NEW WEBSITE ! !

Oh yes, it has taken me embarrassingly long time to get my website sorted...This week I signed up with Wix to build it myself. Hhmmm...it was super easy. I had tried with Squarespace earlier and was totally lost with it. I got discouraged for months. But I suppose you have to find what works for you and Wix did it for me. So I proudly present:

http://www.nadjasarell.com/

You're most welcome to check it out! What a week!

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!

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!

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!

When everything starts to grow

Here is a small illustration I did experimenting with all kinds of pens from felt tips to fine liners, gel pens and my son's magic pens. Shame that all the lovely neon bright colours don't show here! This is my prelude to spring :)

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.

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!

All kinds of happy birds

Welcome back, all you lovely birds of all kinds!