Welcome to the place where you can take a peek into my studio and join along for the adventure where we will paint nature, animals and creatures of all kinds!

After many years of patience and contemplation on how this idea would manifest...this is where it all converges.

At a crossroad between adventuring into nature, mighty beasts and creatures of all sorts, oil paint and charcoal.

There are so many things in store that I am eager to share with you.

After all, because of you dear reader, my art receives a deeper value. Its true value.

I will write these posts without AI and I hope we all laugh at my mistakes and attempts at pretending to hold any significant measure of wisdom.

I am happy to have you here, and I am looking forward to having you help me create art that both you and I would love to see more of in this world! Whimsical, mysterious, hopefully beautiful and full of adventure.

Onward!

It is a rainy, gloomy day in the studio.

And I don't mind. It feels like a permission to rest and write before venturing out into the wild again.

Ideas, thoughts and plans are settling and turning into a familiar, predictable flow in which I feel comfortable and creative. There were many hypothesis that I had to test and decisions that had to be made before I was confident in the path forward. And the inner compass feels stable again at last.

I have finally decided on the platforms where I will be sharing my adventures and in what way.

I will be focusing on short video content for multiple platforms for now, but over time I would like to go back to making longer videos because I imagine this community as one that enjoys the atmosphere, the calmness and the intricacies of the journeys that give birth to my paintings. This takes time and I feel like short form content doesn't do this process justice. There are many locations that I would like to visit, paint and embellish.

As for my creative process...being surprised by a scene and having its elements in front of me is what motivates me. I appreciate the organic lighting that exists into which forms and creatures can be added. Some artists prefer to invent these by drawing inspiration from their plein air or photographic reference - for some unexplainable reason I feel resistance towards that. It is not bad, it is just something I don't enjoy.

For the most part, this is what you can expect in the coming days. Going outside, capturing the scene and making the decision what creature gets placed into it. Right now I want to heavily include you, the community into the decisions on the creatures or objects that make it into my paintings. I prefer not knowing in which direction each quest for a painting goes. This is what excites me greatly!

Until next time 👋

It was in spring of 2022 that I completed this piece.

The inspiration was drawn from the war in Ukraine which I found senseless and as an unnecessary loss of life.

Oh, the eagerness that I felt to paint with oil paints...

At this point I was able to purchase 8 tubes of oil paint. All but two were Rembrandt brand of paints. The other two were Royal Talens Van Gogh line. Alizarin Crimson and Cobalt blue.

I wanted to paint something less flat and with more flow and action than "Of Birches and Werewolves".

In order to guarantee my success in this endeavour, I prepared with the traditional illustrative approach of studying and sketching many variations of the idea in order to develop it and then finally created a comprehensive value sketch digitally in Krita.

When an idea is just in the mind, it's almost like it's not even there. You must put it down on paper and let it take shape. This is where it becomes real. I remember that the dragon's belly scales were a big problem for me to visualize and construct. I drew a lot of variations before finally settling on a design.

It was relaxing to paint with oil paint. The coverage and the tactility were amazing. The pressure that exists when painting with acrylics no longer existed and the paint on the pallet didn't dry in under 20 minutes. It was exactly what I was looking for.