A Busy Year

This year has been busy. Every time I thought about updating the blog something else came up. Well, now I am happy to be posting again.

Map of Micklabo

70x50 cm, Acrylics

This year I've been working on a game version of the educational book "Monstertrubbel" (monster trouble) by Askunge. It was a direct followup on my previous work from 2012. Now that the game has been released on the digital platform Digimundus (currently only in swedish), I can finally show you some of the content!

The map was a really important part of the project. Not only was it supposed to bring the imaginary world of Micklabo alive, but it was also to be used for setting the ambience, style and color scheme of the rest of the backgrounds, narrative stills and details of the game. 

All backgrounds were painted 70x50 cm, Acrylics

It was great fun to revisit some of my old work and put a fresher look on it. In the next post I'll show you some of the monsters living in the world of Micklabo. 

If you can't wait till next post, you can order the awesome catalogue "Swedish Illustrators & Graphic Designers 2016" from Illustratörcentrum (Sweden's largest agency for visual communication) and open page 72-73 where you will find me and some of the characters I've been working on ;-)

Pumpkin Patch

A bit late with posting this month, nevertheless today it is getting done! This illustration technically differs from the others in several ways. First, the background is minimalistic, which is not really something I typically do. I really enjoy details, but here I wanted a much more clear silhouette of what was going on. Also, I painted much of the different colors and and textures on separate papers and later put it together in photoshop, so it was a bit of an experiment because I really didn't want it to look digitally painted. In the end it was much like my initial sketches and ideas and I was happy with the result.

Pumpkin Patch

15x40 cm, Watercolor, Digital 

A Feast of Mushrooms

It's September already. The time of a rainy autumn is here and the nature around is giving us a season of... mice and mushrooms... which is just what I've picked as a subject for this month's illustration.

A Feast of Mushrooms

15x40 cm, Watercolor, Gouache, Digital 

  

High Above The Rowan

August. With only four months left of the year, I painted this Mountain Ash tree, (Sorbus Aucuparia, or "Rönn" in swedish), as a typical sign of the summer getting closer to its end.

Askunge is writing about the calendar on their blog (in swedish) this month.

High Above the Rowan

15x40 cm, Watercolor, Gouache, Digital

Nearly Forgotten

June is one of my favorite months of the year. It's the start of the summer and many of my best childhood memories belong to this season of the year. Exploring deep forests, finding lakes to swim in or try ones luck at fishing. Climbing trees and rocks, running and playing in mossy forests...

At this time of year the forests in Sweden have a special kind of light I've always been fond of. Warm, golden and mystic. John Bauer is one of my all time favorite illustrators to capture the essence of this almost magical feeling, and much of my work is inspired from it. This was one of the first drafted illustrations I made last year. I had wanted to work on an illustration like this for a long time when I made it.

Nearly Forgotten

15x40 cm, Watercolor, Gouache, Digital

As in all the paintings I've shown and will show you this year, they follow a mathematical theme of numbers connected with the months portrayed. The ideas were worked up together with Mirvi Unge Thorsén, and all 12 illustrations I will show this year has been published in the form of a calendar for learning the months by the swedish publishing company Askunge. I am excited to see them being used in schools and I hope many children will benefit from it and have a great time finding the details in them that make each month so specific!

   

Story of a Tomte (final)

I had some time to finish the details on this, not really anything new - just finalized. I have just started on the second piece in the series, hopefully I'll have something more to show you soon.

Leif the Lion

I was happy when I was commissioned to illustrate my first Children's Book, written by Anna Engquist about "Lejonet Lejf" (I am guessing the translation would be "Leif the Lion" in English). It will be published for the digital market this fall by the Swedish company Mind Vitamins. I was allowed to show some of the work here and write about it.

 

The requirements of the image were "City Park" and drawn with "Colored pencils". There are many colorful and old quarters in the cities here, so I picked out a few buildings for inspiration and started to sketch up the neighbourhood around the park in the story. The fun part was the challenge of using colored pencils again, I have not done that since the early school days (now it's mostly watercolors and digital images). I hope to show you more of the work done when it has been published.

Trolls Final

I am happy to bring you the final piece so soon. 

Details... I was painting the fine lines with a W&N series 4 size 0 brush, it has a really fine tip allowing me to go into great detail even if the paper size is not very large. I was working on a standard A4 size (about 8" x 11" I think) 240g acid free cotton paper.

 

As I have mentioned previously, this image was based on some writings and drawings I did years ago, I wanted to post the original image here as it gives me a good laugh today:

 

Mystical Forest of the North

I have always loved Fairy Tales, and Northern Folklore. I grew up with tales illustrated by John Bauer, and his art have always fascinated me. I am currently working on a portfolio based on the environments around me; Swedish Pine Forests and all the lore that comes with it. 

I did these as I was practising watercolor techniques. It was hard to squeeze in any real detail as the paper size was no larger than 5"x7" (about 12.5x18 cm). Color enhancements was made in Photoshop.

Above: Gnomes have always played a big part in the fairy-tales I've been reading. Below: thumbs from my sketchbook of what's to come.

The Trees of My Days

I have always been fascinated by trees. Each one is just perfect in its own way, and if I wander the fields somewhere and see a lonely old Oak, I can't but stop and feel like home... 

The background I made for this blog was put together by three paintings I had made where I was trying to reflect this, as shown below:

 

This was "The First Tree". Believe it or not, but I was sketching on this over a period of about six years+. It was the first page in my artbook of thick A3 watercolor pages, and I refused to start on the next page until it was finished. I wanted every detail to be there, every leaf (the very reason it took such time!). But in the end I felt it was not necessary to do so, and when I started to feel finished with the pencil work I was afraid to ruin it by coloring, because I had not been working that much with watercolor during that time. However, I took the courage to color it in 2010, and there it goes, "The First Tree" on the hill...

 

"The Field" was painted as an addition to "The First Tree" especially for the blog, and as soon it was done I continued with the third image in the series:

 

"The Second Tree" (original name, I know!). It took about half a day to get the second and third image done for the photoshop work to create the background. Now I'm not sure if I even want it as a background on the blog, but i will leave it be, for now :-)