A bohemian on Newbury Street

I made this piece (above) with ink on bristol board, then worked with the toning in Photoshop. I had started it a while ago, and originally envisioned it in full color, but that's not how it worked out! No surprise, really, because I love working in black and white. The sketch (below), however, turned out to be quite vibrant once I added color to it. I mainly used Copic and Mepxy markers. The scene is Newbury Street in Back Bay, where I spent some time sketching at the beginning of fall. I love to walk around this area and look at the buildings with all their galleries and boutiques, and all the stylishly dressed people walking around in heels, chatting on their smartphones, or walking in groups, heading for a club or a party. Sometimes I bring one of my numerous walking-tour books of Boston with me, and learn a bit about the apartment buildings--many of them old mansions--as I roam around. I love this area, but it is a bit like a bubble. A mix of the grandiose, past and present, and the corporate and fast-paced. And I don't feel entirely at home here, the streets are too clean, and most of the people on the street probably don't belong to the neighborhood either, maybe they work here, but they live elsewhere. On this particular night,  I watched the street light up its windows and street lamps as dusk fell. I sat down and sketched, but most people walked so fast, I could hardly sketch them fast enough before they disappeared around the corner. That was at the beginning of fall, when there was still some warmth in the air. Now it is winter, and freezing cold, but I shouldn't let that stop me from sketching outside. As they say back in the old country: There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes.

"Sweet Nothings" for 2012 Sketchbook Project World Tour

This video shows my finished sketchbook for the Art House Co-op's 2012 Sketchbook Project World Tour. I sent the book in yesterday, right at the last minute! This is the first time I put together a video, so bear with me! The music is by my son, Alexander Olsson, who took piano lessons growing up , and who briefly studied digital music production in Norway. Now he makes music in his free time, mostly digital stuff. Lucky for me, he lets me use his songs as soundtracks to my videos!

For more info on the Sketchbook Project, go here.

Sketching in Boston and Brookline

I bring my sketchbook everywhere, and there is nothing I enjoy sketching more than cityscapes and buildings, preferably with people in them. Landscapes and cityscapes alike seem lonely if there isn't at least one living creature in them (a squirrel will do, but I prefer people, and most of all people with a bit of a personality or attitude that I then want to capture). Or maybe the way I draw people says more about me and how I view the world than the people in my pictures? You be the judge.

Kenmore Square. A made-up billboard ad promoting "romance, marriage and financial security" a toned-down CITGO sign and a crowd of indifferent students (how could they not be indifferent?). 

 The Koo Koo Cafe across the Brookline Village station. I used to come here all the time with friends, because there are toys for kids to play with at the back. Now that my kids are all in school, I only stop by when they have lemon poppy seed muffins (which is only once in a while).

On the C-line (which is more like a sluggish trolley bus than a subway train), a day in November. The quote is from Thich Nhat Hahn, and one of my favorites.

On a bench overlooking the Boston Commons. At lunchtime, there were people everywhere, spilling out from office buildings, the State House, schools and subway stations. They crossed the park to go who knows where to have lunch, to meet up, or, as the elderly (probably retired) guy on the right, to go for a run. I was listening to music, and some lyrics from Bob Dylan's Abandoned Love ended up on the pages as well.

Sunday at the Arboretum in JP. The brutal-looking concrete building housing the Mass State Laboratory was at once a contrast to the nature of the park, but also seemed to belong there, in the surrounding city with its eclectic architecture.

Just A Few Sketches from June & July.

I just realized that I haven't updated my blog since June! How time flies! I am not on summer vacation, just keeping very, very busy! Among my projects: a pirate comic, illustrations, and of course, job applications. In the meantime, here are some pages from my sketchbook to look at...

Below: Inspired by a relatively new picture book about Audrey Hepburn, Just Being Audrey, written by Margaret Cardillo and illustrated by Massachusetts-based artist Julia Denos. I found the book at the Curious George store in Harvard Square (which we will miss very much now that it is closing!), and wanted to buy it for my kids. Unfortunately, my boys did not share my enthusiasm on Audrey Hepburn; they took one look at the pictures and decided that the lack of monster trucks, dragons and epic battles did not interest them. So I ended up buying the book for myself, just so I could look at all the gorgeous illustrations. Well, it was so worth it!

Next: More random pages from my sketchbook. I must admit I prefer to draw women rather than men.

Canada, Comics & Cheesecake

Cheesecake pen & ink drawing w/ pink frame

View from our hotel window in Montreal

Mural in Montreal

Expozine 2010

On most Friday nights (after the worst rush traffic has subsided), we drive up to Vermont for the weekend. Last Friday, we decided that we would stretch the weekend out a little, so we went on to Montreal on Saturday, spent the night there, then drove back to Vermont on Sunday afternoon, and finally came back to Boston Monday night.

Montreal is one of my favorite cities in the northeast for several reasons: it's in Canada, and since it's also in Quebec, where most people speak French, you really get the sense that you have gone abroad. Otherwise, going to Canada from the U.S. feels a bit like crossing the border from Norway into Sweden. Yes, you're in a different country, but it's not a drastic change (I know many Canadians--not to mention Swedes--will be offended by this statement. Try not to take it personally! :-).

Other things I really like about Montreal is good restaurants (French and Indian are among my favorite cuisines), the old part of town, even though it's touristy, and Chinatown, which seems bigger and has a lot more stores than the one in Boston. It is also the city of Leonard Cohen, Julie Doucet and Drawn & Quarterly :-)

When I was a kid, we sailed up the St. Lawrence river on the bulk carriers my parents worked on (for more information on this see my Inbound 5 story, "The Sardine's Tale") on our way to the Great Lakes. I don't remember much of these trips, except stopping further up the river, at Niagara Falls, where we went to see the falls and the surrounding kitch. I also remember falling down from one shipdeck to another, a fall from which I still have a scar on my chin. But that's all a different (comic book?) story.

