These photos are called “Docile” and “Gimmethetreatgimmethetreatalready!!!”

Some old and one new coloring pages for kids! They aren’t my best work but some might like them :)

In Finnish for the googlers: VÄRITYSKUVIA!

Clicky!
Olavi Uusivirta, Tavastia 02.12.2010
Risto, Tavastia 02.12.2010

Woops! Took me a while to update again. I just can’t seem to find my inner enthusiastic blogger anymore. I’ve done this for years and years and at some point I actually had to keep myself from updating several times a day. What was going on back then? I don’t think I had anymore exciting thoughts and trips and gigs and stuff going on in my life than I have now. Or maybe I did. Maybe I’m just living in this fantasy world now, thinking I’ve got sooo many things going on I just don’t have the time to write about them.

Right.

But yes. Stuff has been going on. Aside from my usual animal-abuse-worrying, desperate-future-planning, insane-vampire-related-book-devouring home life I’ve actually gone out too. I spent a weekend with Jutta at Fiskars, photographing stuff for the village itself and to a lovely restaurant. Imagine! How perfect is this: they make a delicious dish of heavenly food, I take a few shots of it AND get to eat it! I think that’s awesome. (I think I’m going to start photographing vodka bottles next, and beautiful houses in California, some silkie chickens and Adrien Brody. You know. To get to keep them afterwards.)

Ok, so just visit Fiskars if you have the chance. It’s just a wonderful, beautiful place that not enough people know of.

Last week I went to see this artist I really like (he’s called Olavi Uusivirta – very Finnish), to take some live photos. Bumped into some guys I was working with this summer, one thing led to another, and soon I realized I was suffering a 2-day hangover. Outrageous! Not fair! After all, we were just singing and dancing until 9am next morning..

I really don’t like getting old. It sucks! My mind’s still 16. Why is my body twice the age?! Grrr.

Yesterday was fun too! Me and Satu, we went to see Green Day play “live” in a movie theatre, on the big big screen. Well, as we learned afterwards, the gig wasn’t actually a live broadcast from Germany, but we might have thought so.. It was so very odd to watch a band on stage without dancing, singing (well I did some yodling along), clapping, shouting “YEAH!!”, stagediving (honestly, we do that a lot – not), rushing into the first row (that we sometimes do). Instead of all that usual stuff we ate popcorn and did some happy giggling.

It was all very NOT rock’n'roll, but as I said earlier, also very comfortable for the elderly such as us.

After coming home from the “gig” I went out to take some photos, and later had to update my Facebook status with the following message:

After spending more than an hour photographing up-to-my-knees-SNOW in the dark, for fun, fingers toes frozen blue, I realized once again I’m doing something I truly love. And it’s my job too! Utterly fantastic.

So, that’s some nice stuff – liking my job. The results of my snowy adventure can be found here: Meanwhile In Finland – photo gallery

A fun link for the day: A very, VERY funny story about dogs not understanding basic concepts – might even be funny to non-dog owners. Excellent usage of MS Paint!
A movie link for the day: Cowboys & Aliens (trailer) – can you believe it? Cowboys and Aliens, and it’s exactly that! Seems so bad it must be good.
A love AND a music link for the day: Matt Cardle sings Knights in White Satin. Yes, knights. I have no idea why they haven’t corrected the title yet. Anyway. He’s going to be my X Factor boyfriend, just as Adrien Brody is going to be my Hollywood boyfriend. (I do think I will be needing several Hollywood categories to fit all my actor-y loves, but I’ll figure that out later.)

Well, THERE! Two weeks’ worth of updating. And LINKS! I hope you weren’t foolish enough to actually click on all of them. Quite nonsensy. (Is a word now!)

Went to a cruise with Satu on Thursday. Had a lot of fun. Wore a few wigs. Loved the Poets of the Fall gig (when do we not?). Took a few photos.

Yes. I really need more models. Too much of me.

For our photo project Shutter Eye Land. Varssoguu, as they might say in Swedish. Well not really.

I need someone to tell me to finish my children’s book. Really. I need someone to kick my ass (we really use that expression in Finnish not for violence, but for when someone is encouraging, almost forcing you to do something when you yourself are too lazy to do it) when I stop drawing and writing it.

I’ve had this story in my head since I was 18 or so. FIFTEEN YEARS I’ve known it, the whole plot, the main characters and their adventures in a strange fantasy land. Back then, I actually had 12 paintings ready for it, but I sold them since I was young and stupid and needed the money. The pictures were framed and all, and I was working for this.. I guess you could call it a media study group. There were also some theater folks working alongside of us, and they did a fun trip to Ireland to do a few plays and meet some local colleagues. They took me with them, and I had a couple of short art exhibitions featuring my paintings. And me, telling the whole story to groups of people.

I think the best memory of those storytelling sessions was this old, lovely couple who came to tell me they had visited Finland 10 years earlier and that my style of painting reminded them of Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Whhaaat! I took it as a huge compliment, although I still can’t see how they made that connection. I mean really.

On our way back to Finland, I lost a couple of those paintings – I still have no idea if they’re hanging on someone’s wall or if they were just destroyed as suspicious packages at some airport.

After that, I had an exhibition at a library in Helsinki – the kids’ department librarians actually told me it’s amazing they haven’t been published, and wondered how I never offered them to any publishing house. So that gave me a bit of courage to actually think of doing so. Now I just need the backbone to paint everything again and do it.

I don’t mind selling / losing the pictures anymore, cause I think some of them weren’t good enough anyway. But it’s fun to think about – what if I’d finished the story back then and someone actually published it? Would I now be a happy author, making a living by painting and drawing these characters or a dozen others?

Who knows. As Tuitu says, you must not regret the life you’ve lived. I agree – there’s nothing I can do about the past anyway.

So, now. I have to start working on this. I don’t know if anyone is gonna like it, or publish it, but at least I’d get some peace of mind. I’ve set a schedule now, let’s see if I can keep it or do I really need someone to KICK MY ASS.

I’ll drown my beliefs, to have your babies
I’ll dress like your niece, and wash your swollen feet

Just don’t leave, don’t leave

I’m not living, I’m just killing time
Your tiny hands, your crazy kitten smile

Just don’t leave, don’t leave

And true love waits
In haunted attics
And true love lives
On lollipops and crisps

Radiohead, Friday, an attic and a friend. See why it was done. See what inspired it.

So, in a few weeks, I can officially demand an IMDb page for myself. Movie still photographers can have one, right? I hope so, since it’s secretly been one of my goals in life, just like getting one tiny photo published by Natural Geography – ok, I wouldn’t mind them publishing more than one. You gotta aim high you know?

Veijarit the movie is coming out in December. You can book tickets here, and see a couple of photos I took. The quality’s not quite as good as in the originals, but even the originals could be better – 450D just couldn’t handle all the darkness. Wish I had my 5DmkII back then already! Well, next time. There’s always the next time. Better equipment makes things easier, I give you that, even if it doesn’t make you a better photographer in any other way.

In other news: Tarja & Cristiano got married today. YAY! I went to take a few photos & to have an afternoon wedding meal with them and a few friends. Good fun. And now I’m off to take some artsy fartsy photos in an old attic – this one’s for our photo assignment of the week. It’s related to certain song lyrics. Luckily, I have Jenni to do all the posing, since I hate self-portra.. no wait, I generally hate being in front of the camera.

Hence the being behind it.

Off now, ta-ta, write to you later!