THE ART OF MATTIAS NORÉN
THE HUNDRED
THE STORY
After working and creating digitally for a long time, I realized at the end of 2022 that it was time to learn to paint watercolor. Coming from digital and learning watercolor is not entirely easy. It's really the opposite way of thinking where it's important to keep the light parts of the paper unpainted if you want a highlight, instead of painting the highlights last, as in most other types of painting.
Someone said that if you can paint portraits in watercolor, you can paint anything. So I decided to go all out and paint no less than 100 portraits in 2023. It was a year of many hours in front of YouTube and even more hours of experimentation. As I constantly felt that I was developing, suddenly some of the ones painted at the beginning were not good enough in my eyes anymore. Some I have gone back and "saved" with new knowledge I acquired during the year. But others felt hopeless and they were plucked from THE HUNDRED and replaced with new ones. So in total I have painted well over 100 portraits.
One of the most enjoyable periods during the creation was painting the pictures for the record "Dormant" by Silent Skies. Extra fun as I love the music and it really boosted creativity. I've created hundreds of covers and booklets for bands over the years, but I've probably never been this satisfied with the result. See the Dormat cover below.
Most of the paintings are in A3 size, a few are a bit bigger and in the end I wanted to try a really big paper (see the second image below). The design was an idea for another album cover that we later decided to take in a different direction. But I liked the basic idea and when there was no client on the other side and no specific goal what the painting would be used for, I could take it completely in my own direction. I'm sure there will be more "big ones" in the future.
