Chickelacke and chic - what’s the connection?

I found this old girl’s magazine in Lyon, France last time I was there, at the stand of one of the traditional used books sellers along the riverside.

Nothing weird at all until I noticed that the girl on the cover illustration had blue eyes, a traditional “russ” outfit with hat and a bamboo stick with a flag colored ribbon (you’re a russ when you celebrate the senior year at high school). And then I saw the royal castle in Oslo in the background. Funky.

Why would a Norwegian drawing make it to the cover of a French magazine from the fifties? Or is this a French illustration about girls at Karl Johan, the high street of Oslo? Read the rest of this entry »

After a tropical summer vacation here in Norway, a tsunami of freelance gigs has forced me back to my office, which is a mobile one at the moment - temporarily installed on a dining table with a panoramic view of the Bjørnefjord.

I’m about to draw some 100 small illustrations for a schoolbook by Cappelen, another 25 for a new book about avalanches (another one!), all of it before September 1st. Let’s see how that goes! The last few weeks I did a cover for BTmagasinet as well as a few other magazine illustrations for various clients, and I just finished a two page illustration for the new edition of UTE, an outdoors magazine that was recently acquired by Fri Flyt. The image above is a cropped version of that one. The story is about a Norwegian climber who falls unconscious on his way up the Aconcagua peak in Argentina.

Well, as you understand there are a whole lot of other things to do than to spend time blogging. See you later!

I’m going to move in a month’s time and have to start thinking about packing down and wrapping up my office. I’ll not be able to take on any gigs until I’m back in business in July. Stay tuned!

The Highcamp poster is such a success (or so they say on the website at least - they even call it a collector’s item) that the organizers decided to print it in A3 format and put it on sale at the Eksponert.no web shop.

The last of this year’s camp events took place at Turtagrø this past weekend, reportedly with excellent sunny weather.

While drawing a viking king and his men for an educational book earlier this year, I unconsciously seem to have put myself in the role of one of the king’s bodyguards.

I just realised this, although I did the illustration a few months ago. My photos are flipped over so I look in the same direction as the viking version.

Some of the Burma t-shirts I made have traveled far since they went on sale from my web shop (still a few left!). The picture above is taken somewhere in the lush woods of Panama, and shows artist Luitgardo Broce and Panama’s former Minister of Justice, architect Mariela Sagel sporting their brand new Aung San Suu Kyi tees. Thanks for the photo, Luitgardo!

The one below is from the opposide side of the planet, from Hong Kong. Say hello to Bianca Tse, independent art director with some of the bigshot agencies over there. Nice fit!

Well, I have already drawn Judas, Michael Moore and even an invisible version of Muhammad, so it was about time I got to draw Jesus. It happened thanks to my old aquaintance Kristin Walstad, a graphic designer gone communications consultant, and now also an editor and art director for The Norwegian School of Theology’s bi-monthly magazine.

Finally back again after a long period of web geekiness and tech issues way above my competences. Will get back to that in a future post. Meanwhile, I wanted to show you two posters I’ve been lucky enough to work on lately. Pretty rewarding to work on these big formats for a change. The first one, in an attempted lithographic retro style, is for the ski event High Camp 2008. They wanted something reminiscent to the style of antique Swiss ski resort posters from back in the days but contemporary enough to attract the usual crowd of hip young skiers and snowboarders. Unusual approach and fun to work with.

The super glossy second one is for a charity event featuring music and sports stars. It was commisionned by the agency Aptum. Click the images to get the full view.

The German “Ö” did very well on the rock scene for a few decades, with Motörhead and Mötley Crue as the most prominent examples. These days the Norwegian letter “Ø” (pronounced like the vowel in “girl” = gørl) has quite some success in French advertising.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is our idea of having fun at work. But we’re only hopeless rednecks. According to Markus Landrø‘ s girlfriend. But that was before we added the bikini.

Markus is an avalanche expert and author of Skredfare. In the middle of some complex writings last winter, about the mechanisms behind an avalanche, he must have lost it for a second and started to think about women. Hot women in cold places, apparently. Read the rest of this entry »

Right now a British woman is being prosecuted in Sudan for having allowed her elementary school kids to call a teddy bear “Muhammad”. A name which is apparently common in the area.

You probably remember Lars Vilks, the Swedish artist who this summer received several death threats after having drawn the prophet Muhammad as a “roundabout dog” for a street art project. Here is a drawing I did right after that, commenting on “The new reality of contemporary art after Al-Qaida started doing art criticism”. The guy to the left says: It’s a double portrait of Lars Vilks and Muhammad, drawn with invisible ink. Whereas the guy to the right answers: Funky concept! How much is the bounty?

