Some diary pages from the Swedish countryside

May 10, 2017 | Lo Granqvist

Hello!
Since you didn’t get the diary post in the beginning of the month, but I’ve been doing some documenting since then, I thought that you might as well get a little diary tour now.
Not much is happening out in the country. It’s mostly dog walks, digging in the garden and work for me.

We’ve been visited by the neighbor’s dog a lot. The neighbor isn’t too happy about it, but the dogs are.
Working amongst a bunch of cats is as cozy as it is frustrating.

Then it’s all of the travelling that I told you about before, which is going a lot better since the dog got used to public transport.
And digging, with the help of the grooviest gang in Gummarp (that’s the name of the place)

And more dog-walks. After the winter it’s kind of flooded here, so it’s more jumpping than walking for us right now.

That’s all from me today. Hope y’all are having as nice a time as I am :)

Diary in March

April 2, 2017April 2, 2017 | Lo Granqvist

Hello! Here’s the diary from last month. I don’t have a summarising spread this time, but I’ve been documenting as always.
It’s funny how my choice of color is affected by my mood. I found that I used a lot of blue in january and february, where a lot of things happened, but everything was going smoothly and I was calm and overall happy. March haven’t been particularly eventful, but I’ve been going through a lot of emotional turbulence, especially towards the end of the month, and that showed up here as a lot of red and purple.

You’ve already seen this one. Not so much red and purple here.

Patrick outside of the caravan. It’s very brown here still, but the green is on it’s way.

So, yeah. Emotional turbulence. I’ve had quite a few days like this lately, but I think it’s about to pass now.

I got a weekend job. It’s probably very healthy for me, and it’s a great job. I mostly took it for the purpose of getting out every once in awhile, and meet some people. But of course, I’m geting payed too, and knowing that I’ll be having some extra money has made me go and buy a lot of stuff that I don’t really need. Like a gold pen. And apple juice and cookies. That’s luxury for you.

And this one, which you’ve also seen most of already. No red or purple here. Just warm and happy spring-things.

Happy april y’all!

Embla

I have big pockets

March 29, 2017March 29, 2017 | Lo Granqvist

Sometimes, that creativity-thing is just nowhere to be found, but the urge to draw something is still there. When that happens, I find it best to just draw whatever’s around me. While it’s not quite as fun as making up something new, it’s always a good practice, and it gets the itch out of the fingers.
This time I thought I should draw the stuff I carry around with me all the time. It would probably be more fun if I had done this two years ago, because I used to have all sorts of things in my bag. Anything anyone could ever need, that could fit in a bag, I had it. Sowing equipment? you bet! Piece of bread and maybe a little cheese? Of course! Mini-chessboard? A small porcelain elephant? Sure, why not? A harmonica, bandage, extra socks, screwdriver, lip balm, makeup(which I don’t even use), pens and papers obviously, a beer, some foreign coins….
I was even nicknamed Skalman – which is the name of the turtle in a popular swedish cartoon, who keeps everything in his shell except for locomotives and cruise ships (he does have a helicopter).
I guess I’m some sort of mini-hoarder.

Nowadays, I rarely carry a bag anymore, but I do still carry a lot of stuff around.
These are the things I have with me wherever I go. All of these seems so important to have on me at all times (well, except for the paperclip and twig. I don’t really use those) but I would probably be just fine with only the keys. Not even the dog leash comes to use that much.

What do you carry with you when you leave the house?

First day of spring

March 13, 2017March 13, 2017 | Lo Granqvist

If you live further away from the equator, as I do, then you know that awesome day after a long winter where the sun is actually warm for the first time. (yes, I know it’s always warm, and you know what I mean) We had that day two days ago, and we really did use of it.
This whole winter I have avoided going outside as much as possible. Partly because it’s winter, but also because I’ve been having more work than ever before. I’ve taken maybe two or three days off since october, and I’ve only left the desk because the dog needs it’s walks. Poor Rita. I’ve been no fun at all to hang out with.
But this day, there were no excuses. I rushed through a few projects in the morning, and to both mine and Rita’s excitement, spend the rest of the day out in the forest.
Awesome day. Looking forward to more of these.

Has spring come to you guys yet? Or maybe you live somewhere where the sun warms in the winter as well? I know some of you come from completely different places in the world, so I’d love to know what spring is like over where you’re at!

Have a great (and hopefully warm and sunny) day!

