Happy holidays!

Season's greetings! 

Iloista joulua!

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!

Happy Holidays!

More snowy card designs in the hope of SNOW

Here are two more of my Christmas card designs. I thought that maybe if I post them here now, we just might get the first snow soon. It's this hideously dark and chilly, damp month of November, my least favourite of all...The rest of my family thinks that November is great! For me, sleeping through the whole month is very attempting.

Below are some character drawings of my Santa Owls. Actually they have another name too. Someone from our Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design course thought, that these fellows look like the Tribbles from a famous episode in Star Trek!

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!

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.

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!

Snow and sunshine

This weekend Helsinki got the first snow (well, 1-2 cm, but still white and gorgeous) and the sun came out after weeks of rain and darkness. The world looks very different now! It's also nice to get some natural light to the studio. Temperature dropped to -15 C, which means I'm' wearing multiple layers of clothing again, both indoors and outdoors. Spring is on its way, I can feel it!

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.