Project: Painting a swirly tree on the wall (part 1)

I recently just moved into my boyfriend's house, and I realised that it was way too boyish/bachelor looking for my taste. The house had all the typical manly tech items, like the massive TV, surround sound system, and a whole room just dedicated to his computer. There was nothing wrong with the furniture (they are all really new and stylish) but he didn't have one single decorative item in the house. That needed changing! The house was in desperate need of a woman's touch!

I started off small; putting a nice table cloth on the dinner table, placing candle holders in almost every room, putting up a little wine rack in the kitchen, etc... But that wasn't enough for my artistic soul...

So I gave myself a bigger project. And in this case bigger means that I made my boyfriend chuck his computer out, and I decided to change his office into a nice little arty room for myself. (Selfish? Naah... he never spent time in that room anyway!)

I started painting over the ugly boyish light blue walls, but I wouldn't settle for just plain colours. Sure, I decided to paint 3 of the 4 walls white (I painted the 4th one in a beautiful olive green colour), but my big project is that I am painting a big tree on one of the walls. It's massive actually.

I haven't actually painted it yet, but I projected my design on the wall yesterday, and drew the lines with a light pencil, so I've got a good idea of what it's going to look like.

My design of the tree I'm about to paint (with inky pen on A4 paper)

See how the tree turned out here:
Swirly tree on the wall (part 2)
Swirly tree on the wall (part 3)

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Another portrait

Another portrait. This one is of one of my best friends - Josefin.
This panting was (just as the other ones) made with acrylic paint, and I painted it in 2009.
I really enjoyed painting this portrait, since Josefin had a very special style back in the days. Quite extreme, with different coloured dreadlocks, and often very colourful Manga inspired clothes. As you can probably guess, this is not the first time I make a portrait of this pretty girl.

(I'm sorry about the bad quality of the photo. It was taken with my old camera phone)

Portraits - great presents

Once I started to get the hang of painting with acrylic colours I realised that paintings were great to give away to people as presents. I didn't have a great job at the time, and could therefore not afford really fancy presents. These are some of the paintings I've given to people for their birthdays. All the paintings are portraits. The first one is of my sister, the second one is of my ex boyfriend, and the third one is of my ex boyfriend's sister when she was about 5 years old. I must admit that the second one is my favourite, as I was working with contrasts only on this painting. (the quality of this picture isn't great though, since I photographed the painting with my old mobile camera)
What do you think?

Inspired by a Metallica t-shirt

Once I started getting into painting with acrylic paints I started giving myself challenges. I spent lots of time on little tiny details, and one single painting could take me days to finish!

My boyfriend at the time was a huge Metallica fan, and had all these band t-shirts with rock prints on them. I studied these t-shirts very carefully, and decided to paint a couple of them on big canvases.

One of them is this painting of a cracked hand holding a snake (or should I say the remains of a snake, thinking about the fact that you can see the snake's skull) that I painted in 2006.

This painting took me 10 hours, since I mostly used a teeny tiny brush for all the little details.

Again, please ignore the big "Maria Hagman" written all over the painting. This was done in photoshop after I decided to upload the picture on the internet.

My first ever acrylic painting from 2006

To get this blog started properly I thought I'd upload some of my old work. 

The first one in line is a painting of Marilyn Monroe made with acrylic paint. The story behind this painting is not very interesting, but I can tell you that this was my first ever painting with acrylic paint, that I made in 2006. 

I had tried oil before, but I just didn't like it. Acrylics are so easy to work with, as the paint dries in no time at all, which is a benefit when you need to change something in the painting.
 

Try to ignore the massive 'Maria Hagman' written all over the painting. When I first uploaded this painting to my Facebook page I was a bit paranoid about people copying the picture and taking credit for it. That's why...

I have developed my painting skills and I've changed my technique a lot since this painting was made, but I just thought it would be fun to show you all how it all started.