The 2024 calendar season is pretty much over and soon it's time for me to start working on the illustrations for the next calendar! But before we get there, I want to share all the work-in-progress material I collected of the 2024 illustrations. The 2024 calendar had a variety of detailed illustrations of squirrels, bunnies and ...

Finally! The last illustration of my 2023 calendar!  I'm so happy about how this one turned out! I think you hear that a lot from me, but isn't that just a good thing? ;)  When I look outside around Christmas, it's the darkest time of the year (at least here in Finnish Lapland). But when I look inside, Christmas brings so m...

Another perfect horse painting! Needless to say, another favorite of mine.Of course there needs to be a shiny black horse in a horse-themed calendar. And what would be better than a shiny black horse with shiny stars floating around its mane and tail? I really don't know.A magical environment acts as the cherry on top of the cake; Purple and p...

This horse became more blue than I intended. My original plan was to make him gray, but it might actually have been too depressing of a color scheme. So the blue might just work better for this illustration. Other than that, I'm very happy about the feeling of flow and strong wind in this. It portrays the strength of the horse; he has faith in...

One of my favorite illustrations in this calendar! ?I have a lot of favorites in this calendar tho, but let's not go down that road now... ? At first I thought I'd paint this illustration of September with colors that are generally associated with Autumn (yellow, orange, brown, red) but then, since the horse in the illustration of Au...

I'm really reeeaaally happy about how this one turned out! Just like I imagined and even better! I'm particularly happy with the colors, they blend with each other in a perfectly soft way; the clouds, the forest, the horse... Looking at the finished painting I cannot help but wonder how on earth did I even do all that. ...

It is good to notice at this point how I, once again, mixed up the words "June" and "July". I wrote "July" into the cover picture of the previous blog post, which of course should've said "June". I get these two words mixed up in a regular basis, and I think I've even had to bring up this issue sometime in one of my earlier blog post...

Half way there with these calendar illustration blog posts, good job Jasu! ? I originally planned the "June-horse" to have flowers and leaves flowing out of her mane, and the ground she was running on was supposed to be covered with flowers as well. However, I ended up changing my plan since there were flowers in the illustration of May a...

It's Alex! The main character of my horse comic! ...and his mother, of course. ? Since only God knows when I'll actually be able to draw this horse comic, I take any chance I get to sneak the characters into my other artworks. I did the same with my 2022 calendar, where the month of May features the main characters of my dragon story...

Unicorns!! ??  That's the most important thing to say about this painting. Another important thing is that I wanted to make these unicorns a bit different from the traditional unicorns, which are usually portrayed bright white. Sure there must be differently colored unicorns out there. ? Below you can see the initial super quick...

I'm just going to say it: This illustration is PERFECT! ? And what I mean by that is that it looks exactly the way it should. It gives all the magical, beautiful and elegant vibes that I wanted it to. It's shining! ✨ I wanted the Pegasus to be perfect and so I was very focused working on it. Especially adding the ...

The second illustration of 2023 calendar: February. I originally wanted the horses to have a bit different kind of color, but my attempt to produce the pattern I desired failed and I needed to go with plan B instead. That's the thing about watercolors; once you make a mistake you need to figure out a way to make it work for you so no...

The last illustration in 2022 calendar, December, here we go!  I rarely create artworks that are very Christmassy, but this time I made an exception. I wanted to capture the kind of Christmas atmosphere I know I'd have been most excited about as a kid. Back then, Christmas was the most wonderful time of the year for me; the...

Almost finished with the 2022 calendar illustration blog posts! This time, November~ I just have to start with saying I was sooooo happy to create this illustration, because there are horses in it! Needless to say, I've been extremely excited to work on my 2023 calendar, which is going to have nothing but horses featured in it! ...

And so we continue the journey through the remaining calendar illustrations. This time I give you the wip material of October, enjoy! On the right there's a picture of the original quick sketch the illustration is based on. At first, there was only one kid involved, and I thought I'd make him a boy. But when I started to sketch ...

After finishing all my accounting work and tax reports for 2021, I finally have time for another blog post, yay! This time I share the work-in-progress material of September from my 2022 calendar. On the right you see the tiny sketch I made to summarize the idea of the illustration before switching to the actual watercolor paper. The very last cale...

Long time no blog post! But that's because the last couple of months of 2021 I was too busy to prioritize making blog posts. Instead, I prioritized getting sufficient sleep in order to be able to finish my busy season while maintaining mental sanity, which I did and I'm most proud!   But that's enough of that. Now, let me share the w...

I wanted the illustration of July to be warm and peaceful; A beautiful Summer's day with nature in its full bloom. There's all the time in the world to just comfortably relax and enjoy the soft scent of Summer, flowers, and sunshine. Here's the very first tiny sketch that the illustration is based on. My initial s...

We move on with the calendar illustrations!  Today you get to see the illustration of June. If you follow me on social media, you might be aware that I finished all the 12 calendar illustrations some time ago. That means there are several blog posts to be made about them! ;) That said, let's move to the creation of June... I only now real...

I was beyond excited to create a calendar illustration starring my favorite dragon and the main character of the "dragon story", which you might have heard me mention before. If you haven't: for some years now I've had an idea for a story about this girl and this dragon. In time I'll create this story as a comic, but meanwhile, ...