Portfolio updated!

Check out the new stuff in my portfolio at www.julialundgren.se!

Katla

I've wanted to make a portrait of my dog for a while now. (But I've been avoiding it because of how tricky her markings and colours are to portray). You can see a photo comparison of her below.

In the photo she was about 1 year old, this year she'll turn 9 so I decided to draw a more grown up version of her, where I really tried to capture her personality (loyal, playful, intelligent), and play around with the light to make it even more of a challenge (than her fur and markings already were).

Easter

So easter was a few days ago. I don't really celebrate it but we had an easter dinner and I spent the day drawing. Here's A small speedpaint of some chocolate bunnies rushing to deliver an easter egg. 

My online prescence

So here's a huge list on places where you can find me, sorted so you easily can find what you're looking for

Social media where you can follow me:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Lambidy

Deviantart: http://lambidy.deviantart.com/

Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artist/lambidy

CGSociety: http://lambidy.cgsociety.org/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lambidy/

Tumblr: http://artofjulialambidy.tumblr.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JuliaLambidy

Shops where you can buy of my works:

Society6: https://society6.com/lambidy

Hästlycka: http://hastlycka.se/medlemmar/julialundgren

Galleries where you can see my art and upcoming exhibitions:

Konstagenten: http://konstagenten.se/konstnar/julialundgren/

Gallerinet: http://www.gallerinet.se/galleri/2264

Teckna: http://teckna.ning.com/profile/lambidy

My own websites:

My portfolio: http://www.julialundgren.se

My old portfolio: http://www.julialundgren.se/oldportfolio/

Work related, where you find my CV etc:

LinkedIn: https://se.linkedin.com/pub/julia-lundgren/89/708/169

Monster: http://beknown.com/julialundgren

Warhammer raven

Any Warhammer 40k fans here? 
Here's my own take on the "imperial eagle", or, in this case raven.

The upper one is made as a realistic version, and the lower one made to resemble rusty metal. 

This was a requested  piece for a tattoo! :)

Fenrisulven

Quick practice in drawing landscapes & different environments. 
This one inspired by the beautiful nature of Iceland, featuring Fenrisulven / Fenrir from norse mythology.

Spring

 "And when the spring came, winter died."

Mostly a practice in drawing realistic fur and using light from behind the motive, 

but also in symbolic storytelling (in which I used the passing of a season as a metaphor for how new life can grow from the death of another). I couldn't decide which version I preferred so this one got two final versions, as seen above and below. 

Here's also a rather rough step-by-step tutorial thing on how I created my latest work "Spring". 

I originally planned to make this a "tutorial video", but Photoshop really didn't like my recording program and decided to freeze and crash over and over, so I eventually had to give it up halfway through the painting.. But here's some sort of tutorial thing for you anyways, and I'll give video tutorials another try some other day! (ALSO, If you haven't seen any of my "basic sketches" before -from when I've previously made tutorials etc- then yes, they are hilarious)

Improving your art

Earlier this week, I was asked to give some advice on how someone who's just recently started drawing could improve their art.


First I'd like to point out; It's hard for me to say how I started, and teach someone from scratch, as I've drawn basically all my life. When I was little I had lots of books with paintings by (among others) the Swedish artists John Bauer, Lena Furberg, Sven Nordqvist and more, I decided already at the age of 4 that I was going to become an artist like them. 

I'd say the best advice I really have is, practice, a lot! Don't try to make every painting a finished piece, instead, "sketch for your traschcan", draw a bit every day and feel no pressure, it doesn't have to be perfect or good at all, you're just supposed to play around and learn from it, you'll still improve! :)

 I also believe many artists rely a bit too much on using references. By this I mean, if you draw from a photo, you learn to draw just that motive from that specific angle. But you don't get "understanding" of the motive, which is needed to be able to draw on freehand. (I also believe that by tracing an image and just drawing the same lines over it, you won't really learn much and improve veeery much slower)

For instance, how I've learned most is from when I had a horse I took care of every day. I would sit down in the meadow with my sketchbook and just draw quick sketches (from 30 seconds to a maximum of 5 minutes, and tried to capture as much as I could  in each sketch) of her while she was eating, walking around etc. I still bring my sketchbook when I go to watch others ride on competitions etc. I learned super much from studying croquis in artschool, before that I could barely even draw humans at all and less then a year later I had no problems with it! By practicing on drawing "live" like that you get better understanding of both how things work, how they looks when they move, and how shadow/lightning changes on different textures (such as fur etc). When it comes to animals, if you have the opportunity to meet them, touch the parts of the animals that you find difficult to draw (for instance the legs, paws/hooves etc) and try to memorize what they feel like. When you draw after that, you might not exactly remember what that part looks like, but if you remember how it feels like you can sort of "sculpt" it into your drawing. You'll have to remind yourself that even if your painting is flat, you're actually painting a 3D object.

