A view to inspire

Eventually, every once on a while, I go for a walk in Madrid in search for inspiration. What I'm looking for mostly is textures and colors that I can later use in my collage illustrations.


The one to the left I took for the organic texture of the stone and the strict square box with the happy swirly graffiti signatures.

I really liked the color on this one (to the right) and the stencil with the "evil man in a mask". To me it looks like the drawing next to the masked man could be either the severed head of a princess turned upside down, or a headless woman with funny legs.

In this one (left) the bricks are great, the simple, chunky "vector-like" shapes seem to work well with the "canvas". And the layers of posters add a bit of interesting color.

I love layers, the more the better...
Layers tell a story about time and the local people. I really like how the metal comes forward too, rust is a lovely texture.

Things just happen

When I was little and walking outside in the rain, I used to entertain myself by picking worms from the pavement and laying them on the grass. Little did I know that they only came out onto the asfalt to escape certain death by drowning...

The invasion of the food critics

Now in August Madrid is taken over by tourists and I often find myself observing them. It’s funny how much they (I am a tourist too every once on a while mind you) behave like cows, they like to travel in flocks and they are quite curious but easily scared.

In the metro the other day I overheard some loud speaking tourists as they discussed local food, and it went something like this: “the Serrano ham was too salty, the tapas too small, the wine too dry…” and so on. They came to the conclusion that to have a proper, fulfilling meal, they would need to go to one of the branches of a ubiquitous company we’re all very familiar with…

The same day I opened a Swedish newspaper and read a feature about Barcelona where the most recommended restaurant turned out to be “Los Vikingos”…

So you see, cows and we are not so different after all…we all want to venture on to the other side of the fence but when we get there we stick to what we know…

Dog

This picture belongs to a series of illustrations, it is a project that I am doing about the relationship between our pets and ourselves. It explores aspects like how we humanize our pets, or how we deliberately genetically modify them to suit our own fancy.

Politeness

There is about 30 million species of insects around the world so there's bound to be some polite ones out there. In Sweden we have some that are not very polite, not towards humans at least. It is quite a common insect, many countries have it, but it is the sheer amount of them that makes it scary in here.

I am talking about "the vampire of the north" the blood thirsty beast that just waits in long grass for a naked foot to come by so it can attach itself and spear its head into your body. It belongs in the bloodsucking family of "Ixodoidea" commonly know as "Ticks" and it can give you Lyme disease if you're unlucky, so just beware when you feel the temptation to run into the flower fields without socks or pat a soft kitten in the summer...