Ängelholm ---> Stockholm ---> Malmö!

The past few weeks has been quiet busy.

Me and my colleague Nathan Sowa were up in Stockholm for the Peredvizjniki-show (Ilya Repin, Isaak Levitan, Abram Archipov among other great painters) and to participate at Kista mässan and do portrait-demos.

To experience that show was close to a religious experience

                                               Portrait of the Art Critic Vladimir Stasov by Ilya Repin

We are definitely going up to Stockholm to see this show again before they take it down. Then bringing a real camera to get some good close-ups to study.

I have also moved from Ängelholm to Malmö and have been working hard to get the place in order. So today I had my first chance to paint in my new studio space. I began a figure painting on which Im going to continue on for at least one more day so maybe I can post an image tomorrow of that.

Titus, my dog, was kind enough to lay still for five minutes. (I let him up on the couch where he usually is not allowed)

So here a little sketch of my best buddy,

Titus

In another post I can tell you how I have set up the new studio space.

The Wanderers - Peredvizjniki

Don't miss the exhibition of the decade or maybe even the century at National museum in Stockholm!

29 Sept 2011 -  22 Jan 2012

Peredvizjniki 

or also often called The Wanderers was a russian group of excellent painters.

If you are not familiar with them already, hold on to your hat and socks because they will surely blow you away!

Ilya Repin "Barge Haulers on the Volga" 131.5 x 281 cm"

Ilya Repin was one of the front figures of this group and this great painting has been haunting me ever since I first saw it (in a book) as a student and now its going to be on display i the National Museum in Stockholm. I can't wait to see it...


The timing could never have been better too.
Im scheduled to go up to Stockholm the very 29 of September to participate in one of the biggest art events of the year,


Konstnärernas Höstsalong  30 Sept - 2 Oct   (Kista-mässan)     

• Me and Nathan Sowa are going to be on stage friday, saturday and sunday doing portrait demos and you can also visit us at our stand nr: G:02 

• Friday             14.00-17.00
• Saturday         15.00-18.00
• Sunday           10.00-13.00 

Click here to find out more Konstnärernas Höstsalong

Finalist Award in the Boldbrush Competition

Today I´ve been struggling with a lot of paperwork from the summer and its just killing me...

So it was quiet uplifting to receive an email from the Boldbrush Competition (an online monthly painting competition) saying I got one of seven Finalist Awards in the August competition.

There was no money in the award but an upcoming feature in the online magazine Informed Collector and the honor to be acknowledged among so many talented artists from all around the world.

Here is a link to my entry http://faso.com/boldbrush/winner/23717

and here is a link to the other winners http://faso.com/boldbrush/winners/61

So thank you Trent Gudmundsen for cheering me up today !

Hamburg 16 September

Im starting to write this blog in english from now and on since I get more visitors from abroad.

Last week I got a chance to visit Hamburg, Germany for to days.
It was my first visit and I had one and half day to explore what Hamburg had to offer.
So a power nap after arrival I put on the walking shoes and set out for Hamburg Kunsthalle, one of Germanys largest museums.
After getting the wrong directions at the hotel desk, it took me a little more an hour to finally find the museum but I was lucky that they were open til 9 pm on thursdays so there was plenty of time.

Hamburg Kunsthalle has the largest Caspar David Friedrich-Collection in the world and they have ,probably, one of his most famous works, "The wanderer above the sea of fog", along with smaller landscapes and studies too.

Caspar David Friedrich is considered to be one of Germanys greatest artists of all time. Yet today I believe many art critiques consider his works to sentimental and kitschy. 

I like this painting.

They also had some paintings of Adolf Menzel, one of the most prominent german 19th-century painters

 "The studio wall"

And heres a guy I didn't know about, which is strange considering the sizes he was working in...

Hans Markat, I looked him up on Wikipedia and it said that when he was studying at the academy in Vienna in 1858 he was considered to hold little talent. In 1879 he became a professor at the same academy.

Hans Markat "The Entry of Charles V into Antwerp"

Next day I walked around Hamburg with my painting gear and did a small sketch ( i would look like a stamp compared to Markats painting...) But size doesn't matter eeh?

Thank you Barbara for sending me this picture =)

And a close-up. I think I heard Fleur-de-lys about 8 times while painting this.

Then the law inforcement got tired of the tunes and showed him off....

Thank you for reading!

Rönne River

Jag har en kommande utställning i mars nästa på på Galleri Moment i Ängelholm med ett tema på
Rönne Å.
Med en lånad liten vit båt med 4 arabiska fullblod som för mig uppströms kan fara omkring fritt i ån. Så i slutet på förra veckan fick vi lite uppehåll i regnet och jag tog tillfället i akt att ge mig ut på ån för kolla in lite bra ställen att måla från en båt.

Nate och Titus fick självklart följa med. Även om Titus inte gillade idén till att börja med tror jag att han uppskattade turen. Nästan lite för mycket emellanåt och hängde ut från båten för att äta bubblor.

Den här turen handlade mest om att utforska och hitta lämpliga motiv så det blev mycket puttrande och inte så mycket målande.
Väl tillbaka i hamnen vid 19.30 låg månen lite halvskygg bakom molnen och ljuset räckte precis till att göra en snabbt liten skiss.