Embla

Diary in February

March 2, 2017March 2, 2017 | Lo Granqvist

Hello folks!
I haven’t been around for a while, but there’s been a lot of diary-pages created, here’s the sum-up of february:

Winterbirds and different things we look at.

In case you missed that, we have a dog called Rita. I never thought I’d own a dog, and sometimes I doubt the decision to get one. She takes up so much time, and I can’t really do anything because she can’t be left alone for more than a minute. But of course I love the crazy lady, and i have since the day she moved in.
You know how people say that “you can’t possibly understand what it’s like until you have a dog of your own”. I understand now..

We like sleep, and two experiments inspired by something I saw on the internet. I can’t find that picture now, but if you who made it ever sees this: I’m sorry about the plagiarizing. It was only for practice!

View from mom’s backyard.

And the big february-spread.
I met with a very good friend in Christiania – that weird place where dogs can roam free and everything smells like weed.
Ritas friend Lumi came to visit.
It’s been a very tiring time for the whole tiny family.
Our neighbour came home, to our disappointment. It’s really strange to have someone living so close when the walls are made of plastic and paper, and we’re the kinds of weirdos who prefer to be left alone. Luckily, there aren’t many people that can hold out living like this for too long, so our neighbours usually move out again pretty quickly. They stay over the summer, then they give up around fall, and we can expect someone new to move in again next year.
And the highlight of the month: My dad – PappaLars – came to visit, for the first time since I moved to Denmark (like 4 years ago)! Our common interests are punk music and beer drinking, so of course we had a very good time. Even though he can’t fit in the caravan, or the fact that he knows more about Copenhagen than I do (stay-at-home-people are bad tour guides.)

That’s that. I hope you guys enjoyed these pages.
I’m working on some really exciting projects right now, and I can’t wait until I’m allowed to show you. But for now you’ll have to live with all my less exciting rants and scribbles about nothing.

Have an awesome day!
Embla

Snow

February 24, 2017February 24, 2017 | Lo Granqvist

Hello there!
Here’s yet another diary page.
I know it’s a lot of the diary right now. It’s not something I’ve been planning for. It just happens to be this book that I reach out for whenever my fingers starts to itch, and I don’t have any other projects going on that I’m allowed to show you.

So here you go. My take on the huge pile of snow that fell last evening and melted away again over night:

I wasn’t too excited about snow when living in Sweden, but now it makes me feel like home.
I don’t mean to say that Denmark doesn’t feel like home. I’m pretty sure that I am more comfortable in Copenhagen than in Stockholm by now.
Still, would I ever get homesick, it’s the snow I’ll be missing. Sure, they get it here in Denmark too. But somehow it feels as if it only barely counts, when it only stays for a few hours.

Facepainting

February 22, 2017February 22, 2017 | Lo Granqvist

Hello!
If you read my last post, you know that I’ve spent the weekend in a shopping centre, painting kid’s faces all day long. It was really hectic, and really fun too.

To my disappointment I couldn’t take any photos. I wouldn’t show them to you guys anyways. Because you know, it’s not cool to post pictures of other people just like that. But I would’ve loved to have been able to take some for myself, just to kind of save my work. Most of you are probably aware that you can get emotionally attached to your creative work, and I had no idea that this would apply here as well. But it did.
Mostly it was butterflies, spidermans and tigers(as it has been since the beginning of time) but I got some pretty cool requests too. Such as “I want to be a vampire princess”, “Make me look like a diamond” or “Please just make me as gross and scary as possible”. That’s the kind of stuff I get really excited about, and those were the cases where I couldn’t help but getting a little sad when seeing them leaving.

So instead of taking any photos, I could at least make this little drawing in my diary to sum the whole thing up.

Anyone who has ever worked with children, in any way, knows that half the job is more about the parents. Luckily, I managed to put my whole focus on the kids, and most of the time it was so much fun I wasn’t even bothered by the craziest moms.
I sure hope they’ll be hiring me again, because this is really something I can imagine doing more of.

I did get something else with me from there, and I’m doing a little project with it right now. You’ll get to see it pretty soon, but I think most of the updates about that will be through the facebook page. So check that out if you’re interested in more drawings and shorter texts :)

Have a great day everybody!

