I asked my teacher to give me another caricature assignment. He told me to do Samuel Beckett, and at first I didn’t remember how he looked, but when I googled him I immediately remembered his face. And what a face he had!

An illustration for an article about how teens spend a lot of time on games, internet etc. and how it isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I have made a self portrait as part of my project on caricatures. I’m really beginning to rely on shading via clipping masks, which Chris Leavens helped me understand in this article he wrote, describing his workflow.

I’m working on a project where I’m working as a newspaper cartoonist, and I’m trying to make caricature work for me. Some of the critique I’ve gotten is that I should stick to drawing with vectors, so that’s what I’m trying to do here. I think it came out ok.

The Danish Design school is hosting its’ annual christmas market on december 4th.

I’ve bought a stand and I’m currently working on a series of prints I’ll be selling there.

I looked at one of my older vector drawings (also on the blog somewhere) and got inspired to do a whole lot more of them.

I’ve finally had enough spare time on my hands to make an illustration, just for fun.

I got inspired from the typical end-scene from the Lucky Luke comics, where the lonesome cowboy rides into the sunset. The idea of people riding giant robots has been with me for some time, but I haven’t been able to use it in anything worthwile. I really like the way it turned out, because It’s usually really difficult for me to keep it simple (which is propably why I felt compelled to bring it through photoshop in the end and put some texture and background on it).

I didn’t get nominated!! Damn it all to all kinds of places!
With that out of the way, I’d like to share the submissions I made in collaboration with photographer Jonas Lodahl. I ended up only submitting tWo of the illustrations, but I thought I might as well show it all here.

The idea was to mix photography and traditional illustration in a way that wouldn’t categorize that artworks as to belonging to either category. The technique applied was the same to all three: Hand-drawn illustration, coloured in photoshop, blended with digital photos. The picturesque setting is a forest called Dyrehaven just outside of Copenhagen.

I’m attending a course in school where we’re dabbling with the fantastic world of article illustration. For many illustrators this seems to be the main line of work, so It’s not something to ignore.
I rather like the idea of having to sum up an entire article with just one picture (I know, of course that you could just as easily build your illustration with many different pictures). It’s different from the experience I’ve had with infographics in the sense that most infographics are there exclusively to shed light upon a subject and to objectively explain. The cartoonist is more likely to project a statement or point of view into the illustration.

The article behind this illustration is about how suburban homeowners buy an increasingly amount of motorised garden tools, even with the most diminutive of gardens and lawns (originally from the Danish newspaper Politiken, and written by Claus Bøje). It has a certain focus on the noise that the machines make, and how you’re no longer able to hear the birds. I thought it would be funny to show the sounds of the machines, and not showing them at all. The deafening noises are shown competing with loud typography and colours that battle fiercly.

I recently finished a huge project for Alkalær. It’s a series of books for children and youths who have trouble (or have never learned) reading. It’s all done in illustrator, and consists of five stories collected in one book. The thumbnails are before the typography is applied (the book is being layouted right now). It was a fun assignment, but also quite a challenge, because it was a somewhat tight deadline and also restricted to grayscale. I can’t wait to see it printed!

I recently came across the Illustrative site which looks to be something very exciting indeed. It’s a festival running from 15th of October to the 1st of November, and it’s about most of the genres in graphic arts. This year it’s situated in Berlin, the European capital of awesome. If I can get the time I’ll definately be going.

Over 60 artists have been selected for the exhibition, so it’s sure to be one of the biggest events of the year regarding illustration.

Another thing that caught my attention, is the Swatch Young Illustrators Award, which is calling for 2009 submissions. The Illustrative press release says:

‘Awarding talent in three different categories, the Swatch Young Illustrators Award indi-
cates current trends in graphics and illustration. Illustrative art works, art projects with
graphic influences, animations and book art objects qualify for submission. Submissi-
ons can be handed in until the 30th of September 2009.’

‘The winners await prizes worth 6.000 Euros as well as publications and illustration agency contracts and will also be featured in future international shows. One winner will be invited to design a Swatch Watch.’

They’ll be sure to get my submission

Check Illustrative for details