Working with colours is something I quite recently started with. I’ve sketched and painted since I was very young, but almost only in pencils and black ink – colouring a piece on paper has never really gotten to me. Canvas is another matter. Since we moved to a house last year, painting on canvas is a new hobby of mine!

Acrylics only. I don’t work in oil at all. Partly because I find it too long to dry, and the smell is not very pleasing either.

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I love reading popular science cause it is a wonderful fun way to learn otherwise complicated, stale (and boring) subjects. Because don’t tell me that Math and Physics in a school bench does not make you quiver. It is no coincidence that my habit of heavy coffee drinking started in order to keep me awake in electronics class. Popular science however, is really interesting and fun – and even ”novels” pertruding on these subjects I find truly inspirational.

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For my last two paintings came to be because of books on Math. Particularly one I read last year: The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa. It is a story of a professor trapped in 8 minutes of short-term memory and his new housekeeper and her son. This story is beautiful and sad at the same time. The professor makes all kinds of mathematical discoveries in a world where the present moment is key. I truly recommend this book to anyone!

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The professor in this book, at one time, tells of triangular numbers – and how their geometrical pattern of triangular forms are both elegant and simple. Which gave the idea for this painting of three:

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It is truly just another coincidence – that the painting of triangular numbers were done on 3 canvases. My fiance loves it though, and it soon hangs in his study.

My second painting, that I finished this weekend, came from the thought of Pi. Pi, a ”magical” number of infinite size, has always intrigued science. As far back as the ancient Egyptians, an approximation of Pi was used. But this piece, came to my mind after reading an article online about a woman redoing her kitchen tiles. Instead of tiles though, I saw a skyline in the sunset… made up of decimals of Pi. Over 100 of them.

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Sometime during 2005 I started painting models out of plastic & metal. My fiancé had a box standing around, filled with plastic models for the fantasy strategy battle game Warhammer. He hadn’t played for a couple of years – partly because he didn’t like the painting part of the hobby… and playing around with plain grey plastics isn’t very much inspiring. Good then that he had found someone like me (?) – who loves to paint and make creativity flow… here’s a picture of my very first model painting of an Empire Wizard:

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I remember how I chose this particular figure simply because of the roses… I also remember how I felt as if I would never be able to create a flow in the robes, and the face I won’t even mention… but for a first try, I’m proud. A few years later I did my second wizard, and these two are one of the few figures I’ve ever painted that has a (living) human face (with flesh):

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This is a Creativity post, a category where I write about all the things I got going outside of work. Feel free to comment, and give criticism.