We Can’t Stop Here, This is Bear Country

Road trip summer is coming to an end, we’ve been circling the nature sites in South and East Estonia and my theory is that what put us on the move is this unusually cold summer, until the end of july we didn’t see a day over +16C.

It sounds bad but it also means that the nature is behind one month, which also means that everything is fully blossoming, colorful and green a month later than usual. Not a great summer for leisure but a great one for looking around and browsing the picture perfect sites in nature. I’ve never seen such perfect greenery this late in the summer or the forest full of blueberries , bright yellow Gantharellus cibarius mushrooms and strawberries and the flower fields so full of blossoms.

These small road trips have had a huge influence on my painting work this summer, I noticed there have been a ton of bears and green trees on my painting desk.

Even when we were sitting at the beach in East, lake Peipus, ended up sketching bears. I added two pictures I will add the others later. As most of the time, paintings are available at www.5erg.etsy.com

 

 

 

Cow paintings

 

Strawberry milk cow standing in the rain and not even caring:

Strawberry milk cow resting on strawberries:

The resistance cow

 

The resistance cows are getting harder and harder to farm, some of them have even gone into the extreme and think they don’t even need to be farmed. This is worrying for several well behaved cows. Moo!

The strawberry milk cow standing in the rain and not being disturbed.

Peipsi tint. Taking my own ink to the ocean. But it’s a lake instead.

Peipsi tint (Osmerus eperlanus morfa spirinchus) is a fish that lives very happily in the great lake of Peipsi, in the East part of Estonia. My word, I get it, Peipsi has the best beaches, especially in the northern side. Best meaning here that it’s very slowly getting deeper, there are hardly any people there and it’s so clean. Not sure if someone cleans it or it just stays like this, but never seen even a cigarette butt out there. Maybe the Peipsi tint eats it.

Oh and now I’ve missed out on a perfectly good pun too, because Peipsi is the lake,  “tint” also means “ink” in Estonian and I was out there at the Peipsi shore painting with inks.
Moment of silence for the pun.

But here we go, off to the next topic and that is house cafes. We had a coffee and a cake at the cutest one in Kallaste. If you happen to go see the sandstone cliff (you know that awkward moment when there’s that time when you have to call a 4 meter sandstone exposure a cliff to get a feeling you went and saw something) at Kallaste town, you can find the Anna cafe and hostel near the crossroad and it’s like a Russian theme house that is an experience (notice: Estonia is not Russia. Russia is different. But there are a lot of Estonian Russians living near the Peipsi lakes Estonian side and it’s a part of the areas culture and it’s interesting).

 

Painting with ink at Kauksi

Anna cafe and hostel at Kallaste

Painting poppies with ink

Ink splatter on canvas. Painting poppies and relaxing. A4 size for artwork is so nice, you can sit and paint!

https://www.etsy.com/your/shops/5erg

 

Painting clowns

These guys in Finland, pa-trolling the hate mongers this winter, brilliant.

Loldiers of Odin in Tampere, Finland

Love them and wanted to paint a big picture to hang on my wall to remind us that there are still good people in the world. And I wish them a lot of strength in their fight against blind fear. They’re on Facbook: https://www.facebook.com/loldiers/ You know we need them, let them know too.

 

acrylics on canvas, 50x100cm

 

You are what you love, not who loves you

Painting with the inks, a little rat with a balloon

(click on the picture to see the painting on Etsy)

Painting at Kauksi beach in Ida-Virumaa, Estonia

I’ve never seen such cute waves at Kauksi, without wind! And imagine that, on august 6th, you have the beginning of a +30C heat wave. Must remember to save some tanning lotion for August also!

My friend tanning:

The best wave:

The ants were busy and very friendly:

On our way back home we stopped at Ninasi in Ida-Virumaa, where was an abandoned postal office.

  

A lookouraound platworm tower, as if I knew the correct term, behind the Ninasi bus stop. It’s closed, but you know, wouldn’t it be nice to climb this rusty net, right to the top.

And then this cute fish staiway next to Kose watermill:

And there is home and huge amount of ice cream!

Biking in South Estonia to find Suure-Kambja Burnt Manor

Decided to start the day of our little bike trip at 6am, which was a good choice. If you want to enjoy the trip and get a decent sunburn, you must try to hit the target by noon. Definitely never take a hat with you and do take only one bottle of water. Most importantly, look around! Make the planned 50km on your MTB bikes a nice 70km instead.

In our way we stumbled across the Unipiha manor and ruins (photos by Triin Erg) 

Then had a little painting and eating stop by the Suure-Kambja lake.

Triin found a bunch of butterflies:

Our goal of the trip was to find this burned down manor house, Suure-Kambja manor:

De door is still up!

This is how it used to look in the 1960s (photo by Veljo Rannik). It was built in the 19th century and burnt down in 1998 by (“a suspicious” accident http://www.mois.ee/english/tartu/suurekambja.shtml )

The day went great, we used to wonder around on our bikes a lot, now I remember why!

Painting at the zoo in Tallinn

We set our new goal to go and make a mini painting camp in Tallinn Zoo, ended up being entirely sidetracked by the fact it was so cold the entire time and the ink didn’t come out of the painting stick! So ended up eating and looking around most of the time.

We ended up taking only one painting stop and it was in front of the apes playground. Productivity wise, not a very successful trip, otherwise, COTTON CANDY!