I've also bought wooden figure models of both a human and a horse, I find that such tools can help if you find the anatomy tricky.

When it comes to digital art, well, I'm self taught in that so I'd say I've learned by just experimenting with different tools in photoshop, and over the years figuring out which I prefer, what I thought looked best and by that, what my art style was. You can see a very small part of my digital art-journey (2007 to 2013) here; http://lambidy.deviantart.com/art/Improvement-meme-2007-2013-364999637

Again, the only thing to really do is practice, practice, practice, and draw a lot. And dare to experiment with your art, of course you can admire and be inspired by other people's artstyles, but it's by experimenting you'll develop your own personal style! There are no "cheat ways" to get around that sadly, it will take time. Over the latest 5 years I've drawn almost every day, and I'm still super far from how good I want to be!! + I'm currently applying to a couple of different universities where I'll be able to study Illustration etc too.

And, perhaps most important; don't be afraid of being in the learning phase. Don't try to become a "great artist" in just a week, you have time i promise! I honestly think all artists always will be in the learning phase, because no artist will ever consider themselves a "finished, great artist with no need to get better", they'll always continue practice to become even better. Try to make that your motivation!

I might do more posts on this, and I'll definitely upload more tutorials, but I hope some of this can help you improve your art! :) 

Grandfathers of horror

A quick material and lightning practice, inspired by two fameous horror writers. 

The H.P Lovecraft bottle, including a tentacle to symbolise his stories of odd sealiving creatures. Underneath is a paper sheet with R'lyehian symbols, mentioned in many if his stories.
The bottle shape is inspired by a lantern and fish gills, and ment to match the setting of harbor docks.

The Edgar Allan Poe bottle, including a heart to symbolise his stories of love and hate. Underneath is a raven feather from his poem "the raven".
The bottle shape is inspired by the thorns on roses, and ment to match the setting of a castle.

Midnight hunt

A bit late, but here it is, my first finished painting of 2016!

Some late night sketching turned into a whole painting. I wanted to work with contrast and light to create a dramatical setting, as well as practice more in storytelling and portraying movement. 

This painting became very important to me so I spent much time on it, this because I made it to help myself cope with grief. Ravens and snow owls are my favourite birds.. only, this snow owl became an albino rather than a regular one. This, as a small tribute to a loved (albino) pet of mine that died this week. I'm still very sad about it so I couldn't handle drawing a portrait of her.. but this way I still included her in my art.

You can also see some closeups of it HERE.
Below you can see a step-ny-step tutorial thing on how I painted this artwork.

I wouldn't claim my basic sketches are very pleasant to the eye, but after some hours of work even the messiest ones can turn out nicely. It's been long since I spent this long on a painting and I usually stop somewhere at step 4-5, but I hope this can inspire some of you to put effort into your art even when it feels like it takes forever or won't be good. I promise you, in the end it will be, and the time spent on it will be all worth it.

Dealing with art theft

Today I decided to adress a more serious matter. Art theft is nothing new to me, but I find it tiring. I've previously taken down a lot of my art from my many different art sites to avoid it, but since I put them up again I experienced art theft right away.

Note, I always upload my works in low resolution with watermarks over them.

This doesn’t stop people of course. There are (for some reason?) countless of tutorials on sites like DeviantArt and more, on how to erase or paint over watermarks. Lately I've also found more people having re-drawn my works (traced or heavily used my works as reference and re-coloured them in the same colours), and from that calling it “their” art/sketches/drawings. This without anywhere give credit or even mentioning having used any reference.

If I point it out to them I either get answers like “no I’ve drawn this all on my own you can see it on how I’ve coloured it’s nothing like your artstyle!” or similar. Or, my comments get deleted and I eventually get blocked. It seldom works for me personally to do or say anything. Of course, on almost all sites there are "report" or "contact support" options, shouldn't that be helpful in this matter? I've found that most sites (both different types of social media and actual art-gallery sites) have very flawed reporting systems. When reporting a picture on social media or gallery sites, you can very seldom specify that the reported art is "stolen". You can report it as being mature content, be unsuitable for the audience, or being trash/spam. When the support then go through my arrend, they'll just see that the image doesn't include any content their site doesn't allow, and that it isn't spam. So, nothing will be done. This means there's no way for me to get the stolen art taken down. 

