I förra blogginlägget kunde du se uppstarten av mitt senaste projekt – en häst som är en krake som är en bläckfisk.
Det som fascinerade mig var att en bläckfisk faktiskt ser ut som ett hästhuvud, fast uppochner liksom. Kolla – och koppla samtidigt på en lagom dos fantasi – så ser du det också!
Nåväl, när jag väl har fått en kreativ idé av det här slaget så måste jag genomföra den. Helt enkelt av nyfikenhet! Fungerar idén? Klarar jag av själva projektet? Kan jag lösa de problem som dyker upp på vägen?
I nedanstående bilder får du följa med när Lilla hästkraken växer fram. Och ja, det tar sin lilla tid, men det är faktiskt underbart och nästan meditativt att sitta och arbeta kreativt och se hur projektet går framåt medan tankarna vandrar hur de vill. I nästa blogginlägg får du se nya framsteg!
Nu börjar själva hästhuvudet bäxa fram.Jag målar hela den lilla hästkraken med gesso, som är en sorts primer inför kommande målning.Även undersidan måste målas, naturligtvis. En sittpuff får hjälpa till.Nu är det dags att skapa de canes av polymerlera som ska finnas i tentaklernas sugkoppar. Här är de färger som jag lägger upp.Nu lägger jag en röd grund över den vita gesson/primern. Den lilla hästkraken ska nämligen vara övervägande röd.Hä ä en hel plåt med canes i olika storlekar till den lilla hästkraken.En närbild, så att du kan se hur dessa canes ser ut.… och så fäster jag dessa canes på bläckfisken med papperslera, dvs ”finmalen” papier mache.
The name of this upcoming horse sculpture is a play with words. In Swedish ”kraken” means someone who is weak and little, so ”Lilla hästkraken” means a little and weak horse that you feel sorry for. You want to take care of it. But ”Kraken” is also a mythological creature – a giant octopus.
What happens of you combine these? I have created combined horses earlier, maybe you remenber the Peacock horse. But this time I will create something larger – something really large. In fact, the largest thing I’ve ever created. This Little Horse Kraken will be a couple of meters wide, I think.
It will be a mixed media sculpture. I will use paper mache, chicken wire, acrylics – and of course polymer clay, too.
So let’s start!
Here they are – eight tentacles made of chicken wire.This is the (back of the) wooden base.All eight tentacles in place.… and of course some movement to the tentacles.In the upcoming days I will continue to cover the chicken wire with more paper. Follow my blog and see what happens – how the Little Kraken Horse develops.
Here is one interpretation that I delevoped from this very first sketch. As you can see I have given it more color and more depth.
I was also searching for the feeling of flow in the movement – the same kind of feeling you get as a rider when you and your horse understand eachother really, really well. When your horse use its muscles in a perfect way, doing its very best but the impression is that it seems and feels effortless.
Nico
Den här mycket trevliga hästen heter Nico.
Klicka på bilden för att se den i korrekta proportioner.
PopUpArt är Linköpings konstnärsstafett där vi som deltar som konstnärer har en vecka på oss att sammanställa en utställning som kan handla om precis vad som helst.
Rent praktiskt går det till så att arbetet börjar kl 15.00 på söndagen och presenteras nästkommande lördag kl 12.00. Det blir alltså en mycket utmanande och mycket intensiv arbetsvecka i ateljén.
På affischen nedan ser du vilka andra konstnärer som deltar i år. Besök mycket gärna deras utställningar! Är du intresserad av just min utställning så kan du se den kl 12-15 den 23 och 24 oktober.
Hästar Blå
Mitt tema kommer att vara ”Hästar Blå”, men än så länge har jag ingen aning om vad jag kommer att skapa på det temat.
Ta chansen!
Så nu har du har du din stora chans. Vad vill du se under min utställning? Jag kommer att göra både målningar och skulpturer. Vill du att jag ska fortsätta i linje med något som jag redan tidigare har gjort eller vill du se mig prova något helt nytt? Ge gärna förslag i kommentarsfältet nedan!
Tid och plats
Jag har vernissage kl 12.00 – 15.00 lördag den 23 oktober och söndag 24 oktober.
Platsen är Studio Rutan som är Medborgarskolans lokal på Storgatan 40 i Linköping.
Skriv in tiden i almanackan redan nu så ses vi om ett par månader!
Being an artist does not just mean creating. It also means constantly learning new ways of looking at things, new ways of working, new ways of understanding and new ways of developing.
One way to develop is actually to do the same thing over and over again, in slightly different ways.
I will recreate the same horse several times, but in slightly different ways. By doing this I can learn more about what works for me, what works on the canvas and how the different expressions can vary by fairly small means. And by the response I get from you, I also can learn what you see in my paintings. Probably you and I see different things.
So – today you are invited to follow when I paint the very first horse in this series. It will be a sketch, that also will be the model for the upcoming horse studies.
First step of the sketch – the darkest shadows and a hint of the hooves. Second step – I added background and other colors to create some kind of balance. Last step – I added a little more color to the horse’s body.
Second thoughts – should I have stopped painting at step 2? When I look at these photos I personally think that the second photo has more movement in it than the last photo. What do you think?
