Category: Wild drawing

The place that inspired this bookmark!

I read books, and slept like an overworked adult.

I hiked, watched goats do goaty stuff, foraged, and painted and sketched.

Also, went skinny dipping.

Which was freezing. This view tho’.

Did some drawing for an upcoming project.

And gave our lovely hosts a Hyttebok.

See you next year, Staupstunet! Thanks for hosting us.

The trail map I designed for Fløyen covers the main trails and gravel roads. But there are many qute trails just minutes from the upper station. Here is a map for walking a fairy tale route from the upper station (or if you prefer to walk up, takes about 40 min).

Fløyen station to Revurtjern aprx 15-20 min at scenic pace. Walk through the forest behind the first crossing after the
playground. Enter the gravel road and follow it to the crossing with the stone path up the hill. Take the nature trail to
your right when reaching the first crossing after the path. Hike up the hill and follow the path to the lake.

I grew up with hiking and wandering, then didn’t do it for many years as a young adult when studying abroad, and then started again when I was more settled in life and work. And very much more after 2020. Many of my normal activities changed then, and this was one of the things I stuck to. I joined an outdoor yoga group at Fløyen, and later an outdoor breathwork group that did shinrin-yoku. I didn’t tell anyone because it felt wishy washy and woo-woo. But I fell in love with it, and now I want everyone to try it.

Hiking in Norwegian culture (and probably many other places) is about reaching a summit, walking as far as possible, for as long as possible, and as sparingly as possible. Perfected and polished and timed. This has never appealed to me, probably why I shied away from the hiking culture for a time. I didn’t fit in with the reaching of goals and rushing past all the wonder. I preferred wandering, sitting, lunching, foraging, staying. And now, sketching. I realise this is what I did as a kid, and what I’m most comfortable with. And the hygge of it all. Not deserved, as in Oh you didnt walk far enough, you havent depleted yourself enough to earn a waffle. This whole earning of things only if you deplead yourself completely is a culture thing, and is reflected in our workdays, in our social engagements, and for many women; how we show up for others. learnt behavious over generations.

I work hard, and know I need to replenish my strength. Hiking for hours depleting myself will not serve the idea of replenishing strength. So I wander instead. And now I know it has a name. And why its good for you. The trees release something that makes your cells work better, and builds the immune system. I’m out here actively building myself a better immune system, and that should be a goal in itself. Breathing in green goodness. Replenishing my magic. Going back to work to run a gallery and paint with dapples of sun and new magic.

There is a meme about bird watching creeping up on you as you grow older – in my case it’s moss.

Luckily I live in a cold and damp city. (Normally. This walk was a week ago, when weather was normal for this time of year.)

My house is close to Prom’s gate, one of the stations for the funicular to Mount Fløyen, and that means being cold and damp is easily within reach.

We used the trail behind the ridge close to Bjørnebu – on the map it’s the area behind the giant squirrel’s butt. The trail goes off the main path, and winds back and forth around the ridge.

I was hoping to encounter something moss’y and lichen’y that would spark some sketching, and we did meet a few creatures. And some wonderful habitats.

Coming home from our short but long hike I continued in my sketchbook, without really knowing where I was headed, but recorded the mossy turtle-hedgehog, and the different lichen.

Then this creature popped up in its Cladonia furcata hair and Lobaria pulmonaria vest.

Colour studies done on copy paper because then I won’t mind if I ruin it.

Meet the new moss creature! I don’t have a name for this little sprite yet, give me a shout if anyone wants to name it.

Thanks again to my good helpers on Instagram that helped with taxonomy of the lichen I had photographed. I’ll probably be in want of your research skills again after future encounters with exciting bracken;)

I had my winter vacation the first week of January, before the start of this spring’s projects, and my free time coinceded with sun and lots of snow. I had a digustingly wonderful week building snow caves, going tobogganing, watching the illusive northern nights from my window – and eating homemade celestial shortbread.

Five projects are now in the pipeline, all with different finishing dates so that no deadlines collide. One of the projects I’m in the process of finishing up now, and will be sent to print the upcoming week.

1) Fløyen: The first project is illustrations for the Nature School house at Fløyen. This project has been in development this autumn, and I just received green light from the project manager and activity leader Ingvild Jarnæs that we’re good to go.

For the nature school I’m decorating the outside of a wooden house with life size illustrations that greets visitors with with anecdotes about the role insects play in our lives – and a prompt to start talking about foraging.

