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...

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!

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!