Swedish Inspiration

I just came back from my travelling to Sweden and Italy.

First Sweden. It was my first time in Sweden. I am not a culture vulture. My path layed far from the capital with its museums and palaces. Here is the quite place where I spent a week.

Akvarellcenter in Dalarna.

I had a small group of 7 people. The topic was animals and portraits. Apart from many other courses we had a model - one of my students brought 3 dogs with her. One of them was sitting for us for a little while. Unfortunatelly the students didn`t take the advantage of a live model and after my demonstration returned to their printed samples.

Konstantin Sterkhov. Our course model.

As usual cat is the most popular object. I have panted a few as the demonstration.

Konstantin Sterkhov. Here is the most royal cat personality)

The students were trying their best. Sometimes they learnt something new... as well as myself.

Lisbeth is discovering about a portrait painting. The same as myself.

My students made me to paint my self-portrait which I haven`t done for the last 25 years! It was a chalange for me `couse I avoid noticing the changes coming to what I see in the mirror. Here I had to admit there were changes and I had to bring them out to the paper.

Konstantin Sterkhov. Quick self-portrait demonstration.

The course was organized by Maria and Felix Ginzburg from Stockholm. Maria is herself a great artist. She is the one who make it possible to attend workshops of various foreign watercolor artists in Sweden such as Milind Malik (India), David Taylor (Australia), Heribert Mader (Austria), Paul Riley (England).

Maria Ginzburg, Sweden. Works and a latest book.

Maria is an author of several books about watercolor painting issued in Sweden in houndreds thousands copies. I was very inspired by her watercolor works representing nature reflected in Swedish lakes.

The nature itself was another inspiration. I was picking berries and mushrooms all my spare time. Maria was taking us after classes to some beautiful places like waterfall, series of lakes, boat floating, ect... wonderful week indeed!

More information about the place at http://www.akvarellcenter.com/, unfortunatelly all in Swedish)