I've always been whiny about cold winters, even though I am a Norwegian living in Greece I still hate the winters here with cold wind blowing through your bones. As summer usually arrive with full power around mid may, we got a visitor from my girlfriend’s aunt, and we took the opportunity to visit one of the islands that are to be found close to Athens, Aegina.



Aegina is to be found straight south of Athens, and in the old days this island used to contain the capital of Greece. Guess it made more sense back then to have the capital easily accessible and defendable from the sea. Two things I love about this island is that it is really close to Athens, only 45 minutes with a normal ferry, and my all time favourite ancient temple ruin are to be found here.



We rented some lame scooters (will get some more powerful ones next time) and explored the island, which can be exciting as the roads are not exactly in perfect state, hehe.
After hunting down a gas station, we went to check out the local temple, the sanctuary of Aphaia which is the coolest Greek ruin I’ve ever seen. I’ve been here before, and this was one of the main reasons I wanted to go back. The Acropolis is impressive and all that, but there’s just something about this temple and how it’s in the middle of nowhere on the top of a beautiful hill with amazing panoramic view that makes this place stand out to me. It was build around 490 BC, and it’s really interesting to think about how it may have been here back then when the inhabitants of Aegina island went here to worship Aphaia, the nymph who was though of as the daughter of Zeus.



After relaxing and doing some shopping in Aegina city, we travelled on a larger ferry back home while taking dozens of pictures of all the seagulls that were following the ship. This was a nice little one-day trip that really made me relax and appreciate living in Greece. Guess that by living in busy Athens and working too much is not good, so some small drips of spice is important to keep inspiration fed.

I hereby declare summer started ;-)

Well, things have been busy lately, and it sure looks as if things will get even busier during the upcoming week. At work we are preparing for the E3 convention to do some business with our game (www.darkfallonline.com), and this requires art to be presented. After working hours I am currently writing for ImagineFX, which I really enjoy doing, and illustration another batch of trading cards for Fantasy Flight Games. I also have some other things in the works (like illustration the cover for the next album one of my favourite bands, yay!), but they are not as urgent as the other things. Looks as if I need my superman costume and get on with it. Funny how things always seem to arrive at the same time, it’s probably a conspiracy, I tell ya!

I've also started another personal piece, but this will have to wait.

I borrowed an Intuos 2 tablet from work, as I just figured out that my old Intuos 1 is starting to get old, like 7, or 8 years or so. If I notice any big difference, I might save up for an Intuos 3 as I tend to spend more time on my Wacom than anywhere else.

By the way, I found this lovely picture the other day of a good friend of mine and myself. I am the one with the out of control hairdo. Don't mock me, I had the exact same hair cut as my mother and I don't believe there are many guys out there being THAT brave! Aaaah... 1993, those were the times, 18 years old and no worries.



Oh, and that’s a cheese doodle up my nose...

Yesterday I realised that I've never ever painted pointy elf ears, even though I call myself a fantasy artist. For some reason I found that fact kind of funny, hehe... I wonder for how long I will manage.

Since my last post, lots of things has happened. I have a couple of new paintings done, and another one is close to completion. I will hopefully be able to wrap it up this weekend.

The editor of Imagine FX allowed me to post old articles I've written for them (the Q+A answers from readers) on my website. I will update this on a monthly basis as soon as the articles gets a couple of months old. I just posted the articles from issue#1 of Imagine FX.
Yesterday I got issue #3 of the magazine, and I got to see my workshop and interview. I was kinda nervous about this issue, but their writer really did a great job making this old geek sound as if he has a life ;-)

Well, back to the drawing table, even though I'm not feeling 100% after going out last night painting Athens red with my girlfriend and some colleagues.

I have to say that the portfolio feature from CGSociety seem to work very, very nicely! Can't wait to see what will happen around here as this thing develops :-)

I've been very busy lately with my fulltime job working on the MMORPG game Darkfall, and extra projects for Fantasy Flight Games, and for Future Publishings magazine Imagine FX. I haven't had much time for personal projects at all, but now it seems like I have managed to get most of it out of the way and I am finally back painting on a piece that was due to completion a long time ago :-)

Another thing is that I've finally gottem myself a decent computer. Until now I've been working on a very crappy lap-top with 15" screen and 512 MB RAM. It was simply stupid waiting for lines to show when drawing in Photoshop and getting bluescreens all the time. The new kit looks a little pimped, but that doesn't really matter, the most important thing is that I now have a good computer and a 19" screen, which feels like a football-field compared to the old computer. Finally I get more freedom in creating my art :-)

See you around!