A Heartless Year

2020! Corona pandemic, a mad president sitting (and s****ing) on the top of the world and enviromental doomsday bells. It has been very heartless. December brings us...

...this heartless little balloon-heart-factory; I called it ”Industrial Ego Boost, or Why We Are So Clever”
Backstory: Sweden runs on lots of subsidies; whether it's the housing of Real Workers or directly to the factories where they're stored 9-5, presumably (but not necessarily) doing Real Work. All is paid for by timber from stolen forests and reindeer feeding grounds rich in ore – both taken from the indigenous Sámi people.
(One of those days, the balloon will get pricked by a giant needle.)

We also made a brokenhearted little ballpoint thingy.

This year had many people masking up...

And even S:t Lucia celebrations in Sweden were a little exhausted.

Whew! Cheers to a new year. As different as possible. We need it.

Whatever I Wanted

I've been busy this November. But I can show you "Whatever I Wanted". (Yes, it's for sale.)

The details don't make any more sense.

Not at all.

October Varia

October. I've been making studies like this one, as the autumnal chill allowed. I've also made some decidedly silly things. I call the one below "Sudden Pointless Insight". It's very open for your interpretation.

And this is a cat staring at something across the universe, as cats are prone to do. Ink and a little pastel on paper, inverted.

Edit: I might as well add this butterfy that I made on the spur the other night. And the leaves are falling, mists are rolling in from where our longings go to drown themselves and October is drawing towards an end.

A Cheerful Balloon

Trigger warning: Cheerful dark humour ahead!

Well, this cheers me up. Sorry (not sorry) if it doesn't do that for you. The balloon is happy!

The hair is a mess. The owner of the scalp might not care so much anymore, but I've put a bit of work into it. Also note that the rope/string is in a cheery glittery pink, making the occassion all the merrier.

It's September! The very last of it, even. Here, leaves are falling, skies are hazy and mushrooms are popping up from the ground with a loud corky sound. *Bop!* So the spikes/nails that keep us aeronauts gently attached to dear terra firma take on a certain fungal character.

It might amuse you to know that the gloom in the background was made out of nice photos really. In real life, the red leaves were yellow... (It didn't go with the rest of the picture! Red definitly did)

...and that the autumn day with its cool, crisp air was as cheerful as the balloon. Here's some sweet maples. Now calm down.

Mental August Weeds

August has been a mostly lonely but productive month in these viral times. We have, for instance, harvested a giant pear...

...which is part of O Holy Telephone, a ballpoint pen with digital enhancements now available on Saatchi Online.

We have also built the weirdest little temple -- or ex-temple -- I fail to find a name for it.

Detail: Balloon.

And last but not least, these weeds have grown in the backyard of my mind. No name yet either.

Which Side Are You On?

This gentle Bumble Bee is on the Nice side of my little digital work. (Yes, it borrowed the title from the old protest song.)

The other side is Not so Very Nice; that's if we keep ignoring the warnings of Mother Nature and repeat sayinng what we want to hear like an old record stuck in a track.
"I want you to panic", said young miss Greta. But I'm sorry to say that this is how grownups actually do behave when they panic. It's an coming of age thing; one among other things about grownups that aren't funny to realize if you happen to become one.

But that's not the point. My point was that if grownups don't take care of pollinators, there soon won't be any. 3/4 of the food that we eat is dependent of something usually buzzing or fluttering to take care of their pollen. If they starve, we will starve. There are endless things to do: Keeping to indigenous plants (bees and c:o prefer local cuisine) stopping unnecessary mowing, cutting pesticides out, etc. etc. I know, most of us don't have a garden. Our roots are growing in concrete. But things like pollution has to go down (buzzing things hate it too) and awareness has to rise -- I think that the point is to begin somewhere and do something.

(Also for sale as a poster on Saatchi & Saatchi.)

I'm Here Too!

--- General links and resources ---

Contact Write to oj.ceder@gmail.com for general enquiries, commissions etc. Traditional snail mail: Joakim Ceder Solhagavägen 97 16347 Spånga SWEDEN.

Posters for sale! Displate. Your very own artworks printed on shiny metal, super easy hanging by magnet! (Etsy. Presently not active.)

Movies: My YouTube Channel has everything from Art videos and Music to a few of my Songs in Swedish.

Portfolios Instagram. Everything between light sketches and heavy oils. Some music too. This blog, starting page. Once published weekly (we've got a few hundred posts here in the archives!) but I now try to do monthly. It's tough to be omnipresent.

Other music: Dalírium, my very experimental album (Spotify).

Sad Salad

Mathilda: You love your plant, don't you?
Léon: It's my best friend. Always happy, no questions [...]

