Shop details:

Kickstarter campaign

My books

Wall calendars

Art prints

Other products

Originals

My Finnish shop

Copyrights and work:

Image use & licensing

Commissions, projects, etc

Anti-AI policy

Art process and tools:

Art tools and techniques

My camera

Kickstarter campaign

A new, expanded edition of my art book Woodlands will launch on Kickstarter in August 2026. The campaign will also introduce my 2027 Calendar. (Note: the calendar and Woodlands feature completely separate collections of my art.) You can already visit the campaign page and follow the project by clicking “Notify me on launch”. All details of the campaign will be published on that page when the campaign goes live, but here are some answers to most common questions:

As the main reward you’ll receive a hardcover copy of my Woodlands expanded edition art book. The original version of the book was first published in 2018 but has been sold out for several years now. This new 2026 edition of the book will include all the art and poetry from the first edition, along with more than 30 additional pages of my newer art in the same style, ink paintings and coloured pencils.
Optionally, you’ll be able to choose a bundle with the Woodlands hardcover book and my 2027 Calendar, or both of my art books as hardcover copies (Woodlands + Faraway Dreaming) – or, all three items, if you like.
My 2027 wall calendar is printed in full color and includes all-new fantasy art for each month (these calendar illustrations are not featured in Woodlands or any of my earlier books). Update: Monday-first and Sunday-first layout options will both be available in the Kickstarter campaign!
My art books and calendars are published by Atthis Arts (Detroit, Michigan) and printed in the USA. Atthis Arts is also in charge of Kickstarter fulfilment, shipping my books and calendars, as well as website sales afterwards.
Yes, international shipping will be available within the Kickstarter campaign.
Note for international buyers: The Kickstarter campaign will actually provide more budget friendly shipping, compared to if you wait and order from the regular web store afterwards. For example, if you are in Europe and plan to order my Woodlands book (or both the book and the calendar), I warmly recommend getting them via the Kickstarter!
US orders will of course be affordable either way (in Kickstarter or afterwards), since the items will be shipped from the US in both cases.
Confirmed details on shipping will be available once the Kickstarter campaign launches. You’ll be able to check everything from the campaign page before making a pledge.
All backers will also receive a bundle of digital rewards! These will include some of the book’s contents in digital format, as well as several campaign-exclusive bonus rewards (in various formats such as text, video, image), created by me. More info about the bonus rewards will be provided as the campaign goes live. And the further the campaign funding goes, the more digital surprises we’ll be able to unlock.
Joining the campaign is also possible without getting any physical items shipped. There will be a $1 (or pay what you can) reward available, which will allow access to all the digital downloads.

My books

WOODLANDS

A new, expanded edition of my art book Woodlands will launch on Kickstarter in August 2026! Visit the campaign page for more info, and make sure to click the “Notify me on launch” button so you won’t miss it! The Kickstarter campaign is run by my publisher Atthis Arts, and worldwide shipping is available.

FARAWAY DREAMING

My art book Faraway Dreaming was released in 2026, published by Atthis Arts.

Hardcover: The original original hardcover edition of Faraway Dreaming (with high quality materials and traditional offset printing) is currently available from the publisher’s online shop in USA, and it ships worldwide. Additionally, Faraway Dreaming will be available in the upcoming Kickstarter campaign in August 2026, where you can order it together with my art book Woodlands. The Kickstarter campaign will provide a bit more budget-friendly shipping options for my books.

Paperback: We have decided to discontinue the paperback edition for now, due to quality issues and inconsistency with Amazon’s print-on-demand service that was in charge of manufacturing the paperback copies. This means that the book is no longer available from Amazon, sorry.

Audiobook: There is also a musical audiobook version of the story, which can be found on Bandcamp, Spotify, and Apple Music. The audiobook is performed by George Montrelle and it is based on the original text written by me.

Booksellers and publishers: If you are interested in selling the Faraway Dreaming book, please contact the publisher Atthis Arts.

MY SELF-PUBLISHED BOOKS

My older self-published books Tiny Black Fox, A Month of Ink and Dusk Magic Colouring Art Book are currently sold out and out of print. If any of these books become available in the future, you will find that information right here on my website!

OTHER BOOKS WITH MY ILLUSTRATIONS

In addition to creating my own books, I’ve also illustrated various fantasy books, chilren’s books, book covers, etc for other writers and publishers. You can find them listed here. If you have questions about a particular book’s availability, I recommend contacting the publisher of the book you’re interested in.

