Mattias Ink

This week's illustrator is Mathias Ink. As someone who loves to draw little caricatures ("Littletures") I love to see other illustrator's little caricatures. Mattias inks lives with his wife and two children in Sigtuna outside of Stockholm, Sweden. Mattias has an Masters of fine arts in graphic design( at HDK , school of arts and crafts Gothenburg). He works with watercolors and ink, and his sketchbooks are mind-blowing! seriously they are amazing, it makes my sketchbooks cry (is ok my dear sketchbooks is ok) so definitely check out:

Portfolio:http://www.mattiasadolfsson.se

Blog: http://mattiasa.blogspot.com/

Flickr:http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattiasa/

Behance:http://www.behance.net/MattiasA

and a video:

Process: Le Petit Prince

So I finally got to work on one of the paintings for my postgraduate applications. I showed a while back a sneak  peek of the sketch, here is a bigger sneak peek of what I done so far:

I softly render it so it can guide when I watercolor tones.

I'm now experimenting with ink, let's see how that'll turn out versus my usual just pencil.

J'adore Le Petit Prince!

Salut from Geneva!

I'm finally starting to settle here in Geneva, finally got the hang of the public transportation, started my french classes, and added to my diet the constant consumerism of cheese, chocolate and wine :)
Today is such a beautiful day, at the moment I'm sitting here in the balcony of my cousin's cozy home and couldn't help but do my homework, a quick sketch and now getting back to blogging.



OH before I forget :


misscupcakes, Stephanie Ayres, Laura G.Young and Malka Michaela you will receive a postcard, so if you haven't emailed me your address and what you want illustrated, please do so I can send them right away.

Thanks God for Sunny Days. 

Close up of sketch, I love recycling music sheets :)

Where do you find inspirations for your work?

3 Sources: Life, stories and nature :)

Ask me anything

A Humming Note for You :)

I Love this blogpost by James Gurney where he kept coming across tiny paper cranes and how it brought a smile to him and hey it made me smile to read about it!. So inspired by it, I decided to continue such tradition, only with a little extra. Instead of cranes, I'm doing my favorite animal/bird "The Humming Bird." Each Humming bird will have a motivational message or positive though, hence the humming bird becomes a "Humming Note" and yes I plan to leave this in random places for people to find. Here are my first humming notes:

Now I want to give credit to the artist who came up with the hummingbird, there's no room for me to put in on the humming note, so I'm using my blog to do it. The artist is Andres Plazas and here is a video of how to make it.

Next time I will get origami paper so I don't have to dye my paper with watercolor and I plan to use a fine micro pen instead of my dip pen so my hand doesn't shake too much and causes the ink to drip.

I highly encourage you to learn how to fold your favorite animal into origami is so much fun and then leave it for someone to find :). As for me I'm excited to leave these humming Notes in random places.

Tony Diterlizzi

I really like Tony Diterlizzi Illustrations, it kind of reminds me of a combination of the style of  Norman Rockwell and Brian Froud. He works with various mediums I guess depend on the project he is working on, but it varies from inks, colored pencils, watercolors, and photoshop. 

I reaaaallly want to read The Search For Wondla, I love books that have girls overcoming obstacles because hey it empowers us to fight our battles, even better when is in a fantasy world with cool illustrated creatures. Sadly I'm going to have to wait before I buy it, I still have some books in my library I haven't read and I want to go through those first and for now I'm just writing books I want in my books-to-have list (which is growing immensely).

Visit Tony Diterlizzi website to see all his awesome illustration, books and more here: http://www.diterlizzi.com/

Links for Japan

You know the term "I'll believe it when I'll see it"?


I have to say the more I read and watch on the news about the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crisis in Japan I still find it hard to believe it happened, sadly it is happening.  It's in moments like this when we need the support of others and I love and admire how quickly we all try to reach and help people we don't know, people we have never met, a country we have never been and yet we help because we know they are humans like us. 


