I’ve always drawn

I grew up in a creative family where both my parents drew, influenced by fairytales and fashion illustration. So I drew, painted, inked, and played around for hours and hours with technique, drew fairytale creatures, drew fashion poses, drew from Disney movies, drew from comics, messed around with paint, and generally had a splendid time teaching myself illustration styles.

I had access to art equipment

Good art equipment. Not necessarily expensive tools, but good quality ones. Mechanical pencils and good HB, 2B and 3B pencils, my Alf Bjercke brushes, and Rembrandt, Winsor & Newton, and Schmincke watercolour pans. To master and then improvise (in this case watercolours) I needed good brushes and artist quality paints. Everything else was just annoyingly in my way to make what I wanted. More about my art equipment here.

I was encouraged to apply for an education in art

It does help when carving out a career path, that the environment you’re in is not only supportive of your interests, but loves the idea of you becoming an artist. I think my squad knew I’d be unhappy if not.

I went to art schools

But, that doesn’t necessarily reflect my full skill set. I learnt a lot from just drawing, from my parents, from artist friends and colleagues, from general nerdness, from just doing the job, as well as courses in school with hands on printmaking, graphic design, typography and visual communication.

I think that my schools were catalysts for artistic development and where I could fully immerse myself in nerdy machinery like Gutenberg presses, etching techniques and coding, not a place where I first learnt to be an artist. Developed yes, but not the place I started. So I never really went for it, or took the leap, just sauntered from a child, then teen, then adult, stumbled, snowballed, frog jumped, ran, crawled along the squiggly path to working as a full time illustrator and owning a gallery. My official starting out date is June 2006 when I started my company and sent an invoice, and bought www.gunvor.no.

Watercolour

Half pans from Schmincke, Winsor & Newton, Sennelier and Rembrandt. All artist quality and picked one by one into my cases. The basic colour palette I use is Quinacridone Gold, Magenta, Turquoise Light and Lamp Black, with additional colours like Payne’s Grey, Indigo, Burnt Umber, Chromium Oxide Green, Olive Green, Lemon Yellow and White. I also have variations within these so that I have some colours that are consistent when I work with several scenes with the same characters. This is so that I don’t have to spend time with hit and miss when blending colours on tight deadlines.

Brushes

My brushes have been the same since I borrowed my mum’s brushes. I use Alf Bjercke synthetic watercolour brushes in different sizes. The point is so fine on high quality brushes so I don’t need to buy a full range to get both thick and thin brushstrokes. If you are unsure what to buy, just make sure the brushes are artist quality. It’s a world of difference. I have some Kolinsky natural hair brushes that I’ve treated myself to as well.

Paper

I use different brands of paper, as long as they are 300 gsm cold pressed, sometimes also torchon. Then I get the bumpy surface I so enjoy.

Pens

I use different pens and inks, depends on what I’m making. I use HB mechanical pencils and normal pencils for sketching. For fine line work I use Pilot G-tech C4 (sounds like a plane or explosives), and felt pens for lettering, usually Pilot. I also use paintbrushes and watercolours for lettering, and nib and ink for calligraphy.

Other tools

In addition to this I use masking fluid, metal rulers, scalpels, cutting mats and my light board for transferring sketches.

Software

I use Photoshop for scanning and cleaning up the illustrations, edit photos and all the bits and pieces for readying a drawing for use in a project.

Hardware

Mac in my studio, and PC in my home office. Bought a gaming PC to get enough machine power to power my larger projects.

Camera

For documenting work I use a Nikon Z50.