I’ve spent a lot of money on education and work tools, so many years of practice, and put down so many hours, even days for each single piece. Am I really supposed to feel this helpless, when my works get stolen, and claimed as someone elses? Are artists supposed to feel like they're taking risks every time they post their art, fearing they won’t get taken seriously if something happens? I understand that many bigger artists are slowly leaving sites as DeviantArt, social media like Instagram and more to protect their works. But I feel like more should be done by those sites to protect their artists, their artists shouldn't need to feel helpless or ignored when this happens. I'm not the one who should feel blamed when others steal, use, claim or even try to sell and earn money from my works. I shouldn't need to defend myself all alone when it happens. I really think there needs to be a change of some sort, not only on the internet but in schools e.tc too, as we live in a society where so incredibly much of our information is on the internet. For instance, part of the problem lies in that we're not educated enough (or at all..) on the laws about ownership of information or images, such as the copyright law and more.

Some days I really feel like taking down all my works, because I’m so tired of dealing with this. But then again, I need my online portfolio, this is my job. 
If you want to know more about permissions and usage of my works, klick here to read the F.A.Q on my website.

So much to do

I'm aware that I've been pretty bad at posting anything on the blog lately. I've been almost insanely busy through january and february, with uni admissions and some big projects!

I'm applying to schools in different parts of the country, and most of them are far away from here so it'll be exciting to see where I end up after the summer. Hopefully I'll be able to have an actual studio/workplace where I live then.

Since most of the works I currently do are made as work samples for uni admissions, I sadly can't show you much of them just yet.

Also I've been spending a lot more time with the horses over the past months, taking lessions etc. I feel better mentally (physically too of course) the more time I can spend with them, and I currently use the riding as a way to ease up from stress. This is also a reason to why I have less time to make personal works, or blog for that matter, right now.

However, from now on I'll start blogging here on a more regular basis (now that I'm finally finished with one of my biggest projects!) and in the coming week I plan to show you some of the newer paintings I've made, together with at least one tutorial.

My art-Instagram!

I've now created another Instagram account, this one for my works, especially my digital paintings and illustrations.
Check it out HERE!

Blacksta runestones

These are actually some rather personal illustrations. These are not just any runestones, they're three of the many runestones surrounding my home. In fact, the smallest one in the middle was found in our garden and gave name to the house I've grown up in.

The realistic, textured version;

The simple, sketched version for the mugs;

The original runestones;

Julbocken

Merry Christmas, or Happy Yule!
Have you also been visited by Julbocken, or the "yule goat" today? He at least appeared in my sketchbook while I was waiting to open christmas presents~

Art of 2015!

As the year is coming to it's end, here's my summary of art for 2015! Smiley grin

I used to do a lot of these to see my progress, so if you REALLY want to see how my art has improved and turned into what it is today, you can take a look at THIS awkward thing.
You can also find the blank template HERE.

STAR WARS

Yesterday I was at the premiere for Star Wars; The Force Awakens (And no I won't spoil it!) and wow I haven't been this excited for a movie since, I don't even know! Star Wars was a huge part of my childhood and is absolutely one of my favourite series and I was so scared the new movie would mess something up, but it turned out GREAT! There were two small things I'd wanted them to do a bit differently (And I guess to me the old Star Wars movies will always bring a kind of nostalgia and familiar feeling the new ones might never) but over all The Force Awakens was a really good movie, and my god I think my heart cried a little when seeing some of the old loveable characters again!

And of course, I couldn't go just casually go to the cinema without a sith-inspired makeup!

Mist

Here are some of the photos from a photoshoot I did with my boyfriend Wulfar Smide and my dog Katla in November. The weather here is awful and it doesn't feel much like winter at all, but luckily there are many foggy days and I really like playing around with mist, smoge, fog etc when photographing! I'm thinking of making an entire series of them some time..

Which one is your favourite?

Designing for Mariassmycken.se

Mariassmycken.se makes beautiful beaded jewelry, such as necklaces, earrings, bracelets and other accessories. I get to be the photographer, and also recently designed the logo, I'm currently working on her official website that will be up soon!

In the meantime I definitely think you should check out her Facebookpage HERE! 

All of her creative necklaces can be ordered in different colours and model variations, and she also makes custom works! :) See some examples below;

Adventurous fox

I originally planned to make a set of three christmas cards with wild swedish mammals. A fox, a hare and a deer/moose, but this was the only one I finished and were happy with.

