"Illustrator as Author" mini seminar

Today we had a special treat for children's book and picture book people. Professor Martin Salisbury from Cambridge School of Art was the keynote speaker at a mini seminar organised by Aalto University's Graphic Design Unit. There were also interesting speakers from Finnish picture book field, such as Ville Tietäväinen, Kristiina Louhi and Maija & Anssi Hurme. It's such a rare thing to have something like this arranged in Helsinki. I wish that this is the beginning of more events like this for picture book enthusiasts, researchers, illustrators, authors and 'picture book makers'!

My partner, co-worker and fantastic illustrator/graphic designer Jussi made these limited palette designs below based on my pictures. We are having new business cards printed, and there was some extra space to fill in on the sheets of offset paper, with limited two-colour palette.
It's fun to see what it looks like, when somebody else has done the computer fiddling on my illustrations... The one on top is from a pencil sketch I had forgotten about. The one below is based on a piece of artwork I did for my exhibition two years ago.

 

 

It's the time for...

...the little Christmas elves to appear everywhere, so keep your eyes open! This year's seasonal card is Elsa and her brother, dressed up in costumes for kindergarten's winter play. It's a dark time of the year, so I will light up the candles and eat ginger bread (or chocolate) with a cup of hot tea...preferably in a rabbit costume because it's warm and cosy.

Supercool swimming pool!

Here are some wonderful photos from one of the kindergartens we have visited so far with Elsa-workshops.
We started the art project together with the children by reading the book about Elsa's first visit to an indoor swimming pool. Then we did some painting with marbles to create the water in different shades of blue. Also some frogs were born, ready to dive into the pool water.
We instructed the group's own teachers to continue building a swimming pool area with coloured tiles around the water and even adding extra characters and elements to the 3D-pool. And this is one of the projects finished. These children created a truly fantastic swimming pool, I'm so impressed and happy!

Multi-coloured swimming pool tiles.

This frog (bottom right) meets a surfer!

Lifebuoy has saved one swimmer...jump board tower on the right!

Swimming pool tiles in progress.