Adobe Illustrator

I finally got myself Adobe Illustrator, and I'm very pleased. The only illustrating I'll be doing for a while is for my own thesis: graphs, tables, maps and other more technical illustrations, and Illustrator is perfect for this. So today I made a template for a map over Finland where I will eventually place some numbers on grant applicants and artists, where they come from etc. I thought this would give a better understanding of the actual physical distances between people, where the cultural "centers" are etc.

I'm very happy with the result, the one above was made from my own light board drawing from an old atlas (I also did one by simply scanning an image of a map), and then tracing with the pencil tool on a second layer. Delete the first layer and voilà! Very simple, but it tok me all day to make two! A lot of mouse clicking. There might be an easier way, but I couldn't get my hands on a fresher tutorial, I suspect there's an easier tracing tool... Oh, and I added some drop shadow too. Next I'm turning to the graphs, just have to get the numbers worked out first...

Illustration Friday: hide

Hiding behind silence...

Childrens' books and work panic

These last two months have not been easy. I'm constantly on the look out for work, and it's starting to wear me out. Last week I had to start looking at job ads for anything that I could qualify for. I've given myself a two week limit from tomorrow: if I don't manage to get a bigger illustration job during that time, I'll have to start applying for secretary/ware house/cleaner/sales person-jobs. I don't particularly enjoy sales, I do those jobs quite well, but I do not enjoy them... I don't feel like thinking too much about it.

I've made some children's book stuff during the week, and tried to contact a couple of publishers to begin with. I'll continue with that on monday.

Above is the drawing (Pisces) that mostly resemble what I was trying to achieve, a sort of light, mythological and decorative style. This is what I loved to do when I was younger... but now I guess I have the technical capability, but now I overthink the ideas instead...

A mother reading to her son. I bit conventional...


A painting based on a fantasy of mine, about waking up in a dark green forest. It's oil on hardbard (50x60 cm), and the reproduction is not so good, as I photographed it in bad lighting and tried to improve it in Photoshop. I'll have to take a new photo in daylight. But I thought the style would be very suitable for fairy tale-illustrations...

Well, I got some nice news a couple of weeks ago: I'm accepted as a member in the Finnish illustrators' organization... makes you feel slighty more professional ;-) Now all I need is to find some work (that actually pays off, I have lots of work were publicity is my only reward)...

Producing, selling

I think I shall post on this blog twice a month, as I write much more on my mjau-blog right now.

Yesterday I sent out emails to women's magazines. I will be calling them tomorrow. Prospects might not be so good though as it seems the Finnish magazines do not use illustration so much. I think there is definitely space for fashion illustration here, but no one has realized it. So it's up to me to give them images they can't refuse... create a need for my particular manner. But that's easier said than done.

I also researched some advertisement companies yesterday, and after I've reorganized my "analogue" portfolio I shall try to contact some of them... I have to check out what they do first and come up ideas about what I could do...

Yesterday I also approached a small boutique that sells postcards, ordered directly from artists. They said flowers sell best, and in the summer, sea landscapes. So I'll start making some suggestions this week, and hopefully I'll have something to show the owner of the shop soon. If they like it, it's off to the printers...


I have to say I'm quite proud of my work this week. But still... no secured jobs... I'll have to go on producing, and right now (yesterday evening and this morning) I'm having a little blockage in the creative vein. The difficulty of having a child to take care of is that you can't just go into creative frenzies when the mood hits you. You have to produce something during those moment you have time (when he's in day-care), and sometimes the creative flow just does not appear and everything you desperately try to do turns out like crap. So yesterday I was looking for my flower photos I took a few years ago to use as source material, but they are totally lost after our move last year... annoying. And I can't go outside to find other plants to draw, because everything is covered with snow! Maybe I'll buy some flowers today then...

On Monday I finished the new verion of my website. And designing the background patterns left me a bit inspired to make more patterns (my own, now I used Japanese patterns as inspiration). But what do you do with patterns? Print it on wallpaper, cloth... hm...

Aagh to many ideas, too little output... this is what has plagued me he last two weeks... SoonI'm going to the gym, maybe I can exercise away that block in my brain.

A panicky first two weeks

The past two weeks have been a roller-coaster and felt like two minutes. Last week my son was home two extra days and in the weekend I started panicking. No work yet! Very disillusioning. But today I've been making calls, and I got one good response, possibly a lot of work! Joy.
Well, during my time of purgatory I found the open source webeditor NVU and started working on a proper website. This image on the left will be the title for the illustration page. And I found an equally pretty graphic in Pepin Press's "Graphic Ornaments 1900", so much great stuff to use! But I am such a novice on webdesigning, I'd like to learn CSS, but I'm not sure how to combine all the methods in creating a site. I also have to get more aquinted with ImageReady. Well, today I've sent away a number of applications, and one letter to a publishing company... I'm really hoping on that one... Amazing to get to illustrate a children's book... I'm also planning one myself, but my children's book writing skills are perhaps not the best.

The joy of independent learning

Yesterday was a productive day: I installed PS, scanned four old paintings (from 1999 and 2000) and I learned basic html-coding (I suspect I already knew some of it) thanks to the excellent page webdesignskolan. So now I have a rudimentary webpage on jennywiik.com (oh I also got my domain name and web hotel yesterday). So all in all I got quite a lot done even though I was still "officially" on my holiday. Next I'll start working on CSS and possibly PS and ImageReady...
Above is a small detail from the background to one of the paintings I scanned: I'll probably use parts of it for the up and coming new and improved webpage design. I love the colours on this one...
If anyone's reading this and wonders why I write in English it's because writing in Swedish, Finnish AND English would be a bit much, and possibly very messy. Besides it's good practice for me...

Christmas-cover and a new year

A detail from this years Christmas-cover for Abl. The setting is Santa's workshop but I decided to make it a modern workplace instead, with computers, coffee-machines, divider screens and post-its. But of course they still have to have a moose head on the wall. In this I also tried drawing the contours with a red pencil. I thought it looked a little softer than black ink... Oh and now I have PS again and can finally make some decent editing.

Now it's time to start making a living with this...

Happy New Year!