Embla

A little experiment in the diary

February 17, 2017February 17, 2017 | Lo Granqvist

Hi guys! Today I’ve been working on a small experiment.
Again, inspired by the nice weather, I wanted to depict our morning walk in the mist, and I wanted to use my masking fluid, or drawing gum or whatever it’s called.
It’s not like this is an experiment in the sense of this being something completely new.(I have obviously used masking fluid before)
But it felt like an experiment because I haven’t used the masking fluid on this paper before, and instead of just covering one small detail with the fluid, I was going to cover almost the whole page, and I was going to do it in a different order than I normally do.

So here’s the first step. I loosely drew up the scene in pencil, and inked the characters.

Step two. Here’s where it gets different, because normally I would ink the whole thing before putting anything else on there. But now there’s masking fluid all over the place.
I’m pretty sure it’s made for water based colors, so I had no idea how it would handle being drawn on with an ink-pen.

Ok, so it seems all right so far. The rest of the ink is on, and the masking fluid didn’t really suffer from it. I think. I can’t be completely sure until I try peeling it off.

Step four. The watercolors. Nothing special here. Just coloring like I always do.

And so the masking fluid gone.
It actually was amazingly easy to get it off. It didn’t rip the paper, and the ink stayed in the right place.

Just a few extra details on top of that and it’s all done!
It didn’t turn out just as I had imagined, but does it ever? I’m pretty happy to have found out how well the masking fluid works with this paper, and I’m sure I’ll be using it more.
I’ll be working with paintings kid’s faces in a mall the whole weekend. I’m super excited and nervous about it, but it’s probably going to work out just fine. I wish I could take photos of it, but I’m pretty sure it’s very indecent of me to exploit other people’s children on the internet(If I ever get kids of my own, I promise their sole purpose in life will be showing off my face-painting skills). So you won’t be seeing anything about that.
I just wanted to let you know why I won’t be posting or mailing or anything the next couple of days.

Have a nice weekend y’all!

Embla

Old work

February 4, 2017 | Lo Granqvist

Hello everyone!
This weekend I’m spending at mom’s house, which is always a great place for inspiration for me, so you’ll probably see something about what I come up with here sooner or later. But for now, I’m pretty excited about a few old sketchbooks that I found! The past seven years, my life has been pretty chaotic. I’ve been moving around a LOT. Not only have I been living in real apartments, but also in old workshops, camping wagons, and I was even homeless for a while. Which means that a lot of my old work is gone forever. But it shows that I’ve managed to dump a part of it at my mom’s.
So here is a (in comparison) small selection of stuff I made three or four years ago:

There was a lot of portraits going on. I wasn’t so good at faces back then, so I had much practice to do.

This was the time where I started getting really interested in the inside of the body. Which resulted in some pretty gross stuff. I won’t be showing you the worst.

Obviously, I hadn’t really had a closer look at those kinds of private parts back then…

Some bugs and edible plants.
I still have the idea of making a book with edible and medicinal plants, but that would take an incredible amount of research and planning, so if I ever make it happen, it won’t be for many years.

Naturally, next is animals:

A huge amount of jellyfish were produced here, as well as octopuses and fish.

And… um.. Something animal-ish:

I was also aspiring to be a circus artist, so I did a lot of sketching of my class-mates. Unfortunately, most of it in pencil, so that’s all just a big, gray, blurry mess now. Here’s what’s left.
Some drawings of my friends doing a show:

And a drawing of me and my flyer: (flyer as in the small person being thrown around in hand to hand acrobatics)

Then, there’s a bunch of stuff that’s not so easy to categorize:

Some pretty terrifying dreams I had:

And lastly, here are some places where I used to hang out:

My first camping wagon.
And my flyer in the hammock outside of the wagon.

A friends apartment where I spent a lot of time.

And the old workshop where I lived for a while.

I don’t know if you can see that, or if it’s just me, but I realize now that a lot of these are kind of gray and sad. That’s because I was very depressed at the time, so I can see a lot of traces from that here. No worries though, as I’m happier than ever nowadays :)
I have a plan to remake some of these. I think it would be a lot of fun to see the development, what’s changed and what’s still the same.
What do you guys think? Is that something you might be interested in seeing?

Have a great day!

Embla

Knyttir

Lo Granqvist – children's book illustration

Diary

Some diary pages from the Swedish countryside

Diary in March

I have big pockets

First day of spring

Diary in February

Snow

Facepainting

A little experiment in the diary

Old work