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...

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.

Spring dance

I wish everybody a happy weekend, beautiful springtime and lots of fun and funky dance moves as shown here by Elsa and her brother (our Facebook page reached 300 likes, so I drew this little picture to celebrate!). 

Here's link to our page, all in Finnish though:

Elsa Book Series 

Midsummer's eve soon!

Tomorrow I will leave the city for Midsummer weekend and finally throw away my winter coat in a lake and spend a couple of days together with my family in a little heaven called Johannislund in Kiikala. The old glass factory's village is by far the best place to be in the summer. A little bit later I'll be packing my paints and papers there too to complete the Christmas card illustrations I'm working on at the moment. Here's another lovely photo of my untidy desk at a very hot studio, where the snow is luckily only on paper!

Back to the drawing board

Egg Walk

Ok, it's time to get cracking with all sorts of little projects. The Birds! -exhibition finished yesterday and everything went really well. Now some of my birds will continue to live their lives in someone else's homes. That's a nice feeling. I have plans for my birds in the future, but first I need to catch up with other things and get organised!

Dancing in the dark

November and winter are here again and I feel like a hedgehog needing to hibernate until next spring... Suddenly I seem to need two hours more sleep every day with chocolate breakfast, lunch and dinner. But dancing is always a great way to wake me up. So I promise myself that here in my new studio (finally!) I will get up and dance every time radio plays something groovy. I hope I'll get some work done in between!

Pas de deux

Whatever I draw or illustrate, somebody is dancing somewhere. I feel that today I will need to do some serious jamming and shaking my tail, as does this bird showing off its best moves. But who is it dancing with? That will be revealed later...