Drop

 Drop

2012
coloured pencils

During US History last year I was sketching around and of course paying attention to the teacher and I drew something like this on my notebook. You can see the sketch on the Do You Doodle post. When drawing this piece, I first sketched the figure with a pencil and then coloured it. I have never before done something from my own imagination with actual effort, this is a first. I like the way the men's faces turned out to be and the strong colours, but the lighter blue space surrounding the drops doesn't really please my eye at all and I wish I had coloured it in yellow and maybe the drops in blue or greenish yellow. To me Drop represent reflections, souls and mindless wondering, but you can say what you see in it.

-Ainur

Sunshine

Bill Withers

2012
pencils

Usually I tend to take my time and draw in detail, but this piece only took me about two hours. It was 3/10/12 late evening. Ain't No Sunshine was playing on my laptop and I was feeling low, missing friends and thinking of how many great people there is out in the world and how I just won't be able to get to know them.
   I said to myself don't be like this. Don't just sit around, stare at a empty wall, but better stare at a empty paper and make it full! By the time I had finished drawing and listened to this song about a thousand times it was time to sleep and what would be a better way to solve your head out than sleep - if chocolate doesn't count then nothing really.

-Ainur

If There Was No Music

..would music still excist?

The Head and the Heart - Down In The Valley

Ocean - John Butler

 PS22 Chorus - Viva La Vida - Coldplay

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah

Patrick Park - Life is a Song

Patrick Park - Your Smile's a Drug

Peter, Bjorn & John - Young Folks

Beatles - All You Need Is Love

My 7-year-old brother and I were sitting in my room, doing nothing, drawing and listening to radio when this song from Beatles came on. We listened in silence for a while, then my brother sang with the song not knowing what he actually was saying. He asked me what are they saying in their song and I told him (in Finnish) that they say love love love all you need is love. He looked at me one eyebrow up and the other one down, but then said "huh" and looked back to his drawing. "Well, what do you think? Could you survive with love only?" I asked him. He didn't lift his head, but I could tell he was thinking. There was a silence, then he looked at me and said "Nobody lives without food!".

-Ainur

Live Laugh Love

2012
pencils

Today came and I decided it is done! I couldn't figure out how to get a good shot out of the drawing, because any too sharp light would jump out from the darker places, like the hair, and so here are two photos. Working on this piece was so great and so challenging, there is so much between these people in the picture. Not only two person's, but three, and they all are present in their own way. Capturing the emotions and the look in their eyes was what I wanted to focus when drawing this special request. Thank you for asking me to do this, it was truly a pleasure! I hope you like it :)

-Ainur

Do You Doodle

[If you want to see these bigger, just try to click on the picture and something should happen..:)]

-Ainur

Playing For Change

 

 

I was once again listening to music and I just now discovered these Playing For Change videos and they are so great! These here are two examples of the videos, but there is more! I love the way they are made and the whole idea overall.

6 Pieces

Hello again! I wanted to show some of the works I've done in the past few years at home and at school. I will tell a little of each piece. These, just like any other works, were made in different periods of time with different motives and states of mind. I believe that when somebody creates something by their own volition they will remember it if they want to and by that I mean not only remembering the final result, but the actual making of, which to me is usually the most giving part of the entire process.

Running free

2010

oil/acrylic

Water, colours and horses with a burn in their eyes, was my first thought when I saw the original photograph which I afterwards used as a reference picture. The photo was in a wild life photograph book I have at home, and I just find the photographs really fantastic. I have two favourite photos in that book, one being this here and the other one a photo of an elephant swimming in deep water taken from frog perspective.
   When I started to paint I was terrified. I used a canvas and the canvas was big, bigger than I had ever done , and I wasn't really use to filling that big blank white canvases with paint at all! I took some paint and started to paint. Acrylic paints are challenging to use, because they dry really fast, which doesn't allow much of thinking and mixing the colours later, when a huge mistake is noticed, so at some point I changed to oil paints and they didn't dry that fast. A problem that I faced then was to get it to dry! It takes a long time for oil paint to dry, but I got used to it soon and realized I would need to paint in a different way than with acrylic paints.
   While working on this, I learned that you can paint with oil paints on top of acrylic paints but not the other way. So, for me I think this was about trying out the paints and trying to get the feeling of movement and that burn in the horses eyes.

2010

mixed materials

Deep in the Eyes
2010
charcoal

I have been going to art school since I was a little kid and I can't even remember how old I was when I started there. This art school, which we call taidekoulu, is a place where many people in our town has been at least once. I want to believe everyone in town knows about it, because it really is a wonderfull place and so relaxing too. There isn't any competition and students come there to meet friends and eat snaks while making art. Every year taidekoulu puts up a exhibition at the library where the works of the students are shown to anyone who wants to go and see them. I hope taidekoulu will keep on the artspirit of this town as long as it can.
   I drew this piece with charcoal on velvet paper. Velvet paper is a lot softer than normal paper and it kind of eats the power of the charcoal. It is also almost impossible to erase the charcoal off the paper, because once you rub the velvet paper with the eraser you are in danger to ruin the velvet that is on the velvet paper (this sounds really confusing). This means that if something doesn't go like planned you have to come up with something to rescue the mistake. Then again, mistakes often do turn into amazingness too! I found this paper really interesting and actually really nice, because it didn't take so much time since erasing wasn't an option and you had to make every line with a thought of where does it come from, where will it end, is it necessary, does it add something and so on...I definitely recommend trying this out, it's worth the effort!
   My teacher gave these velvet papers to me and said that I must try it out. I had been surfing in the internet and I had found this most amazing website full of great old pictures of natives and other cultures and I liked the idea of the smooth paper with the old photographs and I took the challenge. I ended up drawing two similar pieces and the other Native American velvet paper piece I sold as my first, and so far the only, work that I've ever sold! I remember feeling so weird, but really happy and glad.

