Dragon Hills is one of my older illustrations, with a classic fantasy theme inspired by fantasy maps and fairy tales. The piece is featured in my art book Faraway Dreaming, along with my other mixed media work from 2015–2025. It’s also available as posters and prints from Printler (Europe & USA)!
This illustration originates from a black and white ink sketch I made in 2017. It was one of the sunny days at our family’s cabin at the island, I was sitting on the tiny beach in front of the cabin and drawing in of my little square sketchbooks.
At the time I had worked as a book illustrator for some years and had created all kinds of imaginary maps in fantasy books as a part of my job. I always loved the nostalgic vibe and charming details in fantasy maps, so I think Dragon Hills was a celebration of that theme.
I really liked the sketch so I made a full colour version of it in Photoshop. I use my own handpainted watercolour or ink elements together with the digital tools whenever I want to give my digitally coloured pieces some of that gritty, earthy texture that you get with traditional paintings. Digital editing allows fixing a few details here and there and making slightly different versions of the image to suit different print products.But for the most part I like to leave the line art as it is. The soul of the drawing sometimes gets lost if you polish it too much.
I often decide to use small scale drawings as a base for my illustrations. I really enjoy the sketchy look, the tiny imperfections and the fact that when you look at the detail you can tell the artwork was made by hand. Sometimes people are curious how can you make a larger print of a small drawing: There’s no problem as long as the digital image file that you create is large enough. This requires using a scanner that allows scanning your drawing with very high resolution (around 1600 dpi).
Images & artwork © Ulla Thynell.