Merry Christmas 2015!

I made a cold and snowy postcard this year. I wanted to share it with you and wish you a Merry Christmas. This has been a busy year and it just keep getting better. Next year I'm going to add 3D illustrations to my portfolio and I'm looking forward to share it with you. 

Winter is Coming 2015

24x22cm, Watercolor, Acrylic

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 ;-)

Happy New Year!

As a last entry for this year, I want to wish you all a happy new year. Here at home we've had a white christmas and I'm certain a few snowballs were thrown. I've learned a lot this year, and hopefully it will show in future works. It is my intent to show you more sketches and work in progress in 2015.

Snowfight

15x40 cm, Watercolor, Guache, Digital 

Autumn Falls

November already. It is days like these I rather sit at home. When I made this illustration I remembered what it was to walk to school on a grey and rainy day. If the wind comes in it can be really difficult to hold that umbrella... And when at home I would be watching the water run down the windows and dream of sunnier days, or long for the snow to begin to fall, because I enjoy that too!

Autumn Falls

15x40 cm, Watercolor, Digital 

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 

Old Tower

Got a little late on this months post. I'm working on a bunch of projects at the moment and keep forgetting how fast time fly when you're having fun. Here is the illustration for the calendar month of july, hope you enjoy!

Old Tower

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!

   

Timemaker

So it's may already, and here is illustration 5/12. The Timemaker. I had such fun making this piece, learning a lot about creating values, depth and overlapping as it was progressing. Out of the 12, this was among the first to be finished, but it was also the one taking the longest time to paint.

Timemaker

15x40 cm, Watercolor, Gouache, Digital

The Meeting

The spring has started and those clever chickens are plotting something again... 

The (four o'clock) Meeting

15x40 cm, Watercolor, Gouache, Digital

Third Dawn

We have entered the third month of this year and it's time for another painting! I have always enjoyed foxes and the folklore around them. At times they can depict intelligence, cleverness, guardianship, faithfulness, love and friendship. 

Third Dawn

15x40 cm, Watercolor, Gouache, Digital

Have A Happy One!

A painting for today. Have a happy Valentine's Day everyone.

Have A Happy One

21x30 cm, Watercolor, Gouache, Digital

Joy

Happy new month to all of you. Here is the second illustration for the year. In Sweden we usually have a cold season in february that opens up for skiing and other winter activities. How joyful it can be when you find warmth in the cold...

Joy

15x40 cm, Watercolor, Acryl Gouache, Digital

Happy beginnings

As the project of 2013 was finished I decided to release all finished pieces one by one throughout 2014.  I hope you will enjoy them. As I wish you happy beginnings of the new year, here is the first illustration!

A clear winter's January

15x40 cm, Watercolor, Acryl Gouache, Digital

Rat Rider

I'm getting back to what I love the most. Folklore and little people. I made this for a self promotional spread in Illustratörcentrum's 2014 catalogue (yet to be printed) and will also be printed as postcards later this year. The only regret is the poor quality of the scan. In my experience a photo reproduction is a better choice than that of a scan of watercolor/gouache and I try to do that as often as I can.

This depicts a wight on a rat and I'm using it as a study for a bigger painting still in progress. Looking forward to show it to you.

Rat Rider

Watercolor, Acryl Gouache

Merry Christmas

Joyful tides. It's been a great year and I am looking forward to see what the next one brings. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Tomten och Rödhaken (The Tomte and European Robin), 

10x15 cm, Watercolor and Acryla Gouache

Lionel the Lion

In july last year I wrote about my first children's book commission by Mind Vitamins about Leif the Lion. Now, as I am happy to see it have finally been published for iPad (in three languages!), I thought I'd show you some of the final artwork done for the book.

Lionel in the Park with ol' Grandma. 

Lionel together with his friend Bee.

The pictures in the book were drawn with watercolour pencils on 350gms cotton paper. It was a fun project to work on and I learned a lot about planning your images for interactivity. It also led to another commission (with a very different theme) I will be writing more about later this year.

If you are interested in the book, you can get it Here. 

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.

Fraggle Rock Boober

Today Jim Henson would have been 75 years old. I grew up with the creations of The Muppets and Fraggle Rock and they bring out a lot of memories even today. Boober was the character I remember clearest from Fraggle Rock. He was the coolest of them all. To me, Henson represents creativity and innovation. I am happy that his legacy carries on to inspire new generations, and this image, though small, is my tribute. May his legacy never die.

Boober Fraggle. Watercolour and Gouache.

Portrait of a Train Driver

Working on a rather fun children's game (that I cannot for obvious reasons reveal too much about at the moment), I got to do some character portraits. This of an old Train Driver that I became rather fond of...

I hope we'll be finished with the project soon enough to show you a small movieclip of it.

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.