Illustrating Children's Books e-course

I had a very busy October as I took a wonderful e-course "Illustrating Children's Books" with Make Art That Sells with top art agent Lilla Rogers and children's book art director Zoë Tucker. This 5-week intensive class covered different areas of illustrating picture books from facial expressions and poses all the way to cover design. After five weeks of working with the course assignments and other commissions I was exhausted, but very happy.

Before the course started we had to choose one of three texts to work with. I chose a text written by Zoë Tucker. It was a story about the life of Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician who is often regarded as the first computer programmer. "Ada Lovelace and the Number Crunching Machine" was my choice over a traditional folk tale and Edward Lear, as I love a bit of research!

The course was packed with information about pretty much everything. I was familiar with illustrating children's books, but now all that knowledge was presented in a fresh, inspiring way. The teachers Lilla and Zoe were fantastic and encouraging.

My main character Ada evolved quite a bit over the five weeks. I enjoyed the "Expressions" week the most, maybe because it was a good reminder of how many other facial expressions there are than just smiling, happy ones! Also "Poses" week was a very useful one to remind me of the power of exaggeration.

Since the course finished I've felt a lot more confident about my work. It was an intense five week period. It's taken a while to catch up with the rest of my life! We even got our first snow during the course, really early this year (now it's gone...).

Ada's friend, fellow inventor Mr Babbage in my neighbourhood forest!

Week 4: "Environments"

Over the five weeks I had a chance to properly experiment with new techniques, mixing traditional media with Photoshop. Now I just worry that I forget all the things I learned. The cover did require some serious help from my studio partner, PS wiz spouse. All those masks can get a bit confusing at the best of times! With my patience, well...

Week 5: "Cover"

Anyone interested on the course, I give it five golden stars!

Exhibition opening action!

Yesterday evening was great fun with my exhibition opening at Annantalo Arts Centre. This exhibition includes gouache illustrations from all four "Elsa ja Lauri" picture books I've made with the author Kerttu Ruuska.

It was the Night of the Arts in Helsinki, so the whole city was packed with happenings, performances, exhibitions, events and late night shopping. I was lucky to have the opening event that same night at Children's Café situated inside Annantalo Arts Centre in the middle of the city centre.
We had prepared a "detective" assignment for the children. They had to find the missing items for Elsa's and Lauri's suitcase before they were due to leave for the airport (as they do in one of the books). The items were all in my paintings, and the search was intense! We gave away small prizes too. And of course, there was a possibility of making paper airplanes, my son's favourite hobby!

Vicuñas and summer holidays!

Tomorrow I start my summer holiday. Actually I should be packing this very moment! But I wanted to write a post before I switch off my computer.
Here is something I have worked on for MATS Bootcamp's June's assignment. The theme was vicuñas, beautiful animals of the Andes. The brief was to make a character sheet or spread of a picture book. Here is my final piece I really loved working on.

And here are some sketches, bits and pieces from the beginning toward the final illustrations.

 After pencil sketches I put on some colour in my A3 sketchbook. That was fun!

 

I reworked the character sketches because I really liked the vicuña riding a bicycle and dancing tango...The story started to evolve.

Then I put it all on a double spread with some text I came up with, added some extra bits such as "cheering" cacti to make it more interesting and made a hand-painted pattern for the background. And hurray, I was finished!

Educational illustrations

Here are a couple of my illustrations for a speech therapy company Kipinäkeskus that commissioned me to illustrate new material for their use and for sale. This was a really great project to do, though very demanding too. In educational material the illustrator has to take even the smallest of the client's requests into account and make the picture appealing for children. There is always a lot of detail that has to be accurately presented.
I had an extensive list of words, especially verbs, to illustrate. The two kindergarten images had a total of 70 people! I don't use computer that much, but these illustrations I coloured in PS. It always surprises me, how quick and easy it is compared to actually painting everything as an original artwork. For me, the most demanding task was to follow the perspective...

Fresh from the press

Our latest book with Kerttu Ruuska was delivered last week. Yay! This week I will put up an exhibition with some of the original artwork at Toukka, a tiny children's book shop in Helsinki. Here is a peak inside the book.

All kinds of happy birds

Welcome back, all you lovely birds of all kinds!

Book illustrations finished!

I'm feeling very relieved today after delivering the last of the original artwork to the publisher, perfectly on time. Though it was a close shave...
The book Elsa ja Lauri juhlissa (written by Kerttu Ruuska) is going to be out in March/April. January was really intense work with the detailed illustrations, but also very enjoyable. Always after a big project like this you can feel quite worn out. I'm just happy there is now time for all the other plans that have been on hold for a couple of months. And it's February, the sun is shining and spring is just around the corner! It's time to celebrate just as they do in this summery, festive book.

Happy New Year ! !

Greetings from my studio and happy, creative, joyful year 2016!

It's freezing outside, but I'm very lucky to be painting green grass, flowers, patterned dresses, barefoot children and lots of juicy, lovely colours with my favourite gouache paints. And Santa got me a new desk lamp that has improved my life enormously! Time management is the key this month and deadline is pressing me on. Great year to come, I have a good feeling about this!

Picture books and portraits

I had a wonderful opportunity to teach a short family course for adults and children (age 5-8 years) at The Finnish Adult Education Institute. Our theme was animal stories and we explored this through art, dance, storytelling and illustration. First session was about painting portraits of animals, reading stories and getting to know each other.

Here are some of the cool animal portraits!

 

 

Our second session was about movement and dance improvisation. We also started storycrafting, a method for the children to invent their own stories. Based on these stories we would then illustrate our own picture books.

The children were in charge of the picture book process. Adults were helping them out by writing the text or illustrating the book with the child. The story was divided in three double spreads.

Here are the wonderfully inventive books the children made with their parents. I was given the permission to publish the books here. The stories were fun to read aloud at the end of the course and the children were very impressed (as were the adults, especially me!) by everybody's creations.

"The Little Cat" by Hertta (8 years)

The back cover text: "The little black cat finds a friend and and a home where she is loved. During the night the northern lights turn her fur into rainbow colours."

"Heavy Rocks" by Alvari (5 years) and his mother Virva

A story about how Hevisaurus (a very popular children's music band) got started. The humorous tale involves two boys, a pig, a rabbit and a "band mobile phone", a farm and a rock concert.

"The Lost Rabbits" by Saga (6 years) and her mother Sari

The book tells a story of three rabbits that get lost in the grass, but eventually find their way home to their mother. Happy ending involves eating delicious porridge and gingerbread biscuits.

A Christmas Story by Tuukka (5 years) and his mother Tarja

A happy story about the little boy Tuukka and his family. The illustrations had lots of details about electricity, switchboards and ita had also a Christmas Tree and Santa Claus.