Caravan trip with a 1 year old

Last summer we had a wonderful 3 week caravan vacation to Sweden and Norway. We had a borrowed mobile car and traveled with our 1 year old daughter. We did several small hikes in the mountains and had a lot of photoshoots. Hiking was easy when our girl was travelling in her backpack.

These kind of vacations are so inspiring! I love big majestic mountains, but I also like exploring all the tiny plants that grow in the mountains. I took photos of all kind of animals we encountered and I even managed to do a drawing while travelling.

Below are some pics from our trip.

Beautifully framed

This made my day :) to see my hare print so beautifully framed among other awesome work. 

Corset is by Ruska: https://www.facebook.com/ruskariebancrafts/

Girls are by Johanna: https://www.johannalaakkonen.com/

Cat lady is by Neryl: https://neryl.bigcartel.com/

Shout it Out - For Hobos

I'm participating in the ”Shout it Out - For Hobos” vol. 3, which is an online auction for rescue dogs. Auction items vary from art and design to event tickets and things for animals. I have donated some art prints for the auction.

The auction is happening on Facebook and will be going on 1.9.-23.9. You can help homeless dogs with your shouts!

more info: kulkurit.fi

I'm myself owner of 2 rescue dogs by the way 🐕💞

Snake drawing

I'm also available for commission work! If you want a unique drawing of your favorite animal, we can discuss it :) price range for a A5 or A4 drawing is about 150-200€

The snake drawing below is my newest comission work.

Family holiday

Summer is here and we had a small trip to Estonia with our friends. This time it was 4 adults and 3 kids travelling 😁 our group has expanded since 2012, when we travelled together for the first time 😉 This time we mainly visited Tartu and it's closeby area. 

Our daughter pretty much learned to walk during our trip. Now she is walking around the house and it's just so cute 😊 Below is a family photo of us. 

Now that we are home there is new art coming up. My newest art is laways first on IG

Twin Peaks art - birds

Recently I started to do a new series of illustrations. A Twin Peaks bird series. It will at least include an owl (obviously!!), the bird from the opening credits (varied thrush) and of course Waldo, the talking myna bird.

I started out by drawing the bird from the opening credits. It just felt appropriate that way! :D

By the way, in 2015 I was sort of modelling at a Twin Peaks event in 2015.
http://nadja-art.blogspot.com/2015/05/twin-peaks.html

Art vs artist challenge

Recently there was the #artvsartist challenge on Instagram and Facebook. Here is my contribution :)
Currently I do mostly drawings, since we have a baby in the house. She's pretty much a toddler already and it's just easier for me to do drawings rather than big paintings...since she is interested in everything I do :D

Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School

In my teenage years I used to do a lot of life drawing. I actually started out when I was 14 or 15.

Nowadays however I'm no longer doing life art so much. I don't have the time for that and there are no classes in my home town I could take. Instead I go from time to time to Dr. Sketchys art clubs in Helsinki. I love them and I have a few old posts about those:

Dr Sketchy Helsinki, 2011
Dr Sketchy Helsinki, 2011

Dr Sketchy Helsinki, 2013

Last spring was a very special Dr Sketchy night! My spouse was the model! How awesome is that! :) Below are some pics of the event and you can also check out the Freelancers Fashion Blog to see more pics. I was so proud of Asko! This was his first time as an art model and he did a great job :)
I was obviously pregnant as you can see in the pic. It was 8 months actually but I remember that I still felt pretty good :)

Predator or prey

Predator or prey. A new creature of the night...

Wolf

A creature that walks by night and makes no sound.

Lighthouse painting

I have a thing for lighthouses! On my travels to Estonia I've visited several lighthouses
http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2013/07/hiumaa-lighthouses.html
http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2013/01/harilaid-lighthouse.html

For the first time, I did a lighthouse painting. This one is called "Safety"
For some reason after having a baby, I paint these sea themed paintings.

Nordic Harbor

Let's go back in time 8 months or so... our daughter was born in May 2017. I got home from the hospital in a few days, and I think it was just a week or so later, that I wanted to paint again. I assumed beforehand that a baby girl would make me paint some sort of adorable pink flowers and butterflies or something...but instead I started to paint winter landscapes (...in summer).

So here is my first post baby painting "Nordic Harbor"

When you think about it, a harbor is a start of a new journey...new life certainly is such.

The original painting is for sale for 600€ and different size prints are available at https://www.posterlounge.de/nordischer-hafen-pr669277.html

Nordic harbor, 60cm x 80cm, acrylic paint on canvas, 2017

Magpie king

Ink drawings continue! Here is the magpie king 😄
We have magpies in our backyard almost everyday. They are such intelligent birds ♥
Please notice that I'm also wearing a magpie shirt in the drawing photo 😉

Greedy frog

Here is my newest ink drawing. The greedy frog, or rather toad. I'm also working on a bling bling loving magpie drawing right now. This year has started out great artwise :) I started to do more drawings sometime last autumn...it took me a few months to get back into it, but now it feels easy again. Like they say, it's practice, practice, practice...

Norway, Lofoten islands - travelling with baby

Me and my partner Asko travelled to the beautiful Lofoten islands in Norway in 2016 . We loved it so much, that in 2017 we wanted to go again to Lofoten! This time we just had a 2 month old baby along with us. Many people told us that it would be awful and impossible to travel with a baby. But we did travel together and everything went well :) did we have difficulties? Yes we did, but in fact the whole trip just gave us more confidence as a parents, so it was definitly worth it!

This year we had a borrowed caravan car (Fiat globescout) from Askos parents. It was luxury compared to our vacation in 2016, when we slept in the car trunk. But with all the baby stuff etc. we were pretty squeezed on our 2 week trip ;) this year with the baby we couldn't drive that much a day and we were pretty much twice as slow as the previous year. Also instead of sleeping somewhere on the road, we went several times to camping areas. Pretty much every other night on the road and every other night on a camping area. The camping areas are pretty cheap in Norway. Something like 25€ which is even cheaper than the average camping area in Finland! So when people complain about Norway being expensive, it's certainly not everything.

If you have any questions about travelling to Lofoten, you can drop me a line :) I might know a thing or two ;)