Waiting outside Stockholm Central Station for a meeting eventually hindered by force majeure, I took to sketching all the funny people that one might see there. Businesspeople hurrying, tourists touristing and people from all corners of the world milling about.
And one of them -- I used to be good at reading lips -- now I'm not -- but I think this lady was Spanish. She now has the unconscious honour of being the central point in an oil, here inked on the gesso coated paper. (Good invention! as for the duration of the medium, we'll live and see and learn. Life is an experiment.)
And then I started on one of the corners, inking and filling apples with oil.
It is anybody's guess what apples have to do with tired tourist angels that rest on top of station clocks. I'll go on throwing details ad hoc in -- some painted live and some painted live from my imagination -- trusting everything to make perfect sense one of those days.
Perhaps it was this little sketch from earlier this year, something about the blue heart, that led me to draw the "medical poster" below it...
...now finished, give or take a few corrections. The electric shock electrodes (upper left) could sizzle and fizzle better, the English version of this poster could be more on a par with the Swedish one (below) in which the scientific parody is flowing with a greater quirky ease. And so on. I want to leave it behind.
Sadly, Sweden in July is heartbreaking from the perspective of a cultural workaholic. The entire country has shut down for vacations that rage for months, and in this eternal sunshine of the Swedish mind it is impossible to find a reliable printer. The poster exists right now as a digital nightmare, and that's it.
I am still working on the heartbreaking poster of the previous weeks, now and then taking a break for lighter, summerly things, such as this sketch of a purple Foxglove.
As for the poster, we're to read there that "scars (q.v.) and sudden amorous flashbacks can be expected for years after the initial clawings." If old wounds open, metal staples might be an option; replacing one large injury with small friendly stings.
I think that the tone of the background is nice -- ranging as it is from papery yellowing to the smudgy sepia above -- but rather monotonous -- and I am considering a more varied structure, full of surprises. Or something like that.
Still working on the brokenhearted poster. Yet again Marie (Friend & Muse) came to the rescue -- she suggested that you might use glue for broken hearts.
Perhaps glue is good for loose nerves too? If you add a lot.
I insisted that we need some rope too (for pulling oneself together, at least temporarily).
Yet much remains to do. Shading, refining. The background is still nice and fairly plain -- perhaps a little boring, and I'm pondering whether to make it more varied or not. Perhaps one could do something funny with it, we'll see...
