Which hat would you choose?

Mysterious 'incognito' style?

Balancing in black and white?

A really grand headwear with a lovely pattern?

Fashionable brimmed hat with real feathers?

Elegant hat for a good posture and grace?

A choice for those who love stripes and shade?

Picture Book Day

Yesterday I participated in a one-day conference organised by Pro Lastenkirjallisuus http://www.lastenkirjallisuustalo.fi/, an association that works towards getting a proper house for children's literature and illustration in Helsinki. The association is only two years old, and hopefully the dream of a house full of children's books, workshops, illustrations on walls and all the wonderful things related to children's books will come true in the near future. Similar buildings can be found elsewhere in Europe, so fingers crossed that it can happen here too, and soon!

The seminar was very inspiring, with many excellent guest speakers from librarians and teachers to illustrators and children's book authors, translators etc.. I will be writing an article about the conference for 1/2013 issue of Kuvittaja, the quarterly journal about illustration (published by Kuvittajat, the Association of Finnish Illustrators). I'm already looking forward to the next picture book day, as do these two friends above :)

New studio!

This photo is from my old home studio. I moved a couple of weeks ago to an office building near home. Now for the first time ever I have a work space outside my own home, and it's fantastic! No washing up to do, no bed to take a creative afternoon nap, but a nice restaurant to have a proper lunch, a morning walk to the 'office' and so on. I couldn't be happier. This is what I needed!
The room looks pretty much the same as it did at home, and I get company from my partner as he moves in the room next to mine in December. Good times!

Back to the drawing board

Egg Walk

Ok, it's time to get cracking with all sorts of little projects. The Birds! -exhibition finished yesterday and everything went really well. Now some of my birds will continue to live their lives in someone else's homes. That's a nice feeling. I have plans for my birds in the future, but first I need to catch up with other things and get organised!

Dancing in the dark

November and winter are here again and I feel like a hedgehog needing to hibernate until next spring... Suddenly I seem to need two hours more sleep every day with chocolate breakfast, lunch and dinner. But dancing is always a great way to wake me up. So I promise myself that here in my new studio (finally!) I will get up and dance every time radio plays something groovy. I hope I'll get some work done in between!

Birds and their habitats

Some beautiful paintings were created last weekend at the gallery!

Workshop weekend

Yesterday three preschool groups from a nearby nursery school visited the exhibition. They were pretty excited to be in an art gallery. We had a workshop where everybody could do their own fantastic fairytale bird.
I had designed bird stencils and had them made in a laser cutting studio Laser-Riimikko. The children seemed to really enjoy painting and came up with some amazing artwork in less than half an hour. This weekend I'll have two more workshops with children aged 4-13 years.

Birds made by children of Impivaara nursery school

Have you seen these birds near you?

They all seem to have flown to Helsinki despite the approaching winter! You can meet them at Gallery Viileä punainen for this very special occasion. Only two weeks and then they will fly to a faraway island. I wish I could do the same!

Tiny birds

I made 24 very small paintings (7,5 x 8 cm) of birds, all with different characters and scenes. I tried to look for as much variety in colour and composition as I could in such a tiny space.

Story of the Golden Bird

A couple of more photos from Tuesday's opening party. 

Today is the fifth national Fairytale Day (Satupäivä) in Finland. I visited my son's nursery school and read them a story about a Golden Bird by Finnish storyteller and writer Raul Roine. Who would have guessed that I chose a fairytale about a bird! 

I illustrated the story on big sheets of paper and we talked about it. One boy was very confused as the prince was wearing breeches with knee socks instead of jeans or other 'normal' trousers. First time for everything!