Train to Nowhere

BEEEEEEP!

"Never miss a day" But if you miss a couple of weeks it´s fine... No I´m sorry but it seems like writing something every monday was harder then I thought. 

Anyways, where were we, Oh yea I was just going to talk a little about developing your style of drawing before I took a little break... But then again I don´t really feel like writing about that right now so the best advice I can give is Derail from what you know and then you will get somewhere. 

Oh yea! I made this skate deck recently and it is out for auction right now at Under Job Party during August. (The website is in Japanse)

The Squidlord deck!

Lots of fun and I´ll write soon again, I promise.

Over The Mountain

 That tricky bastard called motivation 

-Motivation and discipline is a really tricky thing when it comes to working alone. To solve this I have to see myself as a battery that each day has a limited amount of power. Or rather a set of batteries for different tasks.

There is nothing like a good cup of coffee and a slight touch of hypothermia

 Rule nr 1: only one sketch each morning 

-First of all, it´s really important not to drain your battery completely. I solved this by never doing more than one sketch each morning. If I did more than one I felt drained and wasn't looking forward to the next morning. 

-Just to make a silly comparison of what I mean by feeling like a battery: 

My phone re-charges really fast if the battery isn´t completely empty, But if it is then it takes a long time to get it running again.

 Second rule: No erasing 

-Saying goodbye to your eraser is also a fantastically inspiring thing that builds motivation. When regret is not an option you just have to keep drawing until your misstakes look like something decent and makes you want to improve the next morning. (This is a big part of why my drawings look the way they do)

 Rule nr 3. Let people see your misstakes 

-Now social media comes into the picture. When you draw something for yourself there is no pressure, but if you set up a rule that you have to show the "world" every sketch you do, it makes you want to do good every time. 

Here comes the trick: If you fuck up, and your not proud of what you have done but still have to upload it... let me tell you, It motivates the shit out of you to retaliate the next morning.

 Final rule: Never skip a day! 

-If you force yourself to draw something at a certain time every day it becomes a habit that eventually will be very hard to break. This however gets trickier with time and I have been breaking this rule a lot lately. 

See you next week

Make Your Mama Proud

 Part 2 
Lets  move on to my morning sketches and how my internet provider and a really old sketchbook made me do what I did. Ironically what ended my oil painting craze was that I forgot about my rules and started using the internet as usual but this would also prove useful in an unexpected matter.

I wanted to add a picture of my great grandfathers sketchbook but I left that in Sweden. PLACEHOLDER! 

Here is the recipe for my morning sketches!

 Style: 
1. Have a lot of trouble with your internet supplier.
2. Get Really frustrated until the brink of insanity.
3. Add 1L of black soul water.
4. Call customer support one last time.
5. Wait for 45 minuts.
6. Talk to somebody who don't know anything about your problem and then get forwarded to the experts.
7. Wait for another 45 minuts and then get cut off at 9am as it is closing time.
8. Add sketchbook.
9. Pour all this frustration into a giraff sketch.
-Voila! You got yourself a Drawing style.

 Motivation: 
1. Find your great grandfathers old sketchbook which is a little more then 100 years old.
2. Realizing that he did not draw as much crap on his pages as you do.
3. Think about if people would enjoy looking trough your own sketchbooks a 100 years from now.
-Motivated to make every page count.

-So what I did was that I found a nice sketchbook with good paper and a really nice ballpoint pen, (Materials are important). Then I started waking up very early every morning so that my brain would be washed clean from impressions and nobody would disturb me.
Creating something early in the morning sets the mode for the rest of the day and I usually stay happy and creative for the rest of the day.

-Next week will be about my work process and keeping motivation up. That will be my last recap and then I´ll start talking about my life here in Japan.

Nothing is Something

Devil Juice, music and art supply. All you need for success!

Hey! and welcome, I'm starting a new blog as I am starting my next sketchbook (Vol.6)
But first a quick introduction: I'm a Swedish Illustrator/Tattoo artist living in Tokyo Japan.

So why am I starting this blog?
-This blog will pretty much be the "behind the scenes" part of all that I do.
-My aim is to share my work process and self imposed experiments like how the whole Sketches & Coffee thing began, and I will give you a glimpse of what it's like living in Japan.
It might seem a bit stupid to start a blog, I hardly ever read blogs myself, but I don't want to force feed this to anybody. This is just a little extra for who ever wants it :)

Sketchbook 6 caught molesting one of my tattoo design

Please feel free to ask me question and give me suggestions of what you would like to see down in the comments.
Stuff I'm thinking about doing is:

1. Start up my live video stream for my morning sketches again.
2. Maybe an interview or two with my fellow illustrators and co-workers.
3. Making some of my illustrations available as prints and stickers.

I am going to update the blog every Monday.


Once again, Welcome!