The figures will be printed on aluminium coated with white surface and mounted on the house. I have some minor tweaks I’m dabbling with this weekend because I wanted the scans to be of higher quality, and when that’s done it’s off to print. And then you’re all invited to a forest vernissage to greet the illustrations in place.

2) Cider labels: Together with “Hardangerbonden“, Ingrid Sekse, I’m designing and illustrating labels for two ciders and two apple sodas. She runs her family’s farm in Sekse in Hardanger, and are producing some lovely crisp ciders that she and her husband brought for our first meetup in my studio at Bryggen.

We’re well underway in the sketching process, and happily they enjoyed my apple butt sketch for their non alcoholic cider “Nude”.

I’ve been following them on social media after I came by their reenactment of “Three wishes for Cinderella”; and if videos of snowboarding apple farmers in picturesque hillsides in a fjord is your thing, you should definitely visit her Instagram account. The other labels have trolls riding wheelbarrows and a dancing farmer. Good times.

3) KODE Composer Homes: My project with KODE is to develop an illustrated book about the composer Agathe Backer Grøndahl. She is not as well known as her male contemporaries even though she was considered among the best composers of her time. The museum wants to rectify her status, and as part of the exhibition “Harriet Backer. Every Atom is Colour” (Harriet Backer being Grøndahl’s sister) KODE is producing a sound book with snippets of her compositions. Together with museum consultant Maike Aarebrot Flick, who had the idea for the book, I’m now devouring everything I can read about her. As part of the research process I’m also visiting the different composer homes and talking to the curators at the museums to narrow down a style for the book and illustrations.

But the absolutely most delightful part of this project is that our meetings also consist of listening to her compositions.

We are meeting Wednesdays to listen to music and work on the book, so in the spirit of “Mean Girls”: “On Wednesdays we channel our inner Victorian and listen to Classical Music“.

4) UiB/Kystmuseet: Before Christmas I met up with marine biologist Katrine Kongshavn and museum consultant Marianne Lindgren at Kystmuseet. They had a great idea for a board game for use at the museum, and the brief was so well worked out both in content and game mechanics, that I could start the visual work without a longer research period. There is always research to do (which I enjoy) but if it’s a theme that is not my expertise (in this case educating about marine life) the research rabbit hole can sometimes eat up a bulk of time that could be spent doing the creative work. So having more brains at it is splendid.

One of the things guiding my sketches is accessability. The gameplay is based on snakes and ladders expanded with cards, and the board will be printed quite large and have a lot of visual info. I’m working with it both being physically accessible and readable from several sides around a table, managing an accessible rulebook, and keeping the gaming time within a reasonable limit. I enjoy a bit of game design and working with ocean themed tasks, so this is a happy marriage.

5) Music score: This is the more arty of this spring’s projects. In collaboration with noise artist John Hegre I’m designing and illustrating two musical scores for sound installations: “The ill tempered intonarumori” and “Six cycles to Gong Gregor”. I’m pleased to work with visualising soundscapes again (not exactly like Monster Jazz but similar). The freedom I have here can be both inspiring and intimidating – unlearning what a score looks like when there are no notes is giving me a headache. But also fun. The printed format is the only straightforward part, an A4 booklet, but the rest is (quite literally) a blank page.

On the side I’ve been writing on my own book project “RUNA”, but this January I had to prioritize, so I couldn’t spend as much time on it as I dreamed of. But I’m soon finishing editing the first draft and will post a peek into the first chapter.

Since the startup of this many projects is quite intense I’m looking forward to some good long hours immersing myself in the process. That means less days in my gallery shop and more closed up in my studio – but my minions Wiktoria, Ingrid and Helene will be there to greet you as usual Monday to Saturday 11:00 to 17:00.

Now I’m making myself a cup of tea and a sandwich and will set up next week’s framework for an immersive sketching spree.

As part of a project with Fløyen I asked if I could spend a night in Konglen to draw.

I’ve done several different illustration tasks for Fløyen over the last few years, and the drawings in the pipeline now are for their “Nature School” plans for 2025. I’m decorating some walls with drawings, and I’m really looking forward to be able to share it. Until then; here are some pictures of the process.

At Fløyen they’ve build a beautiful tree hut suspended between the trees, and since I’m spending so much time up there drawing for this project, I asked if I could stay one night in the treehut and work.

