Creative autumn greetings !

This autumn has been quite busy, hence the silence here. Here are some highlights I wanted to share with you.

The photos below are from Gudrun Sjödén store in Helsinki. I was there on a Friday afternoon in September drawing 15 minute portraits of the customers as a part of the Gudrun Sjödén's culture week.

Drawing an illustrator colleague Maija Hurme, no pressure!

Then I had a wonderful day with Make in in Design team at Marimekko Factory tour in Helsinki and Sketch Doodle Draw event in the city centre. It was such a pleasure to meet Rachael Taylor and her crew. I'm taking Module 3 of her Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design course at the moment.

Read more here: http://makeitindesign.com/blog/2016/10/04/we-sketched-doodled-and-drew-in-helsinki/

Me with the amazing Make it in Design team

At the Marimekko factory

And I took part in the pattern bombing challenge on Instagram with Make it in Design School. My hippie car with my botanical pattern received an honorary mention too.

There was also one weekend of intensive dance training at SVOLI Convention for dance, gymnastics and fitness instructors. But I carried my sketchbook with me...

I'm also participating in "Illustrating Children's Books" course by Make Art That Sells. These drawings are based on daily sketchbook prompts. I'm enjoying both of my courses and working on an illustration project that requires a lot of time until the end of the year.

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!

My 1920's Birds

I'm participating in Make Art That Sells Bootcamp this year. The course started this month, and there is a different assignment every month, five altogether. The first one was to illustrate a cover for a colouring book. The theme was 1920's hairstyle, makeup, fashion accessories etc. Obviously, I love 1920's style. Who doesn't? The bried was so well presented and started off with a mini assignment. The sketch above was one of my drawings for the mini, just faces and hairdos.

                                                           But then this bird appeared...

                      So in the end my final piece had some really elegant chicks! They just took over.

                                                    With the cover design looking like this!

Book publishing party!

First spread of the new book. 

We had a book publishing party on Tuesday with Kerttu, the wonderfully energetic author of Elsa ja Lauri -bookseries. The top floor of a nice Café Talo was packed with our friends and relatives. Trio Pullakka, our very own house band played (me as the percussionist).
Here are some photos from our cheerful little celebration. And a tiniest little peek from the book I'm sketching at the moment...it's still a work in progress and a bit of a secret again :)

Kerttu and I celebrating!

The lovely little boy also named Lauri who has been Lauri's "model" in my mind.

Trio Pullakka (quartet) playing!

Plenty of colouring to do.

Mini fraction of the sketches that are piling up on my desk.

Helsinki Book Fair and our new book!

Last weekend was the Helsinki Book Fair; four days packed with events, interviews and book sales for all book-loving public to enjoy. Our latest picture book "Elsa ja Lauri matkustavat" (Elsa and Lauri go travelling") made it just in time from the printer to be presented and sold at the fair by Oppi&ilo, our publisher. 

Kerttu and I had a book reading session and afterwards we created paper airplanes with the children and their parents. It's always a great pleasure to see children listening to a story. Their attentiveness and concentration is amazing to watch. And the colourful paper planes were flying around the children's play area. Apparently some of the planes travelled all the way to Italy, Greece and Dubai, and even to Minecraft world.

I was also taking part in Kuvittajat's (The Association of Finnish Illustrators) stand and spend a couple of hours there as a cashier. Next to me was illustrator Maija Hurme drawing mini portraits of people for free. This caused quite a queue, so I jumped in to help out and did a few quick portraits myself (see the very poor quality photos...). It was nice to talk to people while drawing.  I'd love to that kind of thing more often, though without cashier duties at the same time!

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.