Read Suomaa

https://www.kirkkojakaupunki.fi/artikkelit/-/tag/suomaan kansan muinaisusko

Suomaa

Now working on page 9. It's a learning process, what works and what doesn't. A combination of sketchiness and detailed work. Shaky lines contrasted with straight. Naturalistic drawing contrasted with cartoony. I aim to do 3 or 4 now and then move on to Läskimooses. There's an exciting issue coming up (42). Trying to draw it semi-abstract horror sryle. We'll see. Close ups and hard to figure out detail. Looking forward to that too.

Going

What I'm working on at the moment are obviously the Läskimooses book and Suomaa strip. But apart from these two I have several other projects in different stages of development. The new interesting project for one. For this one I got the basic idea last week and I have already started to gather data. Also there is one concept without text and one without pictures. The latter even has a title. I have five or six pretty solid starting points for Läskimooses spin offs. And then the book I started immediately after Silvia Regina that I put on the side for the joys of Läskimooses. And what have I forgotten!
Sometimes I feel it would be cool to enter the studio without any idea of what I will do next, but I can't see that happening anytime soon.
And I have the notebooks with bits and pieces...fragments...that might beginnings of some book.

Method

This might be slightly interesting... during these 6 years working on Läskimooses I've constructed quite an fixed system of working. It always starts with the text, something I scribble down in my notebook. Usually 1 to 3 versions. When I'm happy with the story I move along to the other stuff.
I draw the panels on Essdee white scraperbooard (the new one). My grid is rather fixed and mostly these days 6 equal sized panels in three rows. I draw to the actual publishing size.
After all the panels have been drawn I will start the lettering. At this stage I make a lot of finetuning to the text.
After lettering it's time to start drawing. Often but not always I start with panel one. Even if I haven't had any break in my work, starting a new issue can feel like I've totally forgotten how to draw. Partly because of this I try to make the actual drawing part as much fun as possible so I pick and choose the panels I want to draw first. Sometimes I want to start with some landscape sometimes with some space scene sometimes with something altogether abstract. There's no penciling but sometimes quite a lot sketching which I enjoy. Scraperboard allows me to make corrections while drawing. I keep my knife close at hand. For everything I use Textmark 500. Totally silly but I have my reasons.
When starting the book I made some decisions in order to make the process as fluent as possible. To have a more or less fixed grid was one of them. Also I wanted to have as much liberty as possible with the subject matter. The writing had to be something that would allow me to move from semi-abstract to cartoony to something drawn directly from a photo reference etc.
Eventually all the panels are drawn and I will have to read the story. If something doesn't work I will try to fix it. Then when I'm more or less happy with everything I send the lot to my publisher. He the scans it and cleans the pictures. When the lay-out is done he then sends it to me to check and I do. More often than not I then make some correction to the text. Certain things are hard to spot from the originals.
And then the issue is sent to the printer and I will try to do better with the next one.
Nuff said!

The best

The best retailer of Läskimooses will be revealed in issue 41. The issue is just about done. Some adjusting with the text and 3 panels to draw, not that much really. Had fun with this issue. Lot of drawing and some nice surprises. Back cover I will start slightly later since I have to now finish 4 pages of the Suomaa strip. After those I will be able to start with issue 42 which will by the way feature one of the biggest revelations in the series. You'll see.