I had my drawing list to work from, but hoped that the stay would give the illustrations some extra spark.

And it did. Getting complete silence and alone time is precious, and I reveled at how silent the place was at night. There was no wind, weather was cold and clear, and the goats living close to the treehut seemed to enjoy their alone time too.

The drawings are going to printed quite large, and I had tested the linework vs scale earlier, and knew approximately which size to draw them out in. This one is only 3 cm tall, and will be aprx 30 cm tall when printed. This way we’ll get all the fun watercolour play and wonky linework nice and visible.

I did some fleshing out of the characters while up there (swaying away in the trees) which led to some of the illustrations to be drawn out again. But they came out more alive because of it.

The stream running underneath my contemporary home.

My attempts at photographing the space were unsuccessful to say it mildly, so here is a sketch I made of it instead. Konglen doesn’t feel cramped, the ceiling is high and vaulted, and the window lets in plenty of light.

There is a bookshelf with games and books, wool slippers to wear inside, and it was heated! I didn’t know, so I had packed enough to be comfortable on the North pole.

The table/mid-mattress solution was clever, and when the mattress/table was down the bed was a cozy plain of wool and pillows. Sleeping arrangements are spacious for one person, perfect for two, or one adult with two kids. The thing that makes it more of a challenge to use with more than two people is not the space, but the swaying. The treehouse is suspended in wires from the surrounding trees, so it’s a bit like moving around in a boat reacting to waves.

The rope ladder was attached to the top steps that were built in the hut itself, so when hauling my rucksack up I wasn’t dangling away underneath it for the last few steps. That made it alot easier to push open the trap door.

I’m staying in a tree!

The view from my sofa bed. The best thing about the swaying is that you’re being lulled to sleep.

It’s the most inspiring and wonderful thing I’ve done for myself and my creativity in a long time. Getting this many hours in a row to just concentrate and get in the flow was magical.

I can recommend doing something like this if you want to spend a night in the forest but can’t spend a full weekend away. I don’t have a car, so being able to just take the funicular after work and not carry a tent was a treat. And climb down and go to work the next day. A micro vacation in the middle of the week.

Morning light.

The illustrations for this project are finished, but I’m waiting to publish the final result until they are in place in Mt Fløyen in the very near future.

Btw, I had sea legs for two days;)

Looking though my camera roll it seems all my walks are soggy. This one was also at Fløyen, like my last misty mountain visit.

The colour scheme in this photo reminded me of underexposed hiking photos from the 1970’s and 80’s; grainy, with dark greens and browns and a blue tint. Which led me to think about retro t-shirt designs from foresty summer camps, and *pop*; “Soggy Forest Hiking Club” was born.

A quick sketch so not to let the idea slip.

The idea of hiking is wonderful, but sometimes, when you’re actually there, nature is itching. So I set out to experiment with some colour mixes that would convey ultimate soggyness. Greens become a lovely deep hue when wet, and since drips means overcast I tested out a granulating black tint that would dampen the greens I had in my palette. I didn’t use a contrasting colour or other greens to do the shading, because I also had in mind screenprinted t-shirts with limited colour options, where darker areas would just be printed in black.

Fot the character I wanted a little misfit that was a contrast to the background. With garish coloured gear. One “80’s hiking colour” I remember (from a tent we had) was bright orange.

A few tryouts with red and yellow hues.

Channelling some muddy mood.

I drew this font out earlier on the same walk after seeing some really cute baby ducks, and when I came up with the t-shirt motif it of course had to be the type of font to use.

Here is a mock up of the design, I need to sleep on the colour of the shirt, but think grey is a suitable colour for the soggy club. Don’t know the production date yet, but I’ll post on my Instagram as soon as the t-shirt is in stock in my shop at Bryggen:)

We stayed in Montmartre this time, something I never thougt I’d do! When I lived in Paris (20 years ago) Pigalle and Montmartre wasn’t really a place we chose to hang out. The area around Place du Tertre was a tourist trap (with the exception of Le Tire Bouchon, which we loved but unfortunately now is permanently closed) and the Pigalle area was full of sex shops. We had a good laugh at some of the bars though.

There has always been good places in the little streets between Pigalle and the top of Montmartre though, and the area around rue des Abesses, rue d’Orsel, and rue des Martyrs (down past Pigalle too) has grown and attracted a beautifully scruffy and eclectic mix of niche shopping, good wine bars and restuarants, and collaborative artist studio shops.

