New site in the works

Hey this has been forever I know. I'm working on a new portfolio site as well as a new blog. I hope it will be up and running soon, I was gonna wait and post some new stuff there but it seems it might still be a few weeks away so I'll post some stuff here anyway before switching to the new blog.

Anyway stay tunned :)

Musikforum

Just finished this illustration the other week. It's an illustration for a folder about music rehearsal spaces and courses in music and so on. It folds in 2 places and stretches across the front and back of the folder so the half on the right is the outer 3 pages of the folder and the left half, are printed on the inside 3 pages, and then on top of that is a text layer with all the information.

Below are my original ink drawings before coloring, some of them didn't fit into the final composition.






I made a few different color suggestions so here are a few more, I think we ended up settling on the red one at the bottom. (click for bigger versions)

Digital clean up

Finished the inking last night and just now finished the clean up. Above is a comparison of the two. More to come.

TVPaint my new best friend

Just started using a to me new animation software called; TVpaint 9.5. So far it seems like a great program. I'm looking forward to doing more work in this program, just need to learn all the shortcut keys from scratch, and all the new functions. Anyway here's a short test animation I did of one of my cameleons :) Have a great weekend!

Back in business

Hey all. I'm finally back to work and will do my best to kick start this blog back into life again, it's been more or less dead for far to long now, I know. I've been away for about 7 months taking care of my kid, but now I'm back at work again. I will start posting some work from last year that I haven't gotten around to posting yet, I'm also working on some new cool things both animations and illustrations.

Teaser of some new cameleon illustration work. I'm working on getting some prints out there as well. 2011 will hold some nice things, stay tuned.

Kitchen collaboration pt.2

Robert just updated his blog with some new photos of our collaboration, So I thought I would post them here too. Check out his post here for more information.








Photos by Robert Lindström

Distraction

Sometimes it can be a bit hard to draw when you have a overly social cat :)

Inking

Started the inking process of a new cameleon illustration. Lots and lots of cameleons :)

Sketching

I started working on the first drawing of a new series of illustrations today. I've been thinking about this for some time now and I'm very excited to see what it will end up looking like when it's done. And I have plans for a bunch more in the same series when this one is done.
Anyone who wants to take a guess on what this fist sketch is suppose to resemble? :)

My cat likes to be the center of attention, it's kind of hard to work when he ends up sitting on my drawings or falling asleep on top of them :P

Also I just read about this new documentary "Waking sleeping beauty", sounds like a great film I can't wait to see it. It's about the Disney animation studio between the years 1984 and 1994.

More info about the film can be found over at firstshowing

Cameleon portrait process pt.1

First post of the new year!
I'm working on a new illustration of a pile of cameleons coming together and forming a face. Above is a film from when I was drawing the linework. Music by DZR:P, check them out.

Since I could not fit the entire drawing in my scanner I had to scan it in parts and reassemble them on the computer afterwards.

Cleaning up the linework, there's always alot of dust and imperfections when you close enough to it.

So I cleaned it up digitally to get more clear lines.



Trying out a few different coloring options, not finished with that part yet stay tuned for the finished product.

The finished linework. I'm working on the coloring now. My aim is making this into a limited silkscreen poster print when it's done.

And possibly do a few more illustrations in the same series to go with it.
If anyone know of any good silkscreen artprint studios that will ship to Sweden, please let me know.

Cartoon hands

Finished a new Picnic with panic print this week, will be sent to the printers soon, I'm just
going to work out what color tshirt I'm gonna use, I'm also thinking about sweatshirts :)

Below are a few pictures from the work process.
Maybe I should make this type treatment into a font to, might be cool.
But I will leave that thought for another day.

Picnic with panic

Working on new Picnic with panic shirt designs, a sneak preview above of the work in progress.
Maybe I should make a font out of this when I'm done, might be fun.

Miss Julie - Opera illustration

2 Months ago I made this illustration for Norrlands Operan, the opera house in Umeå. It's the poster for
a new opera version of August Strindberg's Miss Julie that they are setting up this fall.
You can read more about the event at their homepage here.

Above is the final version of the illustration.

This is the next to last version which is my favourite, it's a bit darker and less saturated.

I thought I would write a few words about the process and share some images.
The brief was to create a illustration that would work as a poster for the opera. This would be a new interpretation of
August Strindbergs classic Miss Julie, that would now be set in the 1930s colonial Africa on a rubber platage in the jungle.
They where looking for a creppy feeling with big insects and thick jungel that in a way kept miss Julie from leaving.
I started going throu old photographs of hairstyles and clothes from the 30s along with pictures of jungle, plants,
rubber trees and alot of insects to find the right style and inspiration.

Here's my first rough sketch, I think I had some thumbnail sketches in a sketchbook to but can't seem to find them right now.

I then continued on to a pencil sketch of Julie leaving the background for now.

After that I started inking. I found this really nice box of nibs for crow quills on a auction site, great find.
So this is what I use for the inking along with Black indian ink.



Inking process.

Every once in awhile Lego comes along looking for attation :)

This happends from time to time it's verry annoying but I guess I'm not that used to inking with a quill yet.
If you can't see what I mean it's the black spot that is suppose to be a white pearl in a neackless.

Almost done with the inking.



Details...details...details it's hard to stop when you work on a highly detailed drawing you can always add more and more.
The trick is know when it's enough.

So this is the final inked drawing, now time for some clean up work on the computer and coloring.

I scanned the drawing in 2 sections, because it was drawn on a A3 sized paper and I don't have that big a scanner.
So 2 sections then pieced it together in photoshop and cleaned up the lines.

Laying out some "flats".

And setting up some different layer masks.

So now we are moving on to the coloring.





Adding details to Julie's face, some eyelashes and freckles.

Trying out an idea I had from the beginning with black liquid rubber running down Julie's face and arms.
But I felt it would have been a to dark and scary look for this project so I decided to leave that out.

Adding some more highlight to Julie's skin and some other parts of the illustration like the birds and hair.
The character collects birds in the opera so that's why the are incorporated and the hair starts to form bird,
giving it a more surrealistic feeling and suggesting that her situation is also a struggle for her in her mind.

Adding some final details to the veins entangling Julie's arms.

And some final touches on Julie's face, some extra highlights here and there and so on.

Scroll to the top to see the final version again.
This was a very fun project and I've been looking forward to doing a project in this style for a long time.
So I finally got a great subject to try it out, and the end result is really nice I think.
Illustrating 1930s fashion and hairstyles, and thick wild jungle is really fun so I will probably return
to that in one way or another in future illustrations.
Anyway I really like the way this turned out, I hope you do to :)