---

I actually believe that plants are more happy than people. (They are vastly more happy than me, that's for sure.) But this green specimen became sad; perhaps a matter of art reflecting the artist. I must've told the poor thing that existence is pointless; vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. Perhaps I wasn't in my best mood or something. But lettuce is generally good talking company. It doesn't mind if you're a little brusque, they don't "snowflake" (as some people do) and above all it won't give you preposterous, presumptuous lectures if you fail showing off the full amount of cheerful photosynthesis that day (there are actually people that might do that. I've decided to avoid them, lest I become Sad Salad myself). Cheers for lettuce. Hooray for plants.

The computer had fun. My original looked something closer to this:

Older stock photo (also by me) was used for the boards and the background.

Meet Mässie, the Sea Monster

Loch Ness has Nessie, Chesapeake Bay has Chessie and Lake Champlain wouldn't be the same without Champy, who prowls these waters between New York State, Vermont and Quebec, Canada. While Sweden has an old creature in Storsjön (Storsjöodjuret), great Lake Mälaren has hitherto been sadly neglected. So this month we see, for the first time, the probing proboscises, or mouth-eye tentacles, of Mässie, Hässie (as I saw it off Hässelby) and Lammie (as this particular part of the lake is named Lambarfjärden. Said glacial depression (filled with water) is also the deepest part of the entire enclosed archipelago (some 200 ft. deep) making the presence of lurching sea monsters and aquatic dragons all the more likely).

As there are eyes in their mouths, they're able to constantly glare judgingly at you and nag in the same time, and I can't possibly imagine anything more horrible. I who went a-rowing to evade such creatures!

It might perhaps amuse you to know that I only had time to draw a quickie sketch before the presence of Mässie & Friends got too overwhelming. (The colour was added later.) Ballpoint pen is good practice, though. There's no erasing or changing anything. You have to plan forward, save certain spaces and keep things in your head. Yes, you need to concentrate when you live near sea monsters!

(Not to mention, however, the odd things that you might encounter when you're ashore. Most of them have two legs.)

The Rites of Spring

Well, it's springtime here and the poor thing needed a name, right? Made quite ad hoc without wanting to paint anything really. And the piece by Stravinsky (my favourite rendering is the one by Bernstein, who had a feeling for its exquisite rawness) was the perfect thing to have in my ears while painting it; "Rites" is sort of my Angry Music. One prefers to paint out of happiness and joy, I suppose; sugar spice and all things nice. If one can't, one has to paint rather like greeting cards from the Dark Side. We have no choice.

Aforesaid unwillingness might have caused the bloodied scalpel in the top of the "flower" (here as seen during work, you can see that the rest was only planned in coarse outlines):

The leaves were, in the midst of this painter's anhedonia, allowed to take on whatever weird shape that they wanted, as long as they were there.

Further down, one might also note that the ash-brown leaf doesn't bother to go all the way down into the glass really. It still worked with the image (the glass turned out rather well, don't you think?) and honestly, would you notice this if I had not told you so? There you are.

Finally, I made that little ground reflection from the glass that you see in the first picture (overview, top). I could not be bothered with a background, so that would have to do to save the object from floating in space. Voilà, yet another painting from Mr. Ceder...

Calming Corona Mask

Dear readers; I advise you very strongly: Don't have a personal crisis while there's a pandemic going on. You'll get no help at all. I presently am suffering from some sort of occupational burnout and seem unable to draw on commission. This one I did before the burnout truly hit me; a Calming Mask for these troubled Corona times. Cheers!

February Harvest

I'm still more active on Instagram these days. On the upside, you get more feedback. On the downside, "Insta" is quite jealous, it really doesn't want you to link anywhere else. (It grudgingly allows you one link, but that's it, Buster!)

So, what do we have for this mostly grey and windy month?

My Soul is Rainy

Digital work with my photos -- and my shoes :)

"Stop!"

I also reworked an old image, from 2015 or so (might be found on this blog, look in the archives!).
Those blood red hues do something to your instincts and feelings, don't they? Look at the original:

But I did draw the original with all colours inside me, that's for sure.

Hopes and Promises

This little thing might be a brother or sister to my previous work. I've (most ambiguously) decided to call it Hopes and Promises. You see little of trust in either.

Some things of what this lady says might be taken lightly. There are things amiss.

But I don't trust that quixiotic knight either. I wonder what crumbling hopes do to his morals.

(Of course our gallant knight would never get the idea to test one of those ropes...)

Parting with Illusions

Do not part with your illusions, said Mark Twain:
"When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
Still, I've sort of half resolved to do that this year.
Even if it might be a little painful.
Even if it cuts the chains that keep my feet down on this poor little planet.

A closer look. Splattery-splash! I didn't say that being true to yourself doesn't hurt.

On a more philosophical note, what do we mean by "live"? I keep returning to that stupid Nietzschean maxime of "What doesn't kill you", etc. but I do feel it does, slowly. And is it really a bad thing?