Foxes are great fun to draw, as it's a challenge to capture their curiousity. When I'm not making simple sketchy illustrations I've always strived to draw realism, but in this I also added a personal touch to the swirly branches around the fox.

My sister bought a mug with this print, you can see HERE on my instagram how it turned out! You can buy it as a print, pillows and more in my Society6 shop!

Busy busy!

I've been bad at blogging lately as I've been rather busy, so here come's an update!

• They've released the mandatory art pieces for uni admissions, and since I plan to apply to more than one school this means I have A LOT of work to do! It's exciting but of course very time consuming.

• A week ago I was selling paintings, mugs, jewelry and more at a local Christmas market, together with the blacksmith Wulfar Smide. We also did a collaboration, in which I designed and burned the pattern for a viking-inspired axe he made!

• I cleaned up my DeviantArt account!
I haven't been active at all there for the past two years, so now I've made a few changes in the gallery by deleting some older works that I'm no longer very fond of (I've of course spared a few that you guys especially liked). I've updated some works, and just replaced the file with never versions. On those I have updated I've also written that in the caption below them. 

• I've also finally let myself draw horses for fun again (this mostly to stop myself from getting stuck in an artblock). Years ago horses were the only things I wanted to draw, and my galleries were filled with them! However on my journey to become an illustrator I've had to put it aside more and more, and now I usually only draw horses when I get comissions of horse portraits.

Here's the newest piece, Snowblind:

I decided to not make it "too easy" for myself (as horses is my "safest" thing to draw) by picking a trickier pose, from an angle I'm not used to, and not allowing myself to use much contrast or color as I usually do!

I also re-drew one of my most popular drawings "Phantom"/"Horse of the opera". Those of you who've been following me on DeviantArt etc have possibly seen this paining years ago, and you can see the old version HERE.

See more of my recent equine drawings here; https://www.artstation.com/artwork/aE0V8

• I've been accepted to three different courses in graphic design this spring, but I can probably not take all of them so I'm currently having a difficult time choosing!

So to sum it all up, I'll probably be blogging slower than usual for the time being as I'm focusing on the University admissions, but the blog is still alive! :)

Moon and Sun

"Sun and Moon, brothers of the world.
With horns proud as Kings, they gave all creatures of this world a chance to rise."

I often re-draw or finish up older works, as a way to see how much I've improved my drawing skills. My painting "Moon and Sun" originally showed two plain green unicorns on a green background. Today with more shadows, better colouring, a lot more details and markings it looks like this;

Social media

So I've been productive on the social media front lately. I finished my Facebook page, I started a Twitter account and I've been putting up new pictures in both my art tumblr and Instagram. 

It's getting a bit hard for me to remember to update all of my social media accounts (since these are only a few of them) with new drawings, photos etc. After all, I have so many projects I'm working on outside the internet as well! But the list of social media I'm on will just keep on growing, and, I wonder how many I'll end up with since new sites appear every year?

Sketchy Flowers

Sometimes a simple sketch that you didn't plan to use for anything, turns out a whole lot better than expected when printed on things. This goes for my "Sketchy flowers" prints, which I made in ink in my travel sketchbook when on a train this summer. I made my sketch into two patterns, the single flowers as in the pictures above, and the bouquet in the pictures below. Originally I din't even plan to keep the flowery pictures.
Today it's one of my most popular prints!

Bunny studies

I drew theese two a while ago, as a practice in drawing realistic fur digitally. Whenever I'm drawing hair of any sort, things tend to get out of hand and I end up drawing curly swirls everywhere.. but not this time! I imagined them sitting on glass, hence the reflections. I also really tried to give them realistic light and put much effort to their eyes.

They're loosely inspired by two of my own bunnies, Spookie and Tengil.

Working with horses

Today I had a job interview, quite far from here so it almost took all day. The job was related to Icelandic horses, and they seemed really nice and so on. However.. I've always thought it would be best to work with something else, and keep horses as a hobby only. Or, more like a goal. This both because I'm afraid that I would loose interest in riding and horses a bit if I begin to see it as work. And as a "goal" I mean that the reward will be greater if I've really worked for it. I believe that the day I can manage to have a horse on my own, it will be worth more to me, than it would have if horses were a part of my job.

I believe I've made the right choice. Studying to become an Illustrator and Graphic designer, good enough to one day afford to live as I dream to, with a horse of my own, and more.  

My boyfriend gets along so well with the horses -especially old Smári- that he too wants to spend more and more time with them, and even study to become a farrier. So I don't think it will be a problem to keep horses close in my life, regardless of how much time I spend studying/working.

