This has been a tough couple of weeks in many ways. And it’s not helped by the fact that one of my idols, Frank Frazetta, passed away a couple of days ago.

Speaking of idols, Samwise Didier (Wikipedia article, Profile on Sons of the Storm) is probably the one artist who has had the most influence on my own development as an artist. I remember as a kid spending hours just staring at the illustrations in the Warcraft 2 manual, meticulously copying the drawings and dreaming of the day when, maybe I too, would be skilled enough to draw just like my idol and namesake “Sam”. I was about half way thru this painting when I realized that I was drawing something i had seen before.

And that is when I saw how everything was connected.

I often talk about how I try to tell a story with the symbolism in my images, but sometimes I feel like I don’t really control what ends up on the canvas. That the images I draw are more of a creation of my subconcious and not really the result of some master plan. It is certainly true that nothing I draw turns up the way I intended it from the beginning. I struggle with this issue a lot and it’s largely my inexperience and lack of talent as an artist which leads to this. But part of it is simply because I allow myself to go where my subconcious tell me to go. So it’s become more and more clear to me that my work probably to some degree is reflecting my inner wishes and desires or whatever it is my mind currently happens to be preoccupied with. So when I connected the dots from my idol and namesake (and some other symbolism which I leave as an exercise for the reader to figure out :P) to this painting I realized that this image was really about me. Specifically, I imagined that the more human character was me and the more brutish “lizard” was the demon/s I’ve been fighting. And I gave the painting the title: “Uphill Battle” because that is exactly what it illustrates, in more ways than one, it is an allegory for that battle which I have been fighting for the past few weeks and months.

The question is, if that flash bomb is supposed to be my last hope to win my metaphorical battle, then what exactly does it represent? I would very much like to know.

I created a time-lapse video series which show how I painted this painting. You can watch all five episodes here.

I have been incubating this image in my head ever since I returned from my trip to Asia. I was inspired by the religious Hindu art I saw in Singapore and Malaysia to draw a deity in the same style. Now, I should mention that while it is not unusual for me to “get inspired” by various things, this is one of those things that just sort of stuck in my head for the longest time. The problem I had was that while it was a very strong feeling of inspiration I felt, the image in my head was not forming into anything tangible. But then about a week ago I started sketching on a picture of Ganesha and at first I was not very happy with it as I felt I was reinventing the wheel so to speak by drawing an image of a deity that has been depicted thousands of times in the past in every conceivable style and pose. And that is when I realized that what I wanted to create was not a traditional Hindu deity, but one of my own imagination. And once I had come to that realization, the image of a Hindu/Buddhist deity with the head of a elk was not very far away.

I wanted to tie the image to my own Finnish roots so the elk seemed like a perfect fit seeing that a special kind of elk, The Elk of “Hiisi” (Finnish: Hiiden Hirvi), is featured in the tales of the national epic Kalevala. Hiiden Hirvi was a powerful elk created by the forest deities known as “Hiisi” from the life essence of the forest. “Hiisi” literally means “a sacred place of worship” but is also the name of the spirits that live in these places. In the story the hero has to capture this elk alive to prove himself worthy to marry the daughter of Louhi (Mistress of Pohjola).

I used my sketch of Ganesha as a base and kept the dancing pose but added a couple extra arms (Hiiden Hirvi is said to have six legs, I figure six arms is just as good) and invented my own Mudras for the hands. I replaced Ganesha’s famous broken tusk with a broken piece of horn and replaced Ganeshas favourite fruit with a Karelian pasty which I think is the perfect Finnish-Asian-cross-over-food (rye bread with rice filling). Once I had these key features everything else just fell into place naturally.

Karelian pasty! :D Om nom nom nom!

You might be thinking that it doesn’t look much like an elk/moose though (besides the horns). This is due to that special ingredient that I like to add to my art which I call “The WHAT THE F*CK Component”. This is also the reason why I can’t draw a normal bellybutton or cover up man-boobs (what can I say? I love drawing nipples). I mean why is he crying and smiling at the same time? I have no idea. I just flow with the ideas I get in my head. In general, what my imagination comes up with is very dependent on what music I am listening to when I paint. When it comes to the weirdness here, the album Silent Shout by The Knife comes to mind (Spotify playlist). I like listening to this when I paint late at night, and just immense myself in the dark black echoes from the deep forests of the North.