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!

When everything starts to grow

Here is a small illustration I did experimenting with all kinds of pens from felt tips to fine liners, gel pens and my son's magic pens. Shame that all the lovely neon bright colours don't show here! This is my prelude to spring :)

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.

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 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!

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?

Watercolours, patterns, flowers!

Last week was the Night of the Arts in Helsinki, a yearly event with hundreds of happenings and performances spreading around the city. For me, it was an enjoyable evening painting watercolour cards to give away to the customers of Gudrun Sjödén store.
I had some lovely discussions with the customers and I kept myself busy painting almost 30 cards based on a few designs I had thought of in advance. All the cards were painted in the spirit of Gudrun Sjödén, one of my favourite colourists and pattern designers.

Back to school/Holiday mood

Elsa and Lauri, the main characters of the picture book (written by very talented Kerttu Ruuska) I recently finished illustrating, are going for a vacation. Meanwhile in real life, our son is back to school already! I don't know how this summer just flew by. I've managed to fill my calendar with many things big and small, but this weekend I will enjoy the sun, swim in the lake and pick some lovely blueberries in the forest!

Masterclass by Svjetlan Junaković

It's been a while since my last update. Yesterday I finished a picture book that I have been working on this summer. I have also been enjoying summer holidays, although this summer has been one of the coldest in 50 years!

In June I had a chance to participate in a two-day illustration masterclass taught by Croatian artist, illustrator and sculptor Svjetlan Junaković. He is one of my favourite artists, so being taught by him was a privilege. He is such an inspiring, enthusiastic teacher and a charismatic person and storyteller.

From one portrait to another, magic!

We painted with mixed media, using acrylics, gouache and whatever pencils and crayons we had in hand. I really enjoyed this technique and had lots of fun with it. Th theme for the workshop was "Portraited in Illustration". We interpreted well-known fairytale characters with our own stories behind them.

The fish on the left was painted by Svjetlan on top of many different faces.

My Princess with the Pea. She's had enough of the fuss and decides to get rid of it.

Princess is feeding the Pea to Little Red Riding Hood's Wolf.

Botanic garden sketches

Last weekend I participated on a two-day course drawing plants at Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden's glasshouses in Helsinki. Well, only the first day was sketching on the spot. On the second day of the course we were asked to paint anything we like based on our sketches from the previous day. I got the jungle fever of some kind with my oil pastels. It was really enjoyable to just draw what you feel and have enough time to do it. So definitely more of this soon, I hope.

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.

Today, Tove and new paints!

Here's a sneak peek of the main character on a children's book I've been working on. I just got more gouache paints on Monday, just in time! I was seriously running out of my favourite paints. I found a good store in Germany that I order them from now on. I got special service, not to mention how much cheaper they were than buying from an art store in Helsinki...
Tonight, Tove Jansson exhibition opening at Ateneum Art Museum. What a treat!

Colours, light, paint!

Just  a quick Hello! from my studio. As you can see, I've been keeping very busy with new artwork for a children's book. The studio is a mess, but I just focus on the paper and paints while listening the radio, music and audiobooks. It's fantastic to get more natural light every day, that's for sure!