Inspiration Tumblr

Whenever I need new inspiration for creating, or just want to dream myself away to other places, other worlds.. I turn to my tumblr. On my tumblr Julialambidy I share photos, drawings, quotes, music, gifs, videos etc etc.

So click in, and enjoy!

The most common themes in my posts there, are nature, animals, art, and more!

Dawn of the Deer

Today started with me and my boyfriend taking a short ride in the forest with the horses. Since we came home I've been trying to find matching frames for my drawing "Dawn of the Deer", which I'll be selling prints of. It's actually one of my favourites among my own works.

This piece was originally named "Hunters doubt and debt". It's ment to be a portrait of a hunters perspective, in the final moment where he/she decides whether end the deers life, or not. Unlike many of my latest works, this one is sketched and painted entirely digitally, in Photoshop with a pen tablet.

Horse photography

I took the camera with me to the stable this week, and tried to shoot some cozy autumn pictures. All three horses were great models (even though they were very curious of my camera so most pictures turned out as, well, a little too close-up photos of their mules).

Eldgrimur (the grey) is 7 years old. Eldur (the palomino coloured) is 16 years old, and Smári (the chestnut) is 33 years old. I think Eldgrimur was the hardest one to photograph, as his colours doesn't blend as well with the orange autumn leaves in the background as the others.. but I think I managed to capture the autumn mood in most of them. Here are only some of the MANY photos, and you'll eventually get to see more later! :) 

New buisness cards

For the past three days I've been trying out designs for my new buisness cards, since I realized I'll be needing some for the christmas market (and future jobs!). I had a hard time deciding on whether they should look more professional and buisness-y, or creative and decorative.. but I think I managed to create something in between. Now I've finally ordered them!

What do you think?

The Hill

Yesterday I started taking a backup of all my pictures, turns out I had, well, let's just say a lot so it took over 24 hours and when almost done, it crashed my computor. So I'll just have to try again. Yay. On the bright side, since I couldn't work on my computor I instead took the time to plan my upcoming projects. For instance I've been looking up galleries in which I could hold an exhibition/vernissage, and I booked a selling table at a local Christmas fair! 

Since I can't acces my newer works right now, here's an older photograph, taken in a beautiful place I still long back to often.

THE HILL
-Spontanious photo taken in southern Norway. 

Happy halloween!

It's the 31st of October, so HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Since I love to put on a costume and pretend to be someone else (a fictional character for instance), I of course take every opportunity I can to do so. First I worked at the wildlife park as a ghost this week, and here's what i looked like;

Apparantly, I managed to scare both kids and adults while there, and many asked if they could look closer at my eyes and makeup so I guess the lenses and white eyelashes got the effect I wanted. Today I found another use of my lenses when I and the boyfriend dressed up as a casual Joker and Harley Quinn as seen below.

Did you dress up as anything fun this year?

Masked creatures

Environments have always been something I've found quite difficult to draw. I think it's hard to capture the depth of nature, the light setting and slight movements in all of it. This makes it an interesting challenge to me. 

In my piece "Masked creatures" I tried to picture a calm glade at the foot of a mountain, in which the curious creatures live.

Picture above: Process, building the layers of rocks and moss
Picture below: The finished drawing.

The creatures themselves are something I used to imagine a lot of as a kid. They're small mammals that move similarly to how mice do, and lives in holes in trees and under rocks and roots. I never gave them a name, but whenever I saw small holes in the ground I used to think "Oh there lives one of those creatures".

Inktober

So October is almost over, and for many that also means Inktober is almost over as well. Artists all over the world participate in the Inktober challenge, in which you're supposed to draw at least one ink sketch/drawing per day of October.

My drawing for today turned out to be a little dragon. 

I'll admit that I'm not really one of the participants -at least not this year- as I haven't been drawing exactly every day of this month. I actually tend to forget such challenges halfway through them, AND I've been busy with other projects I'll show you soon!

Autumn

Fall has never been a favourite season of mine, but I think it's starting to become one as it's almost impossible not to love how colourful and cozy everything becomes in it. A few days ago I tried to portray the feeling in photographs -as seen below-, but it's not quite the same thing. Today I just feel like laying on the sofa under a fluffy blanket with a cup of hot chocolate, and just, enjoy it all..

However, I'm currently busy packing the last things for my event job at Kolmården wildlife park this week. I'll no doubt bring pen and paper for the trip, as all the animals and this beautiful weather most likely will inspire me to create stuff!

Which season do you find most inspiring?