The Aung San Suu Kyi t-shirts are printed! No, they’re unfortunately not free, like the headline suggests, but they’re not expensive either. Show your support to the Burmese people with this limited edition B&C tee, screen printed by hand on 145 g. cotton. Girls’ and guys’ models available.
For each t-shirt you buy, a donation will be made to support the burmese radio journalists in exile in Norway.

Go to the webshop to order your tees right away! Click on the picture for details.

Make sure to visit the AVAAZ website to sign the petition to the world leaders and donate to the campaigns for Burmese struggle for freedom and democracy.

How can an illustrator accept to draw this kind of image? Shameful. Nationalist questions have always had a central position in Swiss electoral campaigns, but this kind of imagery seems to belong to another time.

It took 6 years of travelling to 15 regions of the world to put together the exhibition of paintings, drawings, photos and texts currently showing at Musée de l’Homme in Paris. It includes 200 portraits of women, mostly gouache and ink drawings, by French artist and former professional navigator Titouan Lamazou (make sure you go and see his work by following that link!)

This remarkable guy never stopped drawing and painting during his sailing career. In 1993, after the sinking of his boat, the TAG Heuer, he devoted himself exclusively to art, publishing two volumes of travel diaries, Carnets de voyage (1998 and 2000), and a book with photographer Raymond Depardon, Rêves de desert. He has written a novel and is also known for the cover art of French singer Renaud’s album in 2002. He was appointed UNESCO artist for peace in 2003 for his work on portraits of women of the world.

Zoé Zoé
Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France.
October 11th 2007 - March 30th 2008.

Michael Moore’s latest movie “Sicko” is finally being screened in Norway. That’s the obvious reason why I was asked to draw him - with a baseball cap - for a magazine article published this weekend.

And, by the way, a happy birthday to myself. What a fabulous Tuesday this is going to be…

I posted this illustration on my old blog last year, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. Now she’s making headlines once again, as some of the monks who have taken to the streets to protest against the military dictatorship marched by her home in Rangoon (Yangon). As this happens on the other side of the world, a guy named Sean left me a nice and uplifting comment over at my ex blog where he compares my illustration to the famous Che Guevara graphic, and calls Suu Kyi a “brave peace warrior”. Because the other server may be taken down soon, I’ll publish the comment and the original post here. Just click the image to see it.

The story behind this illustration is a bit out of the ordinary. It was the first time I spent several weeks in a foreign country to do research that later was used for an illustration! In fact, in 2003, I travelled in Burma (Myanmar) as an undercover journalist (anything else than undercover would be both stupid and dangerous). This was not long after the military leaders had let Suu Kyi’s political party NLD (National League for Democracy) reopen offices around the country. I talked to NLD’s spokesman U Lwin who is …

Read the rest of this entry »

Well this would no doubt look cool in a casino, but would it be practical in the living room? Wouldn’t it be tiring to do stuff with your arms that you could have done with a tiny mouse gesture? What about carpal tunnel syndrom from this one?

And, is it coffee-proof?

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

I was just made aware of a newspaper article that has been around for a few months without my knowledge, and a little bit of bragging might be appropriate. The German newspaper Neues Deutschland praises one of my drawings for the Karicartoon exhibition as “the probably sharpest satire of the whole exhibition”. Nice comment from critic Harald Kretschmar, considering there were 36 artists exhibiting.

The paragraph translates something like this: “Works by four guests from Norway meet us right at the entrance of the city-historical museum. Dagfinn Bakke and Finn Graff correspond in a noble manner to the veteran age of many of the German participants, while Egil Nyhus and Atle Hansson come along as young and fresh. The probably sharpest satire of the whole exhibition comes from the latter. Two africans are told “put out your fire, Europe just bought your CO²-quotas”.

Just a quick message to all you spammers out there: I won’t ever see your messages again.

I spent a rainy evening on vacation back home in Norway doing something I should have done before. Gathering all my various email accounts in one mastermail account. Read the rest of this entry »

Check out these two French guys’ surprising products and great ideas: www.atypyk.com. They started out selling cow stickers for fridges, and have so far sold 60.000 of them. Now they sell things like cheese slices made of sponge, duct tape with python print, screwdriver lollipops and dog poop from Paris in plastic containers (they call it “Lucky Shit”). I especially liked the PLEASE section of their website, a collection of truly quirky design ideas.