Hey there, long time no see! I have been busy getting back in the rut, playing Witcher 3 and inking pages for the next SPEJS chapter (I’m pretty much on schedule, even though it’s a bit sweaty). I’ve also been reading a lot while commuting, hence the lack of metro doodles. But I decided to treat myself to some new markers (specifically the Winsor & Newton ProMarkers) and decided to start doodling a bit with them in my new sketchbook. This book I bought looks very fancy, but I’m not sure if the paper is good for anything really. Markers look pretty okay though, so I might continue filling it with marker doodles :)

Let’s start this year with a doodle dump of some SPEJS related stuff!

some people on Tapastic are starting to doubt that male pangee exist. Well, they do, and look fabulous! But they haven’t really been introduced properly in the comic yet. I’m musing a bit about the next chapter where this dashing lad might show up though :)

Speaking about pangee, it’s very uncommon that pangee and seri are getting along, even less common that they are romantically involved. These two fellows are getting along quite well though, and I can’t wait to tell you more about them. I’d love to make a short spin-off comic with these guys, if I have the time I’ll try to make it before the end of march :)

A fancy Swagata, just because I missed drawing her <3 Also experimenting with the looks of Seri women. I’m sort-of musing with the fact that it might be more common with them having a bit more body hair, and not feeling forced to shave it off or whatever, especially not on their home planet. We’ll see, I’ve yet to show some seri women in the comic too, so I have time to experiment for a bit ;) Also a random cat as an extra ;)

Hey, this is the Christmas Card I made for this year, but unfortunately didn’t have time to print and send to people. But I hope youwill enjoy it anyways, I made a slightly longer version of this card over at SPEJS, check it out if you want to know what happened after the snowball fight..;)

This year has been pretty stressful for me, but I have managed to draw a lot and make some new friends, so from an art perspective, I think the year has been pretty nice! I’ll come back after Christmas with an art summary post of 2016. Until then, eat a lot of good food and be cozy! :)

So, there was a meme going on at twitter where you were supposed to compare your 2006 art with your 2016 art. I have been in a bit of a slump lately, thinking that I probably haven’t evolved much at all during the years, but let’s take a look!

The images above were made 2006. I was (or maybe had?) finishing my final year at the University of Skövde where I studied game graphics. I didn’t get my dream job after the education and I was very bitter and sad about that. I was working a lot with this fantasy group on my free time. I really wanted to make a story with them and I remember trying to write scripts which I scrapped after 30 or so pages. I really thought this was my artistic peak, I could probably never get better. I put a lot of detail on everyone’s faces, making them look a lot older than they were supposed to. Someone had just told me that blue shadows in a multiply layer made stuff look more realistic so I went all crazy with that =P

Fast-forward to 2016. During these 10 years, I moved from Skövde in the south to Kiruna in the far north and worked as an animator for 1,5 years. Then I moved to Stockholm to study Interaction Design, ended up being a frontend developer and am now coding web for a game company. Is it my dream job? Maybe not, but I’m enjoying my situation a LOT more than I did 10 years ago :)

These images were made this year and feature, in a way, the same characters as the previous pictures, they’ve just been changed around a lot. The green guy in black hair and the redhead are definitely super early versions of Gav and Ragna, only with switched personalities and in space ;) And the short haired girl is definitely an early version of Swagata, but very re-worked. And the thin guy was a thin guy in the early versions of SPEJS too until I decided a Morwen would be more fun (The lady in the middle of the last image is Astrid from Kim W Andersson’s space adventure comic, check it out!)

During the years, I think I have settled for a more simple style (three fingers, not as detailed faces), but with a better understanding of anatomy and color. I still have a long way to go and recently it feels like I want to get better at colors, but I’m happy I can see some progress in these 10 years at least :)

Hi there, this blog has been a bit empty lately, so I thought I could share some art I drew but haven’t posted yet. It’s a younger Gav and Swagata hanging out at school. I’m not 100% happy with it (even though I giggle a little when I see young Gav’s style with that cap), but it was a bit fun to experiment a bit with a more painty style. I still have a lot to learn though!

This was drawn during a live event at Picarto! If you want to see me draw live more, subscribe to my channel and you’ll get mail notifications whenever I go live! :) I haven’t used it much, but I feel I get more focused when I do live events, so it’d probably be good for me ;)

Hey, long time no see! I have been a bit busy trying to get the storyboard done for the next SPEJS chapter (and I still have one or two weeks before it’s considered done), and I’ve tried to read a bit more during my trips to work, so not much doodled! Here’s a little idea I’ve been having in my head for a while and doodled on a drink & draw event a while ago! I kinda like the idea, and I might make it a sticker later on :)

Hey, I saw some kind of meme going around twitter where you dressed up a kid version of your OCs for Halloween, going trick-or-treat:ing, so here’s the SPEJS crew being cute little monsters for Halloween :) Hope you’ll have a fun one!

The past week I’ve been struggling with finding a good style for making the backgrounds for the coming chapter of my comic SPEJS. I haven’t been too fond of the lineart type of backgrounds I’ve been making, but I want something that fits the cartoony look of the comic. Also, I needed to get my sense of colours a bit better, and decide on a style for the part of Aeros City where this chapter will take place. Phew, a lot of things to think about!

For the architecture, I’ve been looking a bit at Sovjet architechture, and I also realized that Vällingby city, where I hang out quite a bit, actually looks pretty futuristic, so I kinda borrowed some shapes from that ;)

For the coloring style, I wanted something painty and simplistic, and stumbled upon this blog post with Power Puff Girls backgrounds, which I thought looked amazing, so I eventually did something similar to that.

And finally, I still have a hard time with colours! But I found this great tool, Paletton, that helps you create color harmonies! I love it!

Below are all the tests I did, and you can see that I’m struggling, and nothing seems to look quite right:

This was finally the background style I think I will continue to use:

There is still some work and fine tuning to do, but I’m glad I’m getting closer to something I like :) It looks simple and detailed at the same time and doesn’t take away too much focus from the characters.

Do you have any tips on good tools for colours and/or inspiration (either by art style or reference photos)? Tell me in the comments :)

Here’s a pangee dude looking all fab ;)

Pangee is one of the people in my comic SPEJS, which I occasionally call “space elves” and are pretty good at working with magic. The guys usually look very fab and I always have a great time designing their outfits :)