The last picture of 2013

Not too sure what the guy on the left is, but the one on the right is a fox.

Happy New Year!

2014 will be great.

:)

Manga Studio Fun part 1 (cattyness!)

Recently I bought Manga Studio under the influence of, well, some stuff I read online and that it was on sale. But truth to be told the one I got was a pretty good value anyway. And on contrary to what name suggests, you don't have to draw exclusively manga on it... The main selling point for me was the fact that it is much better for creating linework than Photoshop. And to be honest, given the low price point (I paid a total of about £50, of which £20 was the shipping from USA) I though: ah, why not treat myself? :P

I haven't really had much time to play with it until now. Although I am still jsut starting out to try all the options, so far I am pretty happy :)

Here is some catty lifedrawing of Ollie the PuddyFat.

Christmas Dogs :)

Available *here*! :)

Christmas Dogs arrived

So they are here! but unfortunately I can't list them for sale just yet because some proper BAH HUMBUG! time took place today!

When I finally got ready for taking pictures I went to look for the little camera which I always use. No luck. After half an hour wasted I gave up and got to the Big Camera - conveniently out of charge! I couldn't use my old camera, which I know exactly where it is, because my SD card was in the little camera. Out of desperation I got the iPad - also flat batteried. Now the Big Camera is charged it's absolutely pitch black out there so no hope for any half-good pictures.

So I completely FAILED! Instead of a delightful announcing post here about the new cards available have one that says they are ALMOST available. They will be up online tomorrow evening, PROMISE!

Cat Cards are doing well as usual though :)

Home. 2

This is part of a panorama of what currently is my home. The city is placed on seven hills, here you can see two of them. When I was first picking as to where to go for my gap year it was between here and Glasgow, and for a completely unreasonable reason (which has the access to the sea) I picked this place. It has been a while since I moved here, I got completely sucked in and I think it would be hard to leave now (although not impossible :)).

Home. 1

Unlike my mom I have never really moved when I was growing up. I spend almost 20 years in the same city, in the same home. And then I finally moved! It was probably my first big, independent decision. One thing I never want to change is closeness to the sea. I might not live super close to it now, but it is there when I need it.

And the above is my favorite panorama of my first home :)

It's this time of the year when I miss it more.

Dogs!

At the moment I am working on a series of dog cards to compliment the cat cards. Here's (a little less than) what I have so far!

I was realy hoping to finish them up today, so I better get going! :[

North Lodge

This is a commissioned piece I did back in July. The original is A3 and it was a "portrait" of a house. Drawn from a selection of photos :) It was great fun to do it. I also have a lot of in progress pictures which I am trying to assemble into an animated GIF :P

wedding origami

So some weeks back I made a customized crane pin. It was to decorate the grooms boutonnière at an origami themed wedding. The idea sounds amazing! So the lady requested the colour and the size. You can see in picture number two a scale comparison to a regular crane ;) All my items are hand made, so these kinds of customization are always possible! Just drop me a message for details!

Two pictures of yesterday

Recently I ordered some screens for printing. They arrived this week and upon opening the parcel this is what my eyes saw:

(very cute, eh :))

And then yesterday I went for a wonder around the town (weather was lovely and warm) and it turns out it was warm enough for even crocodiles to come out. Yep! :)

I hope your weekend was as good as mine! :)

Mini Comic Fair at Edinburgh Book Festival

Edinburgh Book Festival (probably my favorite of all festival activities here in the burgh) was hosting lots of graphic novel related events. There was even a Mini Comic Fair which I went to last Saturday with Aimee. I LOVE comic books, I read probably the same amount of books as I read cartoons as a kid (both is a lot). Recently I have been going through this "blast from the past" fascination with all things sequential. As much as I love illustration and product design this is a nice change. And also reading it and not drawing is quite relaxing ;)

We went first to have a browse and then decide whether we wanted to go back and buy things. And yes, we did! I was armed with a £30 budget (and ended up overspending) and one of my favourite purchases was this:

(Presented to us by lovely young Daisy in the background).
The guy behind them was a great chat and offered to sign the books for us.

And he even drew pictures! How exciting. My name always gets misspelled, and so does Aimee's, so we both were being morons making a big deal of it. And despite all this fuss, he did mess it up on the second book...

To make up for it he made a mistake on Aimee's too. It was pretty funny ;)

The books themselves are essays on film related things (one of them is food in films). They are pretty good, but I will perhaps say more about them next time, when I read them all :)

And here's another shot of Daisy, the dog who'd like to eat all the other dogs.

Cat Wedding!

