NEW WEBSITE ! !

Oh yes, it has taken me embarrassingly long time to get my website sorted...This week I signed up with Wix to build it myself. Hhmmm...it was super easy. I had tried with Squarespace earlier and was totally lost with it. I got discouraged for months. But I suppose you have to find what works for you and Wix did it for me. So I proudly present:

http://www.nadjasarell.com/

You're most welcome to check it out! What a week!

Summer greetings!

Rainy day sketching, searching for colour

Colour explosion, marker sketching for fun

My sketchbook bird enjoying life by the lake

Me and my sketchbook birds at Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art

Collage illustration for a new Finnish band Liljankukka

Artwork for the wonderful designer Gudrun Sjödén on her birthday

Me and my birds visited Stockholm and Yayoi Kusama's Exhibition. DOTS!!

I had a lovely holiday break, though the weather could have been a bit better... Back in the studio now. I had to spend a whole day yesterday tidying it up so that I'm ready to start making a new mess. And I had my birthday present, Wacom drawing tablet waiting for me (yay!). No I just need to figure out how to use it. That's going to be interesting...

Friendship Day stamp design competition

I thought I share my process of creating my postage stamp designs for a competition organized by Posti Group together with Kuvittajat, Association of Finnish Illustrators and Grafia, Association of Finnish Communication Designers. The theme was Finnish version of Valentine's Day, the Friendship Day. The job was to design five stamps around this theme. I came third in the competition, which I was so happy about as these illustrations were made with a lot of thought and love!
My idea was to illustrate animals and children posing in a school photo shoot in a "BFF" kind of a way. I chose animals that are related to each other even when they are different species, whether they are domestic or wild animals. I wanted to make a point that despite the cultural differences, you can be friends with each other. But I also wanted to illustrate happy, joyful friends, sweet characters with a bit of humour too. I chose to go for a retro colour palette and simple, graphic shapes for the characters.

I started with some small thumbnails in a sketchbook, simplified my characters, just played around. Then I did the actual illustrations with black ink on A3 paper, one for each (really big!). Like these here below:

Then I scanned the illustrations and played with the colour palette on my computer. I had some very strange colour versions, some were ok...

And when I had decided the colours, the final designs were fine-tuned and turned into vector illustrations. So this is how they looked like in the end!

My sketchbook project

I've been working on learning some social media skills. So I joined Instagram a couple of months ago as well as set up a Facebook page as an illustrator. This has been all very exciting, and it has taken a fare bit of my time to figure things out. But it's been so enjoyable as well! 

These illustrations are from my Instagram account @nadjasarell. I'm taking part in a creative challenge with #the100dayproject. I found a lonely A4 Moleskine sketchbook in my studio. So I thought I'll draw in my sketchbook something every day. It's only early days at Day 11 today, so we'll see how it goes...My theme is very wide with #100daysinthewild. So I can draw almost anything, really.

I have also had a few workshops with children, a book publishing party, an exhibition, coursework for Make It in Design School's Module 2 and Make Art That Sells Bootcamp's monthly assignments. Both courses are fantastic, and I hope I had more time for them. I'm determined to master some serious surface pattern design skills this year. But I've also done a big job with one competition and almost finished a project of educational illustrations for use in speech therapy for young children. So at the end of next week I'm very happy to have an inspirational week in Berlin!

My 1920's Birds

I'm participating in Make Art That Sells Bootcamp this year. The course started this month, and there is a different assignment every month, five altogether. The first one was to illustrate a cover for a colouring book. The theme was 1920's hairstyle, makeup, fashion accessories etc. Obviously, I love 1920's style. Who doesn't? The bried was so well presented and started off with a mini assignment. The sketch above was one of my drawings for the mini, just faces and hairdos.

                                                           But then this bird appeared...

                      So in the end my final piece had some really elegant chicks! They just took over.

                                                    With the cover design looking like this!

All kinds of happy birds

Welcome back, all you lovely birds of all kinds!

Colouring my Phoenix

My version of the mythical Phoenix, a poster, card design or wall art perhaps. I just might try to print this with my lovely A3 printer. I know I should be working on my website, just avoiding the tedious task of finding my artwork files from the depths of my old, dear computer and get organized. Volunteers, anyone?

Birds singing in the morning!