Wall calendars

My 2027 Calendar is published by Atthis Arts (USA). The calendar will be available for order as part of the Woodlands Kickstarter launching this summer (note: even though they are featured in the same Kickstarter, the calendar and Woodlands feature completely separate collections of my art). The Kickstarter campaign will provide better shipping options for international buyers. Click “Notify me on launch” at the Woodlands campaign to be the first to know when the calendar is available!

The calendar will also be available directly from the publisher’s website (based in the US), with worldwide shipping. Please note though, that international orders from the publisher’s site will include higher shipping fees.

If you are planning to get both, my art book and my calendar, I warmly recommend ordering from the Kickstarter campaign. The Kickstarter campaign will also let you choose which calendar layout you prefer: Monday-first or Sunday-first weeks. It is likely that a limited number of both versions will be available for purchase after the campaign as well, but ordering via the Kickstarter guarantees that you’ll get the version you prefer.

Art prints

My art prints are nowadays available from INPRNT and Printler. More info and links below! Please note that I’m not personally in charge of the print production, sales, or shipping on these print-on-demand shops, and I don’t have access to your order or customer information. If you need help with your order, please contact the customer service of the shop in question.

INPRNT

The largest selection of my art prints and posters can be found on INPRNT. Their production takes place in the United States, and worldwide shipping is available. The fine art prints are gallery-quality giclée art prints on 100% cotton rag archival paper, printed with archival inks. Both framed and unframed options are available in various print sizes. Inprint also offers my art as posters and canvas prints.

PRINTLER

If you’d like to get my prints shipped from EU, there’s Printler. Printler is a print-on-demand company based in the European Union, and they offer posters, canvas prints and framed fine art prints. The print production for the European market takes place in Sweden, and for the US market their prints are produced in the US.

Printler ships to all countries inside the European Union + Norway, Switzerland, UK, and USA. To get shipping options to your country during checkout, you need to be using your local version of the site (links below) when you add items to cart.

Shop my prints on your local version of the Printler site:
Austria • Belgium • Belgium (fr) • Czech Republic • Denmark • Finland • France • Germany • Hungary • Ireland • Italy • Netherlands • Norway • Poland • Portugal • Slovakia • Spain • Sweden • Switzerland • United Kingdom • United States

Other products

Society6 is a print-on-demand shop that offers various home decor and stationery products with my illustrations, such as posters, wall tapestries, jigsaw puzzles, notebooks, zipper pouches, desk mats, tote bags, etc. Society6 is based in the USA and they ship orders only to the United States. Note: My fine art prints and framed prints have moved from Society6 to INPRNT and Printler!

Please note that I’m not personally in charge of the Society6 website, production, sales, or shipping, and I don’t have access to any of the customer information or orders. If you have any questions about the Society6 shop or need help with your order, please contact the Society6 customer support, linked on the Society6 website.

Originals

My original works are available for sale every now and then, mostly in my own Finnish pop-up shop (details below). I don’t currently ship original artworks outside Finland, sorry! If I start planning an international original art sale at any point in the future, I will announce it here and on my social media.

My Finnish shop

My Finnish pop-up shop ships orders within Finland only. The shop is closed at the moment.

Kotimainen tuotemyyntini on päättynyt 1.12.2025 ja jää tauolle toistaiseksi. Tällä hetkellä minulla ei vielä ole suunnitelmia kaupan uudelleen avaamisesta, mutta sitten jos myyntiin tulee taas sopiva hetki jossain vaiheessa myöhemmin, ilmoittelen asiasta täällä ja some-kanavissani. Julisteita, taideprinttejä, taidekirjoja ja kalentereita on edelleen saatavissa ulkomaisista verkkokaupoista, jotka toimittavat myös Suomeen. Löydät kaikki linkit täältä.

Image use & licensing

Please do not publish, repost or copy any of my images (or parts of them), unless I have personally given you written permission for the image use. All my artworks, illustrations, designs, photography and product photos are protected by copyright and may not be used for any purpose without my permission.

Publishing rights or other permissions to images are typically only given to commission clients and others who have made a contract with me and paid a licensing fee. I am not currently available for discussion on new permission or licensing agreements, sorry. If you don’t already have my permission to use the image in question, please don’t use it.

I do not consent to any of my work being used to train AI. Unauthorized use or reproduction for the purpose of training machine learning or generative AI models is strictly prohibited without express written consent.

