I've run away...

... to the Carribean, which is part of the reason why I haven't posted anything in ages... (sitting in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico as I type this) I will remedy this end of january when I get back. Watch this space. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's everyone!

Giant Squid

Hope your summer is going great so far. Mine is! Lots to do as usual.

Here's an image (well, two, one sketch and one cleaned-up drawing) that I am particularly pleased with. It is an artists impression of a deep sea squid. The reason that it is an "artists impression" is that there are very few photographs of deep sea squids. And even if live specimens are caught sometimes they often look terrible (sludgy and deflated) because their bodies are made to exist in the high-pressure zone of deep, deep sea.

It is perhaps going to be reference material for a tattoo hence me using a combined line-and-red-shading style of drawing. I tried to capture the movement of a swimming sea squid based on the fins in this photograph:
http://www.indiastudychannel.com/pictures/gallery/gangarajuchalapathi__73strange%20photos%20bizarre%20sea%20creature%20caught%20part%20squid%20part.jpg

Roooooooowr!

Excerpt from my sketchbook. Angry, angry, bear. I was just curious as to what makes and angry bear (grizzly) look angry. I mean they have all the cute-assets; little round fluffy ears, little "cute" eyes. i guess it's the HUGE teeth and mouth. The large, nostrils do their bit too.

I am currently returning to the "building blocks" of illustration: sketching and colour theory. I have also been working on my painting skills and feel like I have learnt a lot that I can use in my illustration. Most interesting of all has been the warm/cold colour juxtapositioning of the old masters (won't write about it all here - get in touch if you want to know more).

I have also finally mastered the creating and using my own brushes in Photoshop. Yay! Exciting stuff (for me anyhow). Keep an eye out for results of this in the future. All in all I am very busy with various projects. My layout and InDesign skills have been pushing forwards in leaps and bound because of work on 6-page a CD booklet.

Have a good one, hope you get some sunshine! (Here in Sweden the sun is hardly going down at all)

Blue tongued skink: dipping pen drawing-and-text

Posting an image from my sketchbook. One of a series of images where I have paid attention the the relationship between text and image.

I have also started experimenting working with oil paint which is marvelous fun and I hope to post the results sometime soon.

I am also hoping to figure out how to do art with a positive, celebratory slant on things. If you have any ideas feel free to share them with me. I have been thinking a lot about how art is often a crticism of something -- which is fine -- but I feel like I want to avoid criticising without a solution/example of something better, or even better just celebrate good things already happening. I feel as if it is all too easy to find something in the world that isn't right or open to criticism. It is nice if criticism is weighted more towards a solution, or even better celebrates something good. A nice example of what I think is a good example of "positive" art that really is quite moving is the "Where the Hell is Matt?" video: www.wherethehellismatt.com

Awful news: Illustrator wrongly accused

http://www.jonengle.com.nyud.net/2009/04/accused/

What an incredible nightmare of a situation! Proof that illustrators really need to be careful with their work and keep a close record of all images(!) Goodness, who would ever have dreamt of being sued for plaigarism of your own work?!

Noch asleep

A little late-night sketch of my dog lying at my feet. When one of us is away the dog gets to sleep on the bed all night which he loves (when we're both home he finds it too squashy on the bed and prefers his bed on the floor next to us!). I love sleeping animals, they look so peaceful and content. I wanted to capture that in this sketch.

Imaginary Animal Doodle

Just wanted to share an animal doodle I was doing between coding CSS for my new homepage. This is one of those imaginary beasts that are almost therapeutic for me to sketch. Yes folks, this is how I started out drawing -- doodling imaginary animals and monsters everywhere. They are basically a jumble of different real animals that I have at some point drawn studies of. One fine day the co-illustrated fantasy monster themed book will become reality.

Going back to dipping pen

Ahhh today has been a nice but slightly frustrating day. I am completely redoing my homepage and am very excited about applying my hard-earned XHTML and CSS skills. Once I am done my homepage will be a breeze to update *yay*. So what is the frustrating bit you ask? Well if you know anything about HTML and CSS it's the fiddling with positioning and getting the boxes to line up the way you want them to and keeping you div tags in line! One typo somewhere and you have boxes floating all over the place (haha -- yes, pun/in-joke inteneded).

Recently I was browsing the web getting distracted when I stumbled upon Jill Calder's blog (one of my tutors when I studied at the Edinburgh College of Art) and read her excellent interview. Great inspiring stuff for illustrators to read:
http://jillustration.blogspot.com/2009/01/interview-by-anna-violet.html
(Caps Lock warning: she btw apologises in advance for leaving Caps Lock on by mistake)

About the image I have posted -- I revisited using a dipping pen since I came across it whilest unpacking (yes, our house is still a big mess in boxes). I am also trying some new Photoshop brushes thanks to a setting I hadn't thought of using to it's full capacity before. Quite pleased with the result. Not sure if the person is an angel or just a person -- but I just wanted to try to see if I could get that feeling of stretching out in some quick few strokes.