This time in Montreal, I decided to go to the Expozine for a few hours, with a box of Inbounds, Outbounds, Hellbounds and some of my own minicomics for trade. I was only there for about 4 hours, but it was a really cool experience, and I got to meet a lot of nice and interesting people, and on my trading spree I ended up with some neat stuff (for example an illustrated version of T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock," by Julian Peters, a local artist. The drawings are really beautiful and accompany the poem really well. In addition, Peters used buldings and street scenes in Boston as references for his drawings, so it just couldn't be more perfect! :-)

Back in Boston, I am working on a project, which I should try to get done pretty soon (illustrating a chapter of someone's graphic novel), and otherwise drawing cheesecake drawings of pretty ladies (preferably with some pink involved, the color I love to hate, or maybe hate to love...), which has been my favorite hobby for as long as I can remember. There are lots of crafts fairs and shows coming up this holiday season, you might see me at one or two, if I'm tabling for the Boston Comics Roundtable.

Fall

Above is my Hellbound-poster, which you'll hopefully see around Boston, but in red, and with lots of information on it, like this: http://riverbirdstudios.blogspot.com/2010/10/hellbound-is-near.html Hellbound is both an event (Halloween -style party in Harvard Square, but with comics, sketch duels and lots of fun) and the name of a Boston Comics Roundtable anthology, dedicatet to New England horror stories. I submitted a story, Lady in Black, which you can read about here:

http://hellboundinboston.blogspot.com/2010/10/lady-in-black-by-line-o.html



Also, another Boston Comics Roundtable anthology that I've been involved in, Inbound 5 is out, which this time focuses on food. Read about it (then order it :-) on their website: http://www.bostoncomicsroundtable.com/inbound-5/ The book is in the same format as Inbound 4, and with gorgeous cover art by Ellen Crenshaw.



Other things I have done this fall: met nice, interesting people at M.I.C.E., where I had half a table, and strolled around Manhattan, where I for once had all the time in the world to do some sketching.

Greenland & Iceland

Sketches from Iceland

Nuuk, Greenland

Kapisillit, Greenland

This summer, I went to Greenland to visit a friend, via Iceland. I took about a million photos while I was there, the landscape in Greenland is amazingly beautiful, and reminds me of Norway, but--and I am reluctant to admit this in public--even more dramatic. Most of the sketches I did there were funny ones, describing what we did and where we went. In Iceland, however, I sketched as we drove around. We had rented a fourwheel-drive Lada (of all things!), that drove like a tank in the city, but was perfect for backroad driving. It was a bumpy ride on the unpaved roads, but I started the sketches in the car and finished them as we stopped along the way. The landscape in the interior of Iceland was very different from Greenland. The ground was barren, black, volcanic. Dramatic in its own way, and the clouds overhead seemed to be as much a part of the landscape as the ground, giving it also a shifting, restless character. This was not my first time in Iceland, but it seemed different somehow from when I first came here...probably because we took a tourbus back then, but drove around on our own this time. On those deserted roads, on a cold and windy Sunday, one can easily feel all alone in the world, lost in a strange and eerie landscape.

Evolution

Barcelona Souvenir

Another page from my sketchbook, this time inspired by my trip to Barcelona last summer. I fell in love with the city and the surrounding area (we went to two of our friends' wedding in Tortosa, a couple of hours by train down the coast, then to festivities in a mountain village nearby). I plan to do some lager drawings, cartoonish style, of interesting cityscapes, as soon as I have finished working on current projects (story for the upcoming Inbound anthology, #5 is the food issue, and stories for a webcomic).

Overly Sweet

I'm not a big fan of cuteness, but I was inspired by a site, www.girlsdrawingirls.com that has all sorts of cute pin-up types on it. You just can't help being drawn in (literally).

Skiing & Sketching

This was my weekend: skiing & sketching @ Mt. Ellen in Vermont. Mad River Glen was closed because of the 50 mph winds on top of the mountain, but because it was relatively calm at the base, Sugarbush and Mt. Ellen kept some of their lifts open. The five of us packed our gear back into the car and drove to Mt. Ellen, my husband, my father-in-law, the two little boys and me. It was Thor's first day of downhill skiing, and we rented the tinyest little skis for him (so adoreable, I didn't even know they made them that small). Unfortunately, he started to feel sick after a short while, and Josh and I took turns watching him at the lodge while Bjorn practiced with us on the beginners' slopes. At one point, Thor fell asleep while I was at the lodge with him, so I took out my paper and pens & pencils and started sketching (and making up stories about people at the lodge) to pass the time.

Amerika

Ten years in this country, and it has been...interesting, for sure, and not a single boring day! :-) PS This is not me!

Life After Inbound 4

Now that Inbound 4 is out there, living its own life in various Boston bookstores and comic book stores, people ask me if I am working on something else...Well, I am, sort of...I'm just not sure if "work" is really what I have been up to until now. But I guess it's time to really get started on what I have defined as my new project. I have been playing around with an idea for a while, and have conducted research (I took 400+ photos of streets and buildings in Copenhagen for this purpose), and done a fair amount of sketching. Whatever it will turn out to be in the end, it's definitely girly stuff, no testosterone-fueled guys-in-underpants-saving-the world sort of thing...Not something my boys would want to read, in other words.

These pictures are scanned straight from my sketchbook in their un-photoshopped nakedness, with uncensored babble, blemishes and all.

Copenhagen

More From the Sketchbook

The Dark Side of my Sketchbook