It has been a lot of work. When I got the idea to make a small horse, completely covered in flowers, I had no idea how much work it would be. For each small flower, I first created the actual shape of the flower, then carved the petal structure, then mounted the flower on the horse’s body, after that I made a small center and put it there, and then I shaded the flower with soft pastels. Over and over again.
But it has been a lot of fun, even though it has taken a lot of time. It is demanding to do creative work, so to me it is important to work in short shifts and with a lot of breaks. As it is a precision work, you can not do it when you are tired, because then the risk of being careless increases, and then maybe you will destroy the whole sculpture.
When the sculpture was almost finished, a wish came from the horse. It often happens that the sculptures I make are co-creators, that they talk about what colors and shapes they want to have, and what they want to do. This horse did that from the very beginning. I thought I would create a red horse with an intricate pattern, but the horse wanted something different. It wanted to be covered with flowers. So I hade to create it the horse’s way.
When it was almost finished – then came the desire to have a human of it’s own. The horse said it wanted a man who balanced on one leg on its back, stretcheing up towards the sun. So I could not do anything but create that human being so that the little horse would be happy.
So here’s the Spring Flower Horse. Hope you like it – and if you look really closely, you will find that it even has got small horseshoes under its hooves.
Spring Flower Horse
Spring Flower Horse är en unik hästskulptur från Mosebacke Horse Sculptures, skapad i polymerlera. Som alla andra hästskulpturer härifrån finns den endast i ett enda exemplar och är signerad av konstnären EvaMarie Törnström.
It was really a very time-consuming work to create all these small flowers and place them onto the body of this horse. But now it is finally the time to make the mane and the tail. Of course they will also be created in polymer clay, and for them I will use a kind of quite simple cane.
I use FIMO Professional clays in the True Colors system. That means that I can mix any hue I want out of them. Here I have cut some chunks of magenta, yellow and blue and placed them on my working table.
Mixing colors in polymer clay is just like mixing water color or oil color. Here I have mixed some differens greens, and I have also some bluish, brownish, magenta and white. By rolling the clay through a pasta machine, I get these sheets of conditioned lay.
I used these sheets to create a round cane.
This is what the cane looks like when I have cut it in half.
After squeezing the clay into a leaf-like shape, I cut it in very thin slices and placed the slices on the horse’s body as mane and tail.
When I create a horse, I usually spend hours of planning before I even touch the clay.
First of all, I have to figure out what I want the sculpture to say and convey. Then comes the technical part where I think through different possibilities and impossibilities, what combinations of colors I want to use, how I should solve different technical problems and so on.
So when I opened my clay packages to create this horse, I was fully concentraded on a large and stable horse with an exciting red pattern that would sort of run down over the horse’s body.
A Spring Flower Horse instead
But shortly after I started creating, something happened. Maybe it was the spring with all its flowers that came to me with the inspiration. In any case, I no longer saw a horse with an exciting red pattern in front of me. I saw a horse that was completely covered in flowers!
So now I have a LOT of work ahead of me. It usually takes many, many hours to create a horse sculpture, but this one will take many, many, many, many hours because it takes so much time to create each flower separately.
I hope it’s worth all the the work. That’s what’s so exciting about creating, I can never be really sure if the final sculpure will be as I intended or if it wants to be something else.
Read more about this horse in my upcomin blog posts!
Follow the process of creating one flower:
First I create a little flower in polymer clay. The tool you see is used to create structure on the petals.
Then I drill a small hole.
I use small pieces of bamboo skewers to secure the flowers onto the horse’s body.
Here you can see the little piece of bamboo that I have put in the hole I drilled.
I use liquid clay as ”glue” so that the flower really will stick to the little piece of bamboo.
I use a cutting blade to carefully transfer the flower to the horse.
This time my aim is to create a big, friendly, fat horse with sturdy legs. Welcome to follow my blog in the next weeks to see how the horse develops. The main color of this horse will be red.
Yes, this is the start of a polymer clay horse. Like all other horses it needs to have a skeleton. I make it in 1,5 mm steel wire. Can you identify what will be the four legs? And the head and back?
To make the skeleton/armature really stable, I use a modeling compound called Apoxie Sculpt. I use disposable gloves to protect my skin when I mix the two parts of this compound.
Now you can ”see” the horse, can’t you? As the Apoxie Sculpt adheres very well to the steel wire this will be a very strong and reliable armature to build the rest of the horse around. Ordinary masking tape is used to hold the legs in place until the armature has hardened.
Can you imagine anything more healing to your soul than watching grazing horses? In this painting I have combined several details that I love a lot – the dawn where the first rays of the sun paint the trees with gold, the autumn that gives peace after an intense summer, the fog that adds magic and of course the grazing horses that convey beauty, peace and life.
Here the horses start to appear as individuals, and the trees has got more branches and twigs. The grass gets more color and more details. The sunrays are coming in. When you paint with acrylics, the highlights are the hardest ones, because acrylics darken when they dry. So you do not really see what you paint. You have to wait for the result and then paint the hightlights over and over again, until you are satisfied with their brightness. Even more highlights – especially in the trees, also the fog gets to be more intense. Here is the finished painting – I had some wonderful weeks painting it.
Grazing Horses – tavla
Betande hästar i det tidiga morgonljuset, en av de första höstdagarna.
Klicka på bilden för att se den i korrekta proportioner.
Betande hästar i det tidiga morgonljuset, en av de första höstdagarna.