http://www.bjornlie.com
Commercial editorial - with NOBROW, they give a lot of creative freedom and care about how its printed.
Life as freelance is UNPREDICTABLE.
1 year ago he did some branding for a norwegian supermarket, they were really nice to work with and he cretaed illustrations for the baby range. He had just had a baby himself and was able to relate to it.
He likes to adopt his work and solve different problems, although sometimes feels like he’s spreading himself thin as he has many styles.
He has done occasional exhibits, and 4 picture books. They have a sense of longitivity, as every time they get released in another country or language they pop u again and again.
In 2008 his book came out in America, it is given a new life, while he feels with editorial it is “tomorrows chip wrapper”.
Character/ Humour / nostalgia/ nature.
a nostalgia for when hats were in fashion, when cars looked cool. A light hearted honour, characters are busy clusters.
He grew up in south Norway in the 80’s, it wasn’t very variable in people, with mainly middle class white people in the area. Anyone who looked different stood out like a sore thumb...he liked metal rockers and bikers.
Characters ....
aged 13 he drew comics about football, and created interesting characters. He created his own magazine called CRIME WAVE, a magazine about crime for those who commit crime. Lie even made uo his own cigarette adverts. He rolled up leaves from the garden to make the packages for them.
TWIST SISTER
MAD MAGAZINE
COLLECTING CARDS
HIP HOP CULTURE
GRAFFITTI
in 1989 the skating ban was lifted, even though he had imported a skate board from Finland, and he loved the graffiti and culture, it was like “a punch in the face”. Thats what he wanted his work to be like.
Him and his friends fantasised about living in the South Bronks, to create art and havoc... but alas they lived in quiet norway. From lonely sketching in his room, he was creating with friends. At school, there was no facilities or even art school.
He saw the Sandman comics, possibly the first photoshopped images .
In the late 90’s he went to Falmouth college of arts , as someone he knew when there and also applied to Birmingham. The man at Birmingham rushed through his work, and accepted him a place, however Falmouth spent an hour going through every piece and cross examining him.
Nostalgia - He had a summer job in a recycling centre and he came across some magazines from the 40s, a life time of collage! He was attracted to the naive optimism in the adverts.
After graduation, he went back to Oslo and landed upon sharing a studio with the BEST illustrators. He had to work full time in order to pay his studio fee.
He got a grant to visit to visit Yee Haw printing studio, where he worked for a few weeks and started a long relationship with them. He created greeting cards. He had to think about colous and how they worked when overlapped and then THE INTERNET ARRIVED and changed everything.
12 years ago he moved to Bristol, grimy, graffiti but missed the nature. He drew trees. He missed the seasons, there was no snow! No cross country skiing!
He was inspired by American culture, the surf culture -
Margret Killgardens.
He designed some bags for life for a supermarket in Spain.
A Finnish textile company, where he designed repeat pattern.
His second children’s book -
Slush Mountain. It is like a guided tour around a ski resort, as he found he’s not good at “
narrative, at drawing the same character over and over again”. He was inspired by old James Bond films, with chases and cars zooming past. He did 20 pages in 2 months, and by the end of it was “sick of painting”.
NOBROW gave him a call and had a brief of GODS AND MONSTERS, he created a picture based on norse mythology, Oden and Theris having a battle in a boxing ring. He used blue and black colours, as NOBROW only use limited pantone colours. It is a complicated way of working, thinking about opaqueness and opacities.
He created another book,
The Wolfs Whistle, where he was inspired by noir films and an exhibit in the Tate Modern about Post Modernism.
It is like a prequel to the 3 little pigs, where the pigs are the bad guys -slum landlords, proper tie developers and the wolf is a bloke just trying to find his place.
Lay your path of your career as you’re walking, as one project leads to another.
A restaurant called Jackson and Rye saw his book and asked him to design a concertina menu for them, he had a vague floor plan and designed lots of characters for them.
PERSONAL WORK IS IMPORTANT FOR WELLBEING AND EXPERIMENTATION.
You can make mistakes, there’s no deadlines, mess up, learn!
He is using a technique where he cuts into the papers surface with a scalpel, and using charcoal or pastels, he rubs in slightly, giving an airbrushed effect. With stencil cutting, if there’s a mistake, you have to incorporate it and enjoy the mark making.
He drew some botanical studies, inspired by Ernst Haeckel. Daiz, an Australian fashion company, asked if they could use the prints for shirts. An email from a friend who had just released a vinyl record asked if he had any work he’d like to give for the cover - flowers!
A german teeshirt company also saw the work and printed it on teeshirts. From the drawings, he also was approached to create labels for Scarlett Spritzer, featuring a prehistoric duck.
The art director of the New York times (Alexandra) asked him to create an editorial per ice for an article about opiets.
Another picture book, a Norwegian publisher, approached with a melancholy script about a boy who’s friend moves away and how he deals with loneliness. He used 3 colours, working in blue, red and black.
He combined the look of agent guard Russian 20s style and Japanese block prints, which he was attracted to because of their luminous quality.
He looked at Eric Ravilious, and how he used compositions to lead the eye through an image. It was a challenge as Lie had to hammer out a pace, and he made each page have a different viewpoint.
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| Detail. |
Because of a few miscommunications, he had barely any time to create it and had multiple projects on at the same time. Because the publishers are funded for one book year, he had to produce it ASAp as then that would waste the funding for that year. He did it with only 2 months.
He uses A3 research sheets, where he googles up reference pictures and has them open, to study reflections on water say.
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| Showing the combination of images, the carousel and animals, in the scalpel pastel method. |
Lie wishes that his work could be looser and simple, which is so amusing because his work flows and has shapes within it that almost needs the slowing down of tactile movement. He fights the natural urge to tighten up, and to go back and tweak. He wishes to be inhibited and not overwork images.
STAY HUNGRY
Do you have an agent?
[“I did, but not at the moment. I recommend it for starting out. When I arrived in Brostol 2004, I worked for a business magazine which was too dry. I got other contacts directly, but try to communicate.]”
How do you get your clients and how do you promote yourself?
["I don’t really promote myself, i’m mostly online with my own website. I did have a blog but it fell out of use, and I’ve gone off tumblr. Instagram is a good platform.
One time i did direct mail outs, I sent ages on them and only got one reply...”]
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| some sketches from his work i did. |
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| yayaya got an autograph :3 |
