:: Digital La La Land::
I finished “Fairy“ last night, after hours and hours and then some more hours of working on this. I’ve discovered new ways to work with illustrations to give the piece a specific “atmosphere” or feel to it, all just by experimenting my way through Photoshop. I’ve always said there’s literally no end to the possibilities when you work digitally, especially with programs like CS4 (or CS5 if you have that version) and you find yourself thinking you’ll be done with an illustration if only you try this one thing, but then you end up trying more stuff and before you know it, you’re stuck in an amazing learning process – only you’re getting a wee frustrated because you never feel done with anything you do.
Kill your darlings. You got to learn to let go of something, so you don’t over work it. Sometimes working too much on something will give you an amazing, amazing new and different result. Only it was not the intended idea and suddenly you’re stuck with a totally different work, because you over did things and though this new piece might be awesome, it’s still not the amazing piece you had in your head. Either you’re happy with the new mind-blowing thing or you just scale things down and stick to your original plan, your original concept, which is what I usually try to do…But it’s so hard!
::The birth of ideas::
For this illustration I found a lot of inspiration in one of my favorite illustrators (John Bauer), but also from what’s typical in Swedish folklore stories along with a typical southern forest scenery. A lot of people ask me (on deviantArt) why I never mention the references that I use to create my digital stuff. Well. I don’t use references to create anything digitally; it’s all my original concepts and ideas. I never copy or try to remake anyone else’s work. I make my own sketches and then work on them digitally. I do however find inspiration from many things, it could be a song, a line or scene in a movie, a book I’ve read or a person. But I don’t use them; I’m just inspired by them. A difference there. An example is Tim Burton; I’ve loved his work since I was a little kid and saw “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993). But I’m also a big Stanley Kubrik fan, so there’s a huge contrast – yet some kind of twisted similarity to them both. I just like art, dammit! 
- Me
