Category: Notes of life

Downsizing big and bold

Two years ago I arranged an exhibition big and bold. 16 illustrations, height 2,3 meters, width 6 meters. Altogether the exhibition was nearly 100 meters wide, it was outside, and it was my first exhibition ever.

No one knows how many people saw it during those 2,5 weeks, but I know several who went and saw it on a motorcycle. I had wished for that, since the illustrations were from a book that told about a motorcycle road racing legend, Jarno Saarinen. The exhibition was following a road that used to be a race circuit, next to the Helsinki Olympic Stadium.

After the exhibition was over, I took the pieces down, rolled them up and carried to my storage, washed them (both sides) and rolled them up again. It was a lot of work, they were huge and heavy, and when I closed the storage door there was nothing I wanted more than to forget they existed.

Don’t get me wrong. I love them! Among those 16 were the illustrations that got highly commended in the World Illustration Awards children’s book category 2019. The printing turned out superb, they’re truly impressive with their size. People wanted to buy, I wanted to sell. Until the buyers realized it was actually 6 meters wide we’re talking about.

They were just TOO BIG.

When the lockdown started in March 2020, I knew what my corona project would be: downsizing the big and bold exhibition posters. They had started their siren songs from the depths of the storage (two stories up from my apartment) and I knew I couldn’t hide anymore.

But how? Where should I cut? I started it on screen.

I had to create something new. I couldn’t look at them the same way I had when creating illustrations for the book, to tell the story. And I had to pay attention to the size.

The motorcycles were the most interesting to cut. I had loved illustrating all the small technical parts and to learn how a motorcycle works – even only shallowly. Now all that small technical got to be highlighted better than before.

Photographer Tuomas Kaisti

I don’t think I ever will arrange an exhibition that big again. But if someone asked for my advice in arranging one – if they should do it or not, I would say in a heartbeat: “Go for it.”

Photographer Tuomas Kaisti

And then I would add: “You can always downsize them later.”

You’re the designer

“Longest way round is the shortest way home”, wrote James Joyce, and Debbie Millman with her story illustrated the sentiment aptly. In her keynote speech at the Huiput Creative Festival in Helsinki Millman focused on rejections and walked us through her career – and the worst day of her life. She got a handful of rejections all at once (and then some). She put it to words well how easy it is to disguise disappointments into feelings of other colours, even if it’s only for yourself. Luckily things turned out well for her, but it didn’t happen fast, and that was the most important message I was left with. To not try to peak quickly. “If it takes you long to reach it, perhaps you stay there longer”, she suggested.

Lauren Currie urged us to recognize our privilege and use our power. She asked how many of us have a domain with our own name. A lot of hands were raised, including my own. “You are in control of your digital footprint”, she addressed, and I liked the notion, obvious as it seems. I thought about my very own digital footprint, the portfolio website I just updated: it has been existing since summer 2012. Before that I had a blog with my name. I’ve been digitally around a third of my life – with my real name.

Designer decides the gap between columns.

David Carson shared with us a lot of pictures and a lot of jokes. I appreciated both (deeply!). Have the designers gotten lazy? He asked not long into the presentation. With all our software it’s easy to rely on guides, grid and all the help they bring. But you can’t give out the power or the responsibility: You’re the designer. Designer decides the gap between columns.

“Never snap to guides” is a notion I picked for my Instagram post. I don’t think I have, but I have often thought I should. I have often described my layout designing as ‘moving elements around on a spread’, referring to my non-existing knowledge on layout grids and all. Nevertheless I think the layout designing I’ve done is good.

“Your wave is coming”, Carson said. Not only said, he had written it down. In a nice way, and I followed. What a lovely sentiment. And I don’t even surf.

Five years

I started this blog in January 2015. I wanted to have a platform of my own to do something, to post something. I have done so and enjoyed!

In preparing my own portfolio update recently I updated this blog first. Whilst testing out themes I compiled together the illustrations I had posted here 2015-2020. All of them were created with the idea of publishing them on a free platform where not a lot of traffic was happening. I liked what I saw, and realised what I owed to this blog.

Perhaps from now on I will take a different course here. I might do something, post something, a bit more. Since 2015 I’ve cut down eating ice cream but I still love the name – and the Blondie song!

Hello Goodbye Blackbird

Some personal work pieces just never get finished. You go back to them over and over again and change the colors or change the composition or change a teeny-weeny detail in a character’s foot.

Bye bye Blackbird! That’s what I’ve tried to tell this piece several times. Do you think this time he’s gone? Or still hanging around?

Color Palettes

It’s a bit of a no-brainer for an illustrator to say this… but I love colours. LUV. They’re probably a big reason why I ever chose to become an illustrator in the first place.

And I love working with them. In a wider sense they’re attached to everything – events, feelings and phases in my life.

Recently I’ve started to make color palettes from each week. I select colors from illustration assignments I’ve been working on, and then think of the colors my mind has been most busy on. I don’t pay attention all that much to shapes and elements – even though I pick out something new every time.

Here’s my autumn so far:

color-me-4th

color-me-3rd

color-me-2nd-pirita

color-me-1st-pirita-tolvanen