Happy holidays!

Season's greetings! 

Iloista joulua!

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!

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!

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.

"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.

 

 

It's the time for...

...the little Christmas elves to appear everywhere, so keep your eyes open! This year's seasonal card is Elsa and her brother, dressed up in costumes for kindergarten's winter play. It's a dark time of the year, so I will light up the candles and eat ginger bread (or chocolate) with a cup of hot tea...preferably in a rabbit costume because it's warm and cosy.

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.

Cards coming soon...

My "Still Life with Birds" -series get three new cards published by Putinki Oy. They should be in print soon, I'm looking forward to it. My birds are also appearing in christmas cards, which I'll be revealing later in this blog!
Another busy and fun workshop for children last weekend at Vuotalo festival. The theme was...you'd never guess.....BIRDS!

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!

Still Life with Birds Part II

I did three more gouache paintings for Putinki Oy, enjoying every minute of painting them. This one is the brightest one, with a lot of fiddly details.
I know that so many illustrators use computer especially when designing patterns. Well, I stick to my ruler and pencil to get the patterns in line and correct shape and size...I feel it is more lively this way, hand-painted with little mistakes and imperfections.
More birds coming up for Christmas and winter season. Summer is always the best season to work on winter subjects with nice, cool thoughts about snow and ice. I'm looking forward to summer, my favourite season of the year!

My messy, messy desk

I love painting with gouache, but I don't appreciate having to wash those plastic palettes all the time. That's why have three of them, and I use their backsides too! Right now I'm working on more still lifes with birds and I'm really enjoying it. Especially now that it's finally spring in this cold part of the globe.

Still Life with Birds

I made these three paintings for my exhibition. They were based on the objects I found from our family's summer home in Johannislund, Kiikala and things I had photographed at Pettson & Findus' World in Gröna Lund amusement park in Stockholm.

The three 'Still Life with Birds' -paintings will be printed into postcards and sold by Putinki Oy. The original artwork has been cleverly photoshopped to be standard postcard size. I'm looking forward to seeing them!

 

The glass bottle (with text "Punssia", "Punch") in Still Life II was actually made in Johannislund Glass Factory which operated from 1813 till 1960.

My father's old study lamp when he was a young boy. 

The old mustard jar I found hidden in a cupboard.  

From Pettson's workshop.

 

Findus & Pettson kitchen art!

Yes, it's that tiny drawer in the middle.