Illustration Friday - Tool

A little bit of practising with shapes and textures.

Robot characters for kids' event

I recently had an extremely fun and inspirational project. I designed 4 robot illustrations for an event in which kids and their teachers exchanged their experiences they had achieved by using Lego-robots in their schools.

I first had a workshop with children to get ideas for robots. Kids designed and drew their own robot characters and based on those drawings I came up with concepts for the robots. Who would have expected an ice cream robot being one of them? The other 3 concepts were actually pretty practical... wait, did I just sort of claimed that ice cream robot wouldn't be practical..? Ask kids, they know better. I also could utilize some juicy details from kids' drawings.

So here are images in which I have combined either a sketch or a vector path image with the finished one.

The window cleaning robot.

The hedge cutter robot.

The dog walker robot.

The ice cream robot.

Illustration Friday - Unicorn

A horn, but no wings... which one would be more useful for a mythology horse?

Illustration Friday - Punch

A little bit of boxing for Illustration Friday.

Illustration Friday - Animal

After a very long while, a doodle for Illustration Friday. Playing around with Procreate app is so much fun.

Inktober 2015

Last year I noticed that folks were spending the gloomy and rainy October by drawing impressive set of inked pieces in the name of "Inktober", one every day of the month. This year I wanted to join the fun also myself and I did the first piece without even dreaming to do the full set of 31 days. Little by little... I found time to do more and more.

Here's some picks from the beginning of my set.

Being sometimes very badly behind THE so called schedule made me desperately draw faster than I would have otherwise done, and that, I found out, is something that I should do even more often. So far the Inktober has been a great training camp that has taught me some subtle nuances of expressive line work. Zappy line, I think, is not just a result of skill but also courage.

Making weird combinations of animal faces and fashion kind of poses has also been a great deal of fun.

It's probably against the rules of Inktober, but I couldn't help myself finishing pieces with a touch of coloured pencil.

Peace!

Clayface & Batman

Another character for Sketch Dailies.

Creepy Ronald McDonald

After a while I did a daily challenge, this time for Daily Doodle. Here's a character that must be one of the most iconic characters in the universe. Maybe it's just me, but I find Ronald McDonald nothing but creepy, and yet it's used to allure kids. I think Ronald would easily do a main role in just about any horror movie.

Pan - the god of the wild

As playing pipes all day long every day must be a tough job even for a god of the wild, it should be okey to have a smoke every now and then.

Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road

I haven't seen the Mad Max: Fury Road yet, but the Furiosa character would be a nice reason to watch the movie.

Quetzalcoatl - a mesoamerican deity

Another doodle done for Sketch Dailies a little while back. It's a feathered snake, but now that I look at it, it's more like a dragon.

Visual attempts to capture the essence of SISU

In Finland we have this thing called SISU. I don't know if there's an official definition for the word, but it's some kind of never-giving-up attitude. It's considered to be something so important that it's a part of so called finnish holy trinity: SISU - Sauna - Sibelius.

Some time ago I noticed that some are trying to rethink the concept of SISU, update it for this century. I found it challenging and inspiring to try to capture the essence of SISU just by drawing.

So, here they are, my three SISU-doodles.

... I just noticed that by seeing these images in order, one may calculate how much each doodle eats a pencil. Luckily those pencils doesn't cost a fortune.

Zorro suffering from dyslexia

Spelling isn't always that easy. A vector piece for Daily Doodle.

Jenny Sparks

Just another superhero that I haven't heard of until it was in Sketch Dailies. I would guess that she's british.

Another live drawing session - Multicultural school -seminar

Not so long ago I did my first live drawing session, and just a couple of weeks ago I did yet another. This time it was slighty different case - I was drawing in a seminar - Multicultural school.

There were few speakers, a panel discussion and approximately 100 persons in audience. I was given a place on the side, and one of the three screens was reserved for my drawings. There was a document camera where I placed a drawing when I got it finished.

Although the day was slightly stressful, thanks to the interesting topics and speeches, it was also very interesting one and gave a lot to think about.

Inevitably there's an encounter of different cultures... in which should a culture be hided or put in safe..?

It's awkward to hear examples of prejudices about other cultures. They do exist, both ways, and I'm not sure whether they can ever be totally avoided.

Normality, if there is such thing, there also has to be someone to define it.

What if the adults are making problems out of nothing, maybe everything is going just fine?

In a worst case scenario the authorities has nothing but a strong wish, while in the end the responsibility of integration is left to a seven year old.

Oh, and happy New Year 2015 to everybody!

My first live drawing session

I've been drawing more than twenty years, but last week I drew the first time in a live session. It was a brainstorming-kind-of-workshop to generate new ideas and point of views for the future pedagogy. I sat randomly in different groups and listened the discussion trying to visualize either groups' thoughts as they were pointed out... or even better, produce new interpretations and points of view or even question their thoughts. In other words, with my drawings I tried to feed groups' thinking even further - give them nice gentle kicks in an illustrated form.

I was pretty nervous before the new experience and I even gave myself a permission to do some sketching, but in the end I drew everything without sketching. What helped me to get into nice work flow, was that I managed to lower the bar of my self critique.

Of course, when I look those drawings now, I get tempted to do some redrawing here and there, but I try to remember the different function they served.

I got a feeling that people in the workshop liked what I did, but what's more difficult to say is how much added value my work managed to produce. Actually I think it's not just what I do and draw, but also how the participants of the workshop can utilize visual stimulus in their thinking.

So, can visualization offer more than just nice entertaining for workshops, seminars or conferences? Hard to say for sure, but personally I believe in visualization. I say YES!

Werewolf - Happy Halloween

Here's some bestial terror and horror for Halloween, a werewolf I did for Sketch Dailies some days ago.

Ahti - the god of water in Finnish mythology

I tried out an exercise that I gave to my students... and I believe I learned a great deal. I hope the exercise was also useful for my students.

Raven Mocker - Evil being of Cherokee mythology

Just another interesting character for Sketch Dailies. Mythologies seem to be an endless source for wicked creatures. I'd gladly skip meeting Raven Mocker face to face.

I made this with my favourite toys - Wacom Intuos Stylus and Procreat app. Here's a couple of wip screen shots.

Venom - Supervillain

Here's yet another character I made for Sketch Dailies. Doing these daily challenges is not only fun, but it's also a pleasant excuse to keep drawing more than I would otherwise do.

Also I frequently run into characters that I haven't heard of before, like this one - Venom. As far as I got it right, it's somehow related to the Spiderman. I may have seen it before, but I had no idea of its' name. Anyway, now I'm one superhero wiser... only, it's not a good guy, but it's actually mentioned to be a supervillain... So now I also know that there's such a category as "super" for villains also.

I drew this with my favourite combination - iPad Air + Wacom Intuos Stylus + Procreate app. Here's a couple of wip screen shots.