The Abesses area have winding streets and cobblestones, and the facades hold typography treasures like the neatly spaced hotel letters underneath. That’s the thing about Paris for me. It’s scruffy and dirty and wonky and beautiful. I’m not sure how the pink macaraoon idea of Paris got hold, I’ve only ever seen one inside Laduree. Most of Paris looks like a PJ Harvey track.

If you’re looking for some niche shopping or dining I can recommend Rue des Martyrs, Rue la Vieuville, Rue Yvonne le Tac, Rue D’Orsel, and just wander and get lost and discover little ceramics studios that aren’t there the day after. (I’m sure it was there!) I don’t have a single good picture from those wanderings, I was too busy with my sketchbook map. You just have to take my word for it.

Walking around the streets with no real plan gave us some cute discoveries, but we had the time to do it, and we stayed in the area to do just that. Walk around, eat good food, sit at the cafe tables and do some sketching, and get to know a new (to us) area of Paris.

I will continue the work on the map, and update this post with a finished version of it with more info about the places we enjoyed. I think I’m making a printable of it. I’ll post it on my instagram when it’s ready:)

Before I moved my old WordPress site to this new platform, I had written years and years of travel logs from trips for work, or from simply bringing my pens somewhere. In the hustle and bustle of the move, I decided to drop the blog part, which I have regretted ever since. Now I am remedying that by picking up the pen again to document my visit to Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay.

The old abbey is now a hotel located south-west of Paris, and I went there as my pre-bustle vacation before high season in my shop and gallery at Bryggen in Bergen. Also, it was a gift to myself. I had saved up for staying here since I contracted covid a second time, and used it as a goal for when out of my second round of post covid maladies. The place popped up in my feed one day and I was like “When I’m well again I’m going there.”

The abbey has been described as a “Disneyland Hogwarts for grown ups” – and I agree. The staff all wore beautifully tailored Victorian outfits, there were hidden staircases by fireplaces, and the buffet under vaulted ceilings was a visual feast and nothing less than opulent.

I only read a little French but the newspaper had to be in the shot. A ridiculous amount of cake. We were close to Versailles after all. More cake. Unsure if your visual identity is coming through? Brand your bread.

Fortunately the abbey had bikes, and we made good use of them exploring the grounds.

To not get lost they had made their own map. I love maps. Especially the ones that tweak reality and distance or only show you specific places, like the London Underground map or Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. When I drew the Tall Ships Races and Fløyen maps I worked the same way, tweaked and pinched to visualise navigating and what to discover, the actual distance drawn with a pinch of salt. Which might seem odd, but many user friendly small scale navigation maps are created this way. If you are a tall ship navigating the coast, or hiking for posts up a mountain, then of course those maps follow the proper measurements.

Everything was so well produced, even the tactile feel of the paper used for the maps and other printables was of splendid quality, and the graphics were pristine.

The napkins were sewn with tablecloth corners, and this attention to detail was there throughout. That’s kind of why I wanted to go here. Not that I strive for this in my own life, I just really appreciate the work laid down to create an immersive experience. For those of you that enjoy these things; the folded paper menu lay completely flat within the (handmade!) folio. If this never occurred to you as interesting; now you know the level of paper quality and fold detail that might please a former bookbinder.

The designers must have had a blast, the work was almost like a movie set. Elements from the architecture made up different patterns printed on napkins, tablewares, wallpaper and umbrellas, and the different restaurants had their own visual profile in both graphics and textiles.

It really was like a theme park! They didn’t have branded litter bins like in EuroDisney tho’.

But they had wellies with frog’s eyes. Much of our stay there was shared between exploring the abbey and gardens, and the hotel had wellies that you could borrow.

I spent a lot of time in the grounds taking it all in, and drawing.

And took a turn around the lake.

In the evenings; lounging about in different rooms with massive fireplaces and hidden staircases.

This staircase came out in a panel in the wall in the upstairs hallway.

Lounging about in vaulted opulence is a privileged and expensive affair. But I was so happy to finally see it, and it was such a cool experience if you like a bit of lush branding work paired with leopard carpeting.

So after enjoying a bit of wonderland we climbed back up the rabbit hole and took the RER back to reality, in this case Paris! Which you can read about here if you are into small grungy places that serve delicious truffle pasta.