Janne Iivonen is particularly good at constructing complete scenes with a whole scattering of interesting elements to take in and multiple characters playing out their roles. They’re especially engaging for the generous amount of detail he treats us to.
Janne is a keen observer of the human figure and how we communicate through body language. Take a close look at the people in his illustrations and you’ll see a lot of subtlety in their postures, gestures and expressions.
As he describes in more detail below, Janne is interested in using these kinds of gestural cues as a tool for the narrative in his work. He also talks in depth about his process, from sketch to final touches on the computer.
My illustrations are usually centred around one or several characters interacting in a humorous way. The settings and scenarios are most often of the everyday kind, but I try to design them so that they still look fun and exciting.
I’m also interested in how body gestures can be used to communicate ideas and messages quickly when used as an element in an illustration.
I start by analysing the text/brief, highlighting any keywords and paying extra attention to verbs, which point to a specific action.
I then proceed to the sketching phase where I do a lot of small thumbnail sketches on paper with either pencil or pens.
These thumbnails make it easy to quickly try different visual compositions, so that I don’t get stuck in it later in the process. If there is a specific thing/person/setting that I need to study, or that I’m not as familiar with I do couple of A3’s full of studies of the subject.
I then either enlarge one of these thumbnails and work on a bigger version on paper or go straight to the scanner and continue working on the sketch digitally. I hone the sketch into a fairly tight rough sketch on my tablet monitor and Clip Studio Paint Pro.
Next, I start working on the digital inks in the same program, and then finally focus on the tonal variations & colours. Sometimes I reverse the process slightly and do a colour rough before the inks in order to see if the composition needs adjusting.
Before I started to use the computer and graphic tablet for the inking, I used a brush pen, or an actual sable brush dipped into India ink.
I still keep this approach in mind when doing the digital inks so that it has a similar logic/flow in the lines. I think it is really valuable to do both digital and analog work because both approaches have their own strengths and you learn more that way.
© Janne Iivonen, 2015