R.I.P. my warm light bulb

I for all saving the environment, but with the news of the EU banning the old light bulbs come September first reaching my ears I can't help but feel a little sad. Of course I am happy for the energy and emissions saved. A little less happy about about the mercury in the energy efficient ones. And really quite sad about not being able to have my old desk lamp filled with the warm glow of a 60W lightbulb. I will truly miss the 95% of the energy being used to light a normal lightlbulb going to heat my cold illustrator hands on a wintery day. But of course this heat is wasteful so it just has to go. I just hope they make energy saving bulbs with a warmer glow... (I find they cast a more greenish blue light)...

http://redgreenandblue.org/2008/10/11/eu-bans-incandescent-light-bulbs/

Happy Valentines!

An image on the theme of "love" for valentines day for the Swedish Illustrators site. Since my friend is learning how to tattoo people I went along to have a look and was really inspired! My font-loving side spotted lots of pretty looking text. Also I felt like I would have a go at drawing some cool-looking stylised flames (an artform unto itself) - lots of fun. Also wanted to incorporate a rather unusual/surprising animal to show "love" (no offense cute fluffy holding-hands-bear-cards). ;)

Happy Year of the Ox to all!

An image for the Chinese New Year. Combining the solid form of an ox and monumental Roman-type text. Also making the ox look friendly!

Blog revamp

Ah! What satisfaction!

I have at long last taken hold of the HTML template of my blog and made it nice and clean! Yay! It now matches my website. I am not sure if you can imagine just how much that appeals to my layout-and-colour-brain, but it is very relieved now anyhow. I hope to soon(?) be able to post some images that I am working on but they are top secret right now!

Happy snowy days everyone!

Illustrations for Folkteatern (for the play LYCKA TILL MED ALLT -- translation: "Good Luck With Everything")

Front and back of the programme, plus the "theatre-survival-kit" it came in:





























































This work (the eight illustrations for the front of the programme) is a considerable detour from my "usual" style to cater for a very specific conceptual idea.

In this case the graphic designer's guidelines (visit her site! http://www.simonea.se/) for how the illustrations were supposed to look came from the in-flight safety instructions you can find on board aeroplanes (as you may have noticed).

It was challenging to find the right tone humour-wise within what is quite a rigid syle. But in the end we all were really pleased with the outcome and we all agreed that it matched the tone of the play.

The theme of the play is "fear" (our fears as humans). The survival-kit-with-programme is given to theatre goers just before the beginning of the play.

If you're in Sweden go see the play:
http://www.folkteatern.se/

Here's a review (in swedish):
http://www.nummer.se/Templates/Review____6889.aspx

Conceptual sketches for future buildnings

Furuvik amusement park map

Righteo, pleased to present the latest job, that is at long last done. It was a tough slog getting everything in, mainly because the time was so short! Stress stress stress(!) But everbody involved seems pleased, so so am I! It is a map over an amusement park in Gävle, Sweden called "Furuvik". They have Sweden's only keeper who is an accepted member of a chimpanzee flock (read more about it at www.furuvik.se). They (Furuvik) also did a really insteresting behviour test there to see if chimps could plan for the future, which they without a shadow of a doubt could.

Treasure maps

Thought it was high time for an update here.

Why don't I have little magical gnomes that update my blog for me? Anyways, till then you'll have to accept the fact that I am not-so-great at posting new things regularly. I might promise to "from now on post more regularly" but we both know that's a lie even before it's left my lips, so I will refrain from promising altogether.

Here are some treasure maps I was comissioned to do for a magazine (Hem och Hyra Skåne-Halland -- check out their website www.hyresgastforeningen.se) here in Sweden. The maps show the locations of interesting second hand shops in Skåne and Halland. Enjoy!

New published work (colouring book)

Hello all!
Christmas and the start of the new year has been hectic but lovely, and as usual I am not very good at remembering to update my blog and website. So, I thought I would take the opportunity to post a selection of images from my latest work now fresh-off-the-press. It is a 17-image colouring book that is a companion to a story book (Djurens Andaktsbok by Kristina Reftel). Each image is a character from the short stories in the book. The book and colouring book are for sale here: http://www.argument.se/ -- type in a search: "linn ahlbom" and you'll find the colouring book. The colouring book is aimed at teachers wanting to have a reading session with the class followed up by a colouring-in session (the images are meant to be photocopied and given to the students to colour in).

Patches

Again there has been a long silence I am afraid, but I have been busy busy busy with various projects and odd undertakings. The latest project was to run around in medival garb in Visby, Gotland (island off the East coast of Sweden) having a ball of a time and a bit of a holiday.

These patches were made for an airsoft game that my partner is planning/hosting. All of them are pretty tongue-in-cheek in various ways (curious? send me an email and ask me about it ;)). Info about the game: http://www.milsim.se/events/2007/god-guns-gasoline/

I am well pleased with how they turned out and am very tempted to undertake non-in-game patch design just solely for the purpose of selling fun/good-looking patches.

Illustration Friday "Green"

Ah. Yet another "already-ready" entry. But I mean if this doesn't count as green I don't know what does! Self-explanatory image really :)

Happy easter! (easter doodle)

Hello all!

This is an easter doodle I did and I decided to post it since I will probably never have the time to make a "proper" drawing of it.

I had this idea of the hens revolting against the oppressive Easter Bunny (who is obviously collaborating with The Rooster) and demanding better pay for their eggs.

Hope you have an easter filled with fun chocolatey things! /Linn