Last June and July were two months when I have had some very special queries. They were all to do with... weddings! I was very happy to partake in preparation for someone's Very Important Day. Every of those queries was a bit different. This is the first one I will post up. I was to create an illustration of Mr and Mrs Cat on their wedding day, later to be used on the wedding favors. It was VERY exciting to draw :)

I now can't wait to see the picture of what the finished favors looked like! And do I have to mention that if you ever wanted to order anything customized you just need to drop me an e-mail?

Character design and problems that follow

 Few days ago I was reading Rod Hart's post about naming characters. It was an interesting read (as most things that he writes are, so I do recommend going over and having a read) and it got me wondering about how I normally go about naming the characters.

I have never had the problem with accidentally naming two people the same name. I have done something else though, equally silly. After conceiving Malin and all of her back story, future story, current affairs and a dozen of supporting characters I have moved on to halfheartedly working on another story. The main character was also a girlie, similar age, going by the name Rose. It was an entirely different setting (Malin's world was urban fantasy, Rose was a more of an epic fantasy - I had to look these up, honest). The backstories were different. Everything about them was different, apart from one - the way they looked. If you removed all of the surrounds you ended up with two black haired chicks with a bob. I spent a lot of time trying to make them look different. Rose as the newer one was bound to be the one that got redesigned. And I played around with this a lot, but in the end in my head she had BLACK HAIR. And there was nothing I could do about this apart from set this aside and come back later (unfortunately, similar fate has later met Malin. Perhaps the time to dig them back up is approaching?)

And here is just the faces in black and white. I suppose, the removal of all surrounds takes place here.

At the moment I am just lost. Are they really that similar? I can't tell anymore.

Help! ;)

(For real. What do YOU think?)

Semestern 2

A prize goes to someone who guesses where *exactly* this is. Kinda hint in the title ;)

semestern

What more do you need than warm weather, lemurs and oversaturating pictures? NOTHING!

(look at that grass! it's almost toxic)

tigers

So before I got hideuosly busy in the month of June I was working on something that was supposed to be a nice new project for bags and possibly other things. They so far have not left the concept/sketch phase... But here they are, so you can have a wee look at what's to come. (On things I did in June I shall write when the right time comes ;) )

 sketch 1.

 sketch 2 (unfinished as it wasn't right anyway)

sketch 3 the rare hamster tiger

Work in progress

Some future photoetchings me thinks ;)
The top one I am not sure about yet though, I might try to colour it digitally and see what happens.

Photo Etching part two.

As I said before I was going to go back to do more photo etching and the second time round take more pictures. Although now I realise I could have still probably taken more pictures... I think this will be it for now!

First of all the plate needs to be filed and degreased. This is not as exciting so skipping that part :P Once it's ready you take it to the Dark Room, which is filled with yellow light.

Next you stick a layer of your photec - the funny blue film that looks incredibly green here - onto your plate.

Then it goes through the minipress as it has to stick down well!

Then you pop bubbles, make sure it's all good, run it through press again and cut off the excess.

Next you put positive on your plate and expose it. No pictures of exposure unit I'm afraid!

After that it goes in a special bath that develops photec and all the unexposed bits come off. A bit like when you are preparing screen for screenprinting! This is probably the reason why I love this process so much :)

You then proceed and show it to Laura who makes a funny face.

Then it's the Acid Time! I have lots of black surfaces so mine goes in for a few minutes and if it's ok I then proceed to aquatint it. And then it goes back into acid, and when it returns....

...The remaining photec and aquatint have to be removed, so it goes in yet another bath. That's the last one though! Then we're ready to print.

Inked up plate!

And the first proof!

By no means this is finished though. I want the Moon to be a bit lighter than the rest of the image, so I tried to brasso out the face of the moon - results above, you can see my face in the Moon's face! :) I will keep going at it though, hopefully in 2 weeks time you will see the proper finished print though! (prints need to sit in a drying area for like a week...)

This is it for now. So here, have a picture of Katt Monsen:

Bassetting

I had a bit of an uncreative few weeks. I was working my bum off and these few drawings were lying around, scanned but not touched for a while... I think I go through phases of how much I can get done, and now the busy phase is back on :)

When it comes to pets I am mainly a cat person. But I generally love all animals with few exceptions (pests). So yeah, I do like dogs too! I don't know if I could pick a favourite kind. Bassets are definitely a runner up though! I am planning on drawing some "character" dogs, similar to jumper cats. So I did a few preliminary sketches of bassets just to get a feel for them. The last one is surely my favourite! I will do more though and yes, you can expect them here.

Jonah

Today I had a pretty good day. Worked only few hours, weather was lovely, I met up with the Norwegian one for watching her eat food... But most importantly, I made a new friend. His name is Jonah. Currently he is helping me with the art stuff, so he gets distracted from missing the ocean.

Thanks Rachael! :D

three birds

Coming soon! :)