Ny årstid och nya projekt!

Hösten är här med besked. Det är en tid av förändring. Ska det här bli ett lyckat försök med att bli en flitigare bloggare?
För mig har bloggandet på något sätt hamnat i samma kategori som att träna. Det är svårt att komma igång men när man väl gör det inser man hur stimulerande det är...

Den här veckan har också visat sig värd att berätta om.
I helgen bestämde vi (Jag och  Nathan) oss för att göra en liten målarvideo.
Så i veckan har filmat när vi målar varsitt "Alla Prima"-porträtt under ca. 3 timmar.
(Alla Prima = färgen hinner aldrig torka utan man målar allt på en gång)

Med två kameror har vi filmat både duk och palette.
Nu ska filmen redigeras lite och ljudspår ska med där vi förklarar vad vi gör hela tiden.

                                                  Nate målar av Emilio

Detta är alltså inte det första alternativet till fredags-mys-filmen utan vänder sig till målarfanatiker som oss själva =)

Som Nate sa: "Its about as exciting as watching grass grow"

Den stora Release-festen kommer gå av stapeln på Konstnärernas Höstsalong
i Kista den 30 Sept - 2 Okt.
Då kommer både jag och Nate att måla Alla Prima-porträtt på scen och sälja DVD:n.

Vill ni kan ni även förbeställa en DVD genom min mail gustav@gustavsundin.com

(Priset kommer hamna mellan ca. 100 - 139 kr)

                                            Mitt färdiga porträtt av Lolo

Harmony and Presence

Very interesting talk, Dr Jill Bolte Taylor brainresearcher had a Stroke of genius

On TED.com

Is happiness the same as presence?...

(I know, very brief post and its been a while)

Gustav

Post-Posting from the america trip

Well, I have noticed that some images will not show any longer. That is due to an insufficient apple device called Ipad with its insufficient Apps...

I will try to recover those images and post them again, from a real computer this time.

I found a few sketches from Saint augustine and Charleston I havent posted before so, here they are.

Long Branch Creek outside Charleston

The Cathedral-Basilica in St. Augustine

Dolomites , Italy

Here are a few recent sketches from the Dolomites in Italy. I spent a week in Canazei and borrowed a snowboard and a backpack for the painting gear, got a skipass that allowed me to explore this natural heritage.

Fort Lauderdale (no Everglades)

The last three days we spent in Key West, probably the biggest disappointment on this trip...
My expectations and mental image of the island were completely crushed in our first day. It's a tourist trap with all it's components, sky high prices for crap (hotel, food etc), cheap t-shirts with sex-jokes, a train on wheels, adultstores, mass-produced art in the galleries, you name it!
So we cancelled the fourth night at our hotel (would have cancelled more if we didn't have to pay for it).

When doing some more thorough research on the web we realized we had already passed through the Everglades. I think I had a different image of what the Everglades would look like...
And if we wanted to see the Everglades again we would have had to backtrack our path quiet a bit.

So instead we decided to head to Fort Lauderdale where we met the only swede who has ever blown up an american battleship!
It's true.
As a part of an artificial reef-program the old battleship was blown up outside of Pensacola. Today it serves as shelter for fish and attraction for sport-divers. The discovery channel made a show about the sinking so you can probably find it on YouTube.

Fort Lauderdale seems really nice so we decided to stay here tonight. I saw some galleries when we drove through the city so I hope to see some good paintings tomorrow.
I haven't had many good opportunities to paint lately which is very frustrating but I sincerely hope to do wip out the brushes soon.

- Posted by Gustav

Location:Fort Lauderdale

Florida

Due to a lot of traveling lately I have had very little time to paint. But tomorrow we are heading to the Everglades in Florida and I've been longing to go there for some time now. So by tomorrow I sure hope to have some new sketches to post!






- Posted by Gustav

Location:Florida

Happy New Year!

I apologize for not posting in a while but I have had very little or no access to the information superhighway until reaching civilization today.
We have been driving a few miles, from L.A through the Nevada desert to SinCity and then to Grand Canyon for a couple of days before heading to Santa Fe and today we arrived in Albuquerque! (long sentence there..)

Here follows a few recent sketches



Nevada desert approx. 5x10 cm




Nevada desert II approx. 7x7cm


And for a landscape painter few places are as majestic to paint as the
Grand Canyon.
Not only was it grand it was also the coldest conditions I have ever painted in
(-12 Fahrenheit = -24 Celsius).
I wasn't sure if the paint was going to stick to the canvas when I set out the first morning. So please don't judge me to hard on the drawing. My only goal was to capture a few color notes, then I will use, I going to say it!, PHOTOGRAFS!, for drawing reference. :)
The night before I made a small copy of an american painter, Clyde Aspevig, to help me figure out some values in distant landscape, see below.



Color-sketch-copy after Clyde Aspevig

Then here are two colorsketches from Grand Canyon




South Rim approx. 12x30 cm




By Matherpoint approx. 10x15 cm

Until next post, Happy New Year!!

Location:Nevada & Grand Canyon