Birds singing in the morning!

It's very cold and finally we have plenty of snow, a proper winter. Early this morning I heard a bird singing at five o'clock. It means that the days are getting longer and the spring is not that far away anymore. This design is inspired by the light and birdsong. I have been working on my picture book illustrations, so I felt I had to remind myself of how to use the AI again. I have a rubbish memory! So I came up with this design by using my earlier motifs and playing with the scale and colours.

King Gustav III in Suomenlinna

This is the third time that I illustrated the poster and leaflet for Suomenlinna Children's Adventure Tour. Here is the main illustration with handwritten typography. This time the King Gustav III of Sweden has lost his crown and children help him to solve the mystery. After all, the crown is a very important part of being a king! The tour takes the audience to the dark corridors and pathways of the Suomenlinna fortress. Torches are a must! 

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!

Picture books and portraits

I had a wonderful opportunity to teach a short family course for adults and children (age 5-8 years) at The Finnish Adult Education Institute. Our theme was animal stories and we explored this through art, dance, storytelling and illustration. First session was about painting portraits of animals, reading stories and getting to know each other.

Here are some of the cool animal portraits!

 

 

Our second session was about movement and dance improvisation. We also started storycrafting, a method for the children to invent their own stories. Based on these stories we would then illustrate our own picture books.

The children were in charge of the picture book process. Adults were helping them out by writing the text or illustrating the book with the child. The story was divided in three double spreads.

Here are the wonderfully inventive books the children made with their parents. I was given the permission to publish the books here. The stories were fun to read aloud at the end of the course and the children were very impressed (as were the adults, especially me!) by everybody's creations.

"The Little Cat" by Hertta (8 years)

The back cover text: "The little black cat finds a friend and and a home where she is loved. During the night the northern lights turn her fur into rainbow colours."

"Heavy Rocks" by Alvari (5 years) and his mother Virva

A story about how Hevisaurus (a very popular children's music band) got started. The humorous tale involves two boys, a pig, a rabbit and a "band mobile phone", a farm and a rock concert.

"The Lost Rabbits" by Saga (6 years) and her mother Sari

The book tells a story of three rabbits that get lost in the grass, but eventually find their way home to their mother. Happy ending involves eating delicious porridge and gingerbread biscuits.

A Christmas Story by Tuukka (5 years) and his mother Tarja

A happy story about the little boy Tuukka and his family. The illustrations had lots of details about electricity, switchboards and ita had also a Christmas Tree and Santa Claus.

Painting summer!

It's gloomingly dark time of the year, but at least it's bright and colourful in the studio! I'm working on the historical characters for next summer's Suomenlinna children's adventure tour. This time the story will be about King Gustav III of Sweden and his missing crown. Lots of research for the costumes again, which I enjoy.

The fourth book in Elsa and Lauri series is "work in progress" on my desk too. Here is the cover design. So not too many holidays for me this Christmas, but plenty of good chocolate! And books!

Multitasking before holidays

My friend and author of Elsa picture books Kerttu Ruuska created a children's book blog and I made the illustration above for her home page. It's her flying on a story rug, as the blog is called "Lentävä tarinamatto" in Finnish, Flying Story Rug as my homemade translation.

My greeting cards arrived from the printer yesterday! Really nice quality, 300 g Munken Lynx paper and a small edition with digital printing. And a very good local printer as well, one I have used many times. Though we have a postal strike that can last for ages. Hopefully not...

Just to finish this post with a something new, here is a teeny tiny glimpse of something on my desk at the moment!

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!

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.