It doesn't show very clearly in the picture, but if you look at the colored pencil sketch made on watercolor paper, you might notice that the flowers on the water were originally planned to be pink. If you read Finnish, you'll see that I've even written it on the very first sketch. However, this plan was quickly trashed as I noticed the g...

This year I wanted to make sure I'd not have my calendar finished at the last minute like it's been the past two years. So, I have already started working on the illustrations. The theme I have for 2019 is about animal close-ups and flowers. I also want to use a restricted color palette to give the illustrations their own unique feeling. I'm really...

It's been about two years since I created my so far most popular painting, "Firefoxes". In this blog post I want to bring up the reasons I believe why it is so popular among people of all ages. The popularity of these happy foxes is based on the fact that it is the most bought design on all the products that I have. It does not matter which fo...

To make life easier for all of us, I decided to put all the work-in-progress pictures of the calendar illustrations into the same blog post. These illustrations were a lot of fun for me to paint, especially for the reason that they were very simple (considering my usual creations). Finishing one of these illustrations took me approximately 4-7...

Sure, my plan was to make this commission a cute one. That's what the client wanted after all. But somehow, the way this little fellow turned out has even more of cuteness than I intended. Needless to say, I'm very happy with this painting of mine and I hope the client is going to like it as much as I do. Then, of course, the work-in-progress pictu...

One of the most pleasant commissions I've ever received! Honestly, I've enjoyed every single commission I've had a chance to create so far, but the subject of this particular painting was something that I can imagine myself painting just for the fun of it. The instructions I got from the client for this painting were: wolf, forest, full moon, blue ...

I'm not even sure why I'm so excited about it. Must be because moms are amazing. Sebastian's story will definitely not be the last story I create where the role (and the importance) of a mother is on the spotlight.Now I'm officially too tempted to talk about the story plot and need to change the subject. Let's talk about the change that is happenin...

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." by ― Maya Angelou Here you can find work-in progress pictures of a commission I finished a few weeks ago. My job was to design a character according to the client's wishes. In the pictures below you find the fi...

 This commission was finished in one single day. I did work on it all day long but it was still nice to get it done so swiftly (I'm used to spending several days on my paintings). I guess I was overly excited to paint the unicorn since I forgot to take the picture of the sketch before starting the coloring. Click on the picture on the lef...

On this blog post there are pictures from the process of the creation of a commissioned watercolor portrait that I just finished. When it comes to portraits, I enjoy the challenge of making the artwork look like the original photo, so that the person is easily recognized. With this particular painting it was fun to make the surroundings more fantas...

Before Christmas I received a commission of an A1 sized watercolor painting. The client wanted to have a front view of the head of a stag and a transformation effect I often use on my paintings, meaning that the living creatures smoothly transform into water, plants or other elements. That was basically all the instructions I got and the rest was u...