Introduce yourself.

I’m a freelancing digital 2d-painter from Finland. I’ve been a professional artist since 2006 as I got my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, but got involved into the field of digital painting for over 7 years ago. The areas I’m mostly known are dark fantasy and mystique art and recently I’ve started developing my skills in also ‘realistic’ comics and sci-fi themes. During my career I’ve made published book covers, album art, card art, game concepts, character & landscape concepts, and concept art for screenplay, tutorials, advertisement illustrations and comic art. This upcoming year seems very promising for many areas mentioned.
With a variery of experience and growth in the visual side I’ve also taken my creativity a step further by started writing a fantasy book of my own since 2007 and it’s turned out to be a size of a saga by now. Can’t say when I’m able to get it published, but it will surely happen when the time comes.

How have you become an illustrator?

I think I made the decision to become an artist back in 2002, when I was training for applying for Fine Art school here in Finland. Before that I never really thought seriously about the future, I just did what most teenagers do at the time when they discover their strenghts and passions and want to reach out for them. I’ve been very fortunate to see that being an illustrator/artist has always been the direction that’s most comfortable and natural for me. Ever since I was very young I could spend hours and hours sometimes just drawing without anyone asking me to. Before I turned 10 I had already made dozens of comics and illustrated short stories and even made a kids ‘manual’ to horse’s anatomy at age of 12 or so. Drawing and expressing things through art has always been like an rolling engine inside of me without the OFF-button.

You put a lot of thought and story in your paintings. Is painting something more for you then just putting down the forms on canvas?

Much more, since it’s all parts of who I am and how I see the things. It’s not a myth what’s said about ‘picture tells more than thousand words’, because it’s true when the picture is made as if there’s a thousand things to tell. Perception is a complicated subject to unravel, since there’s always multitude of thoughts and ideas going through a human mind each second as we look at life and the world. In my works I try to capture one strong theme and surround it with multiple interpretations and still keep the feeling on top as you look at the piece. Technically I’m a perfectionist and impressionist at the same time *laughs* and particularly this side has always been the part I see least difficult to challenge. The story and impact of the painting mostly depends of the spiritual, mental and inner expression what you are willing to give into it.