Kulingvarsel (Gale Warning)

Winter in northern Norway

Some years ago, I made a watercolor inspired by childhood memories of growing up in Bodø. The image stayed with me, lingering in the back of my mind as something I might one day recreate as a diorama.

I have always felt comfortable building interiors, but creating an outdoor winter landscape was unfamiliar territory. Snwo and ice presented a different set of challenges, and I was curious to see whether I could capture those memories in miniature.

Mørketid

Backdrop and Base

I painted the backdrop in oils on a curved surface to eliminate the sharp corners of the box and create a greater sense of depth. I wanted the landscape to feel endless: a dark winter sky, a wild sea, and the distant outline of mountains.

Even though the ground would eventually disappear beneath snow and ice, I began by shaping the landscape with sand and texture paste, building up the road and terrain before adding the winter layers. Working this way helped me establish the form of the landscape before covering it with snow.

The Kicksled

The kicksled was built from wood and aluminium, with the runners bent into shape. It is based on the traditional kicksleds that were a familiar part of winter life during my childhood in Bodø. More than just a means of transportation, the kicksled is a symbol of childhood, winter, and life in Northern Norway.

Trees and Sign

The road sign is a miniature replica of the one that stood on our street when I was growing up. The original sign read No Through Traffic (Gjennomkjøring forbudt), and I recreated it using aluminium and a steel rod. After painting it with acrylic gouache, I weathered the surface with washes and pigments to give it a worn appearance.

For the trees, I experimented with several materials before settling on a combination of natural twigs and pieces of sea foam. The armatures were sprayed with various shades of paint and finished with subtle light grey highlights to suggest small winter birches. I was less interested in reproducing every detail of the bark than in capturing the delicate silhouette of bare birch trees

Snow and Ice

I experimented with a variety of products to create the snow and ice effects, eventually settling on a combination of AK products and Vallejo modelling paste. The road was never covered in pristine white snow. Instead, it had to look dark, compacted, icy, and slushy, just as I remember it from childhood winters.

Rather than creating a picture-postcard winter landscape, I wanted to capture the reality of patches of ice, dirty snowbanks, and the smooth, slippery surfaces where we searched for the best stretches of road for kicksledding.