It's very cold and finally we have plenty of snow, a proper winter. Early this morning I heard a bird singing at five o'clock. It means that the days are getting longer and the spring is not that far away anymore. This design is inspired by the light and birdsong. I have been working on my picture book illustrations, so I felt I had to remind myself of how to use the AI again. I have a rubbish memory! So I came up with this design by using my earlier motifs and playing with the scale and colours.

Happy Holidays!

Multitasking before holidays

My friend and author of Elsa picture books Kerttu Ruuska created a children's book blog and I made the illustration above for her home page. It's her flying on a story rug, as the blog is called "Lentävä tarinamatto" in Finnish, Flying Story Rug as my homemade translation.

My greeting cards arrived from the printer yesterday! Really nice quality, 300 g Munken Lynx paper and a small edition with digital printing. And a very good local printer as well, one I have used many times. Though we have a postal strike that can last for ages. Hopefully not...

Just to finish this post with a something new, here is a teeny tiny glimpse of something on my desk at the moment!

More snowy card designs in the hope of SNOW

Here are two more of my Christmas card designs. I thought that maybe if I post them here now, we just might get the first snow soon. It's this hideously dark and chilly, damp month of November, my least favourite of all...The rest of my family thinks that November is great! For me, sleeping through the whole month is very attempting.

Below are some character drawings of my Santa Owls. Actually they have another name too. Someone from our Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design course thought, that these fellows look like the Tribbles from a famous episode in Star Trek!

Designing Christmas cards

I've been practising my new computer skills and worked on some Christmas card designs for this year. I usually make just one illustration, and paint it in gouache. Now I decided to go along with my new passion, surface pattern design, and combine some of that in the cards as well.
When you are so used to mixing your colours on a plastic palette instead of millions of options on computer screen, the possibilities can become a bit overwhelming. So I couldn't do just one card, but six...It's like playing a game with colours, motifs and compositions, because it's so much faster way of working. BUT I will also keep on painting with my lovely gouache paints for my other illustration work. Nothing beats mixing the paints and spreading them on smooth watercolour paper!

The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design course

I'm very excited to be part of Make it in Design's online course and finally be learning the basics of surface pattern design. The course is taught by British surface pattern designer and illustrator Rachael Taylor. She is a truly motivating and inspirational teacher.
For the last few years I have dreamt of designing for wallpaper, fabric, stationery etc. Now I have signed up for the Module 1 of the course titled Designing Your Way. We are on Week 4 out of 5 at the moment, and it has been really fantastic. And I have overcome my negativity when it comes to using computer software. That is quite something. Learning to use Illustrator and Photoshop feels almost like arriving on a whole new planet!

I thought I might share some of my experiments here too. I don't know where I'm going with my designs, but I love every minute of finding my way.

Hey birds, what a surprising subject for a motif!

Below are some colour versions of a flower themed placement print that I drew spontaneously while having a cup of coffee in a lovely MOKO Café & Design Market yesterday. I had just bought new pens, so I was trying them out. Then I came back to the studio and experimented with Photoshop. It was fun, slow and not so easy! Well, hopefully one day it will be as natural as riding a bike...

Enjoying a very large cup of coffee and drawing, what a bliss.

 

Three colour versions out of...twenty?

"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.

 

 

Snow and sunshine

This weekend Helsinki got the first snow (well, 1-2 cm, but still white and gorgeous) and the sun came out after weeks of rain and darkness. The world looks very different now! It's also nice to get some natural light to the studio. Temperature dropped to -15 C, which means I'm' wearing multiple layers of clothing again, both indoors and outdoors. Spring is on its way, I can feel it!

Waiting for the snow

Something wet, soft and cold is falling from the dark grey clouds above. It's Independence Day in Finland and I'm spending it in my studio painting and listening to the radio. Hopefully it'll snow soon, to eat away some of the darkness. But I'm wrapped up warm indoors and thinking of summer, sunshine and fresh grass, painting it thick and colourful.

Birds, I simply love them!

Here are all of my new card designs, finally! I have three new 'Still Life with Birds' -cards and six different designs for Christmas and wintertime, published by Putinki Oy. 

So, what is happening next? I'm busy working on two lovely projects that I will tell you more about in good time. For now, it's a secret.