Additional notes:
• You are welcome to share my social media posts by using the social media’s original share or reblog/repost button. Please do not download, copy or screenshot my images in order to repost. If there is no share/reblog/repost button on the original post, it means you are not allowed to share the content.
• If you buy a physical item (like a wall tapestry, book, print, etc), it’s OK to share your own photograph of the purchase on your social media. Adding artist credits would be nice!
• Books are naturally protected by copyright too, so you should always ask the permission from the book’s publisher before sharing any of a book’s interior contents online.
• I don’t currently sell tattoo designs or tickets.
• I never sell my work as NFTs. If you ever see my art offered as NFTs, it’s a scam – meaning that they illegally stole my work.

Anti-AI policy

All my work is human made. I do not use generative artificial intelligence (AI) in any part of my creative process.

Commissions, projects, etc

Please note that I am not currently available for new clients or projects (including commissions, collaborations, freelance work, licensing, etc). Whenever I have time to discuss these topics again, I will update this info page!

Also, beware of scammers. I don’t randomly approach strangers, and I don’t initiate discussions about commission projects or about selling my art in private messages. My official email is info (at) ullathynell (dot) com, and my social media handle is ullathynell (instagram, facebook, tumblr, deviantart, pinterest). Before agreeing to any deals, make sure that the message/comment/post is actually from my official email/account. Then always double check that the spelling is exactly correct, before replying anything. There might be scammers out there trying to impersonate me.

Art tools and techniques

There’s no quick or easy answer to the question “which art medium do you use” – it depends on the piece. I have worked with many different techniques and styles, including (but not limited to) these:

– Calligraphy ink paintings
– Alcohol ink paintings
– Watercolour paintings
– Acrylic paintings
– Black & white ink drawings
– Gel pen drawings
– Pencil drawings
– Colour pencil drawings
– Mixed media paintings and drawings (traditional tools only)
– Mixed media paintings and drawings (various combinations of traditional and digital tools)
– Sketchbook work with varied drawing and painting tools
– Animations using various different traditional drawing and painting tools and/or drawing tablet, with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Animate (previously Flash) and/or Premiere Pro

I like to modify my style, techniques and tools based on what is available or which style suits best with whatever idea or project I’m working on. Some of the techniques that are great for personal and more intuitive or experimental artwork, may not be suitable for commissions that require lots of pre-planning. I’m also often curious to try doing things a little differently than before to see where it leads me. Spontaneous experiments and variation keeps things alive and interesting! I sometimes talk a bit about my art process on my blog – you can find those articles over here.

Please note that whenever I mention the tools I use, it doesn’t necessarily mean that would recommend them to others. I’m writing this because I get asked these things a lot. However, I’m not an art teacher, and this FAQ article is not an art tutorial – I’m simply listing some tools that I’ve used myself, and not all those are or were wise decisions at all. If you’re looking for the most practical/suitable/affordable/sustainable materials for a certain technique, I recommend that you search for actual tutorials on some other websites (anything that states it’s meant for educational purposes), or attend some art classes, or read some books on the subject. You can often find most accurate information at art tool manufacturers’ websites, or by asking your questions at an art shop where you buy your tools. Lots of my work includes impulsive or random experimenting with various different tools/materials/techniques and combinations of them, and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. So proceed with caution and at your own risk. (:

These are some of the tools I’ve used:

Drawings: For black & white drawings I mostly use Micron pigment ink pens (check out this post about drawing with black ink pens on my instagram). For colour drawings I use various tools but most often Caran d’Ache Luminance 6901 colour pencils or Sakura Gelly Roll Moonlight gel pens. Some of my drawings are mixed media (with ink, markers, gel pens, colour pencils, etc). Sometimes I color my black ink drawings digitally in Photoshop (such as the illustrations in my book Faraway Dreaming), combining hand painted textures with them.

Watercolours: I haven’t done that much watercolour work in the past few years. In the past when I did watercolors regularly, I often used Schmincke watercolour pans, along with various other brands. I use masking fluid to create negative space or highlights. With watercolors I prefer 300 gsm heavyweight, textured watercolour paper. Check out this instagram post for some behind-the-scenes photos! I also once wrote an article about watercolour illustration, which was published in Graphite issue 06.