2008

charcoal

In 2008 exhibition of the taidekoulu our teacher wanted to have a few pieces of animals done with charcoal on felt. I was luckly enough to get to try out how it feels like to work with this kind of material and I decided to draw a dead mouse. Why? I don't know, I guess there's something really touching, honest and beautiful in this creature and its position.

    Drawing on felt was really challenging, because every single touch of the charcoal on the felt was final. Like you can see when you look carefull enough there are spots where I tried to cover up the mess I had made, and how it didn't work out too well. I loved the smooth touch that the felt gave to the charcoal, making the fur look more furrish and the mouse to pop of the paper. I enjoyed drawing this piece and I was very excited of what I could do with the combination of felt and charcoal. To be honest I have no idea if felt is the right word to be used here, but it is huopa in Finnish.

 2010
pastels

2009
pastels

Happy Christmas to everyone! :D

My First Portrait

My First Portrait as well as my first drawing of me. It was 2010 and I was finishing my comprehensive school which is basically elementary school and middle school, and we were supposed to create a final piece to pass this art course. Well, it wasn't compulsory, but most of my classmates still gave it a try as a practise to see how they would do in a realdeal situation.I decided to draw a pencil portrait using a photo of me taken by my uncle.

I remember sitting in my room for hours drawing. My mom would get mad at me for spending too much time in my room alone, but this time I had a good excuse. I was doing a school project so she just would need to deal with it.

With this piece I really loved drawing the chairs and creating the effects of different materials, what I found extremely challenging were the knee and the dress plus my face overall. Anyhow, I got it done and I passed my class. :)

Still sometimes I look through my drawings and whenever I see this I kind of stop for a minute and stay with it for longer, because this was the drawing that made me realize that I want to draw more and more and hopefully improve. It was also really important for me because this was going to be my last work in compulsory school and before going to high school.

-Ainur

Today Is Thursday, Tomorrow Is Friday

I was born in Finland, and I've lived here all my life except the year 11-12 when I was in Oregon for eleven months. You could say I'm half turkish and half finnish but if so, then I must be one third american on top of that. I come from a small town and I study in the city nextdoors, which is bigger. Like many other people I take the bus at 6.50 in the morning and then back home at the end of the school day. The busrides take time, but it's a good place to take a nice nap.

School is supposed to be number one for me at the moment, but then again I work on the weekends, spend time with family and friends, theatre practises, driving lessons, surprising events and suddenly there's just so much to do. I feel like people, including me, rush through the days and don't pay enough attention to simple little things, sometimes not always. Then when there actually is time to just be it feels even funny, really good, maybe weird or empty. I don't think to do-list will come to an end, but it's okey. If it does, well then that's just great, or is it?

My first school was a small school were everyone knew each others. It was really nice, now when I think about it. You knew every face and the name that belonged to it. Then I went to secondary school and then high school and the schools just got bigger and bigger! The school I'm in now, Osyk, is absolutely great. I couldn't imagine studying anywhere else. I love to go there in the mornings and that really is something that helps getting up at 6 most of the days.

Here in Finland we do "pikkujoulu"s which means littlechristmas. They are a fun way to get together with friends, family or colleagues to celebrate the holidays. Often drinking is included, but there are pikkujoulus without alcohol as well. To be honest, I think it's just a reason to go and actually see people. Then when somebody asks you "where are you going?" you can say "to have a pikkujoulu" and that way avoid the tought of you going out with your friends. Ok, well that's not completely true, I love pikkujoulus even if they were a total excuse.

-Ainur

"Create a new blog”

Hello ! This is going to be my blog and it begun today. After a lot of consideration and thinking of how would I do this I ended up realizing that I won’t probably come to a clear conclusion of what I want to tell in my blog. So, this blog might end up being a mess of different ideas, but I am willing to take that risk! After all, I have wanted to start a blog for a long time and I think it’s time to do rather than want.

My previous blog was based on my exchange year in Oregon, US. Since that time is over now and I can’t pretend to be an exchange student and keep on posting pictures about my ‘crazy’ adventures, I decided to let that blog be the way it is.

I am going to write in English and it isn’t my first language which means that some mistakes will take place. Sorry.

Pencils and white paper sheets have always been a part of my life; I love drawing and art overall. I’ll post my drawings here and hopefully be able to do that in a way that somehow makes sense. J

Also a big reason for this blog is that I think fb is starting to get enough of my drawings and I wanted to get a place where I could tell more about each work and be able to do it somewhere else than in Facebook, which sounds silly but anyhow.
   I have this need to share some of the things I and other people see as the days pass by and I think this is a good place to do it. Surfing in Internet or reading magazines or books and finding interesting stories, articles, music and photos is probably something I will never get bored to, at least I hope so. There is so much to see everywhere that it is total crazyness.

To be honest, I am really excited to start this blog, because I don’t know how it’s going to be like, but we’ll see!

-Ainur