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!

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...

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!

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.

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.

King Gustav III in Suomenlinna

This is the third time that I illustrated the poster and leaflet for Suomenlinna Children's Adventure Tour. Here is the main illustration with handwritten typography. This time the King Gustav III of Sweden has lost his crown and children help him to solve the mystery. After all, the crown is a very important part of being a king! The tour takes the audience to the dark corridors and pathways of the Suomenlinna fortress. Torches are a must! 

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!

Painting summer!

It's gloomingly dark time of the year, but at least it's bright and colourful in the studio! I'm working on the historical characters for next summer's Suomenlinna children's adventure tour. This time the story will be about King Gustav III of Sweden and his missing crown. Lots of research for the costumes again, which I enjoy.

The fourth book in Elsa and Lauri series is "work in progress" on my desk too. Here is the cover design. So not too many holidays for me this Christmas, but plenty of good chocolate! And books!

Taking part in Lilla Rogers' GTS competition

Here is my entry for this year's Lilla Rogers' Global Talent Search. The brief was to design sneakers for a fictional character, Antoinette from Brooklyn. The assignment was really exciting with lots of clues to Antoinette's daily life and the things she enjoys. So even though I didn't make it to the next round, I thought the competition brief was really enjoyable and I would buy my feather-patterned sneakers any day!
I even managed to overcome my problematic relationship with a certain computer software to get the final piece to look the way I had imagined. Luckily I am working next door to a Photoshop wizard...

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!

Happy May Day!

Happy May Day! 

Iloista vappua!

Going swimming!

My son loves to go the indoor swimming pool and play in the warm water for hours. The temperature in a lake or the sea is never quite enough for him. I'm not a big fan of swimming pools, but I still managed to finish a picture book about this little girl Elsa and her brother going swimming. Possibly more illustrations from the book later. It will be out in September, but my work is done!

Summertime soon!

Here is one pretty much finished spread from a picture book I illustrated earlier this year. The children are going ice-skating and it feels like winter was such a long time ago! Now they're all marching towards summer and I have almost finished the other book with the same main character. After that, I can go back to the ideas I have for characters and stories of my own. And I just might paint a few more birds again, I miss them!

Combining handwritten text and image

Suomenlinna sea fortress is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Finland. The Ehrensvärd Society (http://www.suomenlinnatours.com/lastenkierros) organizes every summer a children adventure tour around the island. I designed the poster for this year's adventure.

The interactive play takes children to see exciting places with characters that are based on the history of the sea fortress. This year's adventure will be set in late 18th century. What a fiddly business I had with the historical costumes to get them look almost authentic with all the tiny, important details.

By the way, the picture makes me realize that summer is closer every day!

Happy New Year!

Today is the first day back at the studio this year. I'm looking forward to working on two children's picture books this spring. It means hundreds of hours of painting, and working with some really nice people. And luckily the graphic designer is just next door, in case I panic (which I most certainly will do!).
The next book coming out soon is the Nordic Children's Bible (Pohjolan lasten Raamattu in Finnish) with 15 illustrators and 15 writers from Scandinavian countries. Here is my interpretation of the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

Cover illustration for Helsinki-info

I was commissioned to illustrate the cover of Helsinki-info, an information bulletin published by the City of Helsinki, printed six times a year. I have to say I was a bit intimidated by the print run of 365 000...
Here are the original artwork (A2) and the final cover. I was very happy with this brief, great work with reproduction and layout by Heikki Sallinen (Logopolis Graphic Design). 

Song about a leggy man

Today I've been working on this illustration for a song about a leggy man and his bowlegged wife ("Pitkäsäärinen" in Finnish). What an earworm it is! The song comes with step by step illustrations on how to play it with a friend. It's quite an addictive game. I find it hard to concentrate on drawing when the song is in my head and my arms and hands want move about. I just want to get it right, that's all!

This is the very day...

...when I finally start my very own blog! 

To begin with, I'd like you to meet two of my favourite people in the world.  This poster illustration was inspired by our music sessions in the living room. Nukkelsson Jazz Band was born, me and my boys jamming away.