Ink paintings: I make two different types of ink paintings, using either calligraphy ink or alcohol ink. I typically used mixed media with my paintings, drawing the details with various ink pens, gel pens, or (most often) with coloured pencils. My favourite colour pencil series is Caran d’Ache Luminance 6901. Some of my ink paintings are fully traditional media, but sometimes, especially for illustration projects, I combine ink painting and coloured pencils with digital editing (Photoshop).

For calligraphy ink paintings I use Zeichentusche ink bottles from Rohrer & Klingner with textured watercolour papers. R&K inks are also great for detailed painting with a paintbrush. They feel somewhat similar to watercolours, but the difference is that the ink will become permanent, and inks give you darker and more saturated colours than watercolour. Read more about my calligraphy ink paintings in this instagram post.

For my alcohol ink paintings I’ve used Copic Various Ink (marker refills). This medium is quite experimental and somewhat controversial for painting due to various reasons (discussed in detail in this blog article), so I don’t automatically recommend it, especially if you’re a beginner, or looking for an affordable and sustainable medium to work with. You can find most of my alcohol ink paintings in my art book Woodlands. You can watch some process videos with alcohol ink painting in this instagram posts.

Papers: I use a lot of different paper types, depending on the medium and size of the piece, or what I happen to have available at the time. It’s really impossible to name a single brand or type of paper because I change them so often. But generally speaking, for watercolour and calligraphy ink paintings I usually prefer natural white 100% cotton 300gsm rough textured watercolour paper, from brands like Sennelier or Fabriano, and sometimes I also use Hahnemühle Bamboo 265gsm paper, which is a more fragile and soft paper type (gives lovely mellow texture, but don’t use this with masking fluid). For my experimental paintings with alcohol inks I use smooth drawing papers between 200–300gsm.

Sketchbook: If you are wondering about the little square sketchbooks with rounded corners that I often use: I previously had Royal Talens Art Creation sketchbooks for several years (most of my black and white ink drawings were done on these), however I kept having recurring problems with the sketchbooks’ durability (the binding was weak and pages got loose), so nowadays I’m using a very similar 12×12 cm and 9×14 cm Sakura Sketch/Note Books, and they seem to be a bit more sturdy. What comes to tools that I use with sketchbook work – it varies a lot (you can find a collection of my sketchbook work from over the years on this pinterest board)! From Micron ink pens, to opaque gel pens, alcohol markers, coloured pencils, watercolours or calligraphy inks, and different combinations of all these tools. Currently I’m doing a lot of colour drawings on my sketchbook with Sakura GellyRoll Moonlight pens (here’s an instagram post where I talk about my gel pen drawings and here’s one of my blog articles on the same subject). Additionally, I tend to shop whatever off-brand gel pens I come across at the supermarket, so I mix and match the different brands as needed.

Digital and mixed media: While a large portion of my work are entirely or mostly handmade drawings and paintings, I also do a ton of traditional+digital mixed media artwork. Often this means that I first draw a black & white illustration traditionally, then add colour to it digitally, sometimes using hand painted elements to add texture (this is the technique I used in my book Faraway Dreaming). I also sometimes create more painterly “tradigital” illustrations with a complex technique where I paint and draw several separate pieces/elements traditionally, and then scan, combine and edit the layers digitally. I mainly use Adobe Photoshop for digital editing. Check out this post on my instagram for more details about my “tradigital” mixed media work.

Animations: I’ve been doing animations every now and then since around 2013 (mostly just for fun). I don’t do animations very often, but when I do, I usually do some frame-by-frame animation in Photoshop (and previously also in Adobe Animate, or Adobe Flash as it was called at the time), and for programmed animation effects I mainly use After Effects.

My anti AI statement: I’m a human artist creating illustrations with my own brain and hands, and I do not use generative artificial intelligence (AI) in any part of my creative process. I’m somewhat old school: I have been drawing for many decades before generative AI ever even came into existence (I learned to draw back in the 80’s and 90’s). I started my professional career in illustration in early 2010’s, working with traditional media only, such as watercolour paintings and pencil drawings. A couple years later I also started doing traditional+digital mixed media illustrations, and photography.

My camera

I use Canon EOS 6D digital camera and two Sigma Art f/1.4 A DG HSM lenses: 24 mm and 50 mm. I especially love taking phots with wide aperture during the long hours of the northern dusk, just before and after sunset. I photograph with RAW image mode and usually edit my photos in Photoshop / Camera Raw, and for video editing I use Premiere Pro. I’ve written an article about night sky photography in my blog, you can find it here.