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel

Interview

Recently I was interviewed for the website Passionhow.com. The interview is part of an ongoing art research project, which studies the origins of passion and what stimulates creativity. Here is the link to my interview: http://www.passionhow.com/nadja-mikkila-portrait-artist/