Stories about a little kindergarten girl fundraising with her art, bloggers coming together, a mentor and friend artist Daniel Lim aka Fawn Fruits donating 100% of his proceeds from his "Sweet Imperfections" show to relief efforts in Japan, my good friend Zakka Nouveau creating the project Stitch + Connect about the strength of connection through her stitching to fundraise for the non-profit of your choice, and artists creating prints and plush. All to help and so can you.


There's also the classic: The red cross: HERE.
HERE's a great site on non-profit organizations that are reliable and trustful.


Hope I didn't sound preachy, just wanted to share links or more options on how to help. If I did sound preachy, just ignore me.

Look! Look! Work in process

So I'm also working on my applications for a post graduate course on children's illustration, I started working on two new pieces for my portfolio. Here is a sneak peak:

Both are based on two of my favorite books. 

One has to do with a little prince and the other a boy and a tiger ;)

More Polaroids

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Sorry I didn't update on thursday and friday! my brother came to visit from LA so I spend most of the time showing him around. I took him to a park near where I live where the river is full of turtles (we both love nature). It was a nice opportunity to play around with my Fuji Mini Instax Camera, here you can see my polaroids:

Laura Logan

I love Laura Logan's Illustrations. 

There is something sweet, warm and cozy about them. Check out her suns! how happily he shines. She works with different medias from watercolor, gouache, color pencils and the computer.

Looking at her illustration makes me want to read them next to a warm fireplace, cuddled in a couch. 

See more of her wonderful work here: http://www.lauralogan.com

New Color wheel

So here is one more color wheel:

I used this PAGE from Handprint to guide me, again I didn't have all the colors suggested so I improvised with what I had available.

I came across another great idea to learn more about the colors I have: Watercolors multiplication table!

Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/watercolor-multiplication-table

Great idea no? but I won't do it yet. I'm a bit inspired and will be working on two pieces to add to my portfolio. I will of course share process :D!!

Have a good day everyone

Can Art Change the World?

Check out this inspired TED Talk video of French street artist JR  on how his art started a positive change:

You can be part of his project here: http://www.insideoutproject.net/

What is TED Talks: They are ideas worth spreading. The initials stand for  Technology, Entertainment and Design. Talks are inspiring, motivational, blow minding and life changing. It shows how much as human we can do. Check it out here: http://www.ted.com/

Have a great weekend everyone.

Mary Grandpre

A couple of days ago, someone asked what artist inspired me the most, I responded the following:

"This is a very very hard question, so many artists/illustrators inspires me. There is one way I can answer your question, the artist that made me realize that I wanted to illustrate for books was Mary Grandpre. Her beautiful cover illustrations were what attracted me to the harry potter books. They felt magical to my eyes."

So here is this week illustrator: Mary Grandpre:

Ah so magical!!!

I love how she describes her style, she calls it "Soft Geometry". It's a great way to describe it! there is indeed some softness to her illustrations along with  beautiful long strokes in her shapes. She works mostly with soft pastels. I love her color palettes and how she composes each illustration (you can see it very well on her Harry Potter cover illustrations.) 

Now here is a wonderful video of her drawing Harry: http://vimeo.com/7163263

Here is an interesting article on her: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1810485,00.html

Here is her website: http://marygrandpre.com/

PS: Of all her Harry book covers my favorite one is "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". What's yours?

What would your dream job look like?

Full time Children books Illustrator

Ask me anything

Simple Hue and Gouache+Watercolor Paint Wheel.

It's always good to go back to the basics to refresh the mind and your skills. So here with the help of the Handprint website, using this page I did my simple hue color wheel with a Gouache/watercolor tints (When I do dark watercolors I like to bring lightness by combining white gouache and the choice of watercolor, it creates a more opaque color and is not too transparent).

Here is a picture of it:

Click image for larger version

Obviously I didn't have all the colors suggested in the site, So I improvised using colors that I had available.
Next I plan to do a mixture color wheel, also shared at the handprint site, it would look something close to this:

Have a good day everyone!