The Helkavirsiä cover

The finished cover for Helkavirsiä

I was asked to paint the cover for Helkavirsiä, a comic anthology drawn by several artists. All the comics are based on works of Eino Leino, a famed Finnish poet. Most of his poeatry is tied into Finnish folklore and the themes are very dark. The artists drawing the comic are some of Finland's best. The likes of Petri Hiltunen (who's brainchild the whole comic is), Tuomas Myllylä, Katja Louhio and Vesa Vitikainen. The album will be out fall of 2015 from Arktinen Banaani, so be sure to check it out :)

Now onto the cover! Petri Hiltunen posted me the original cover of the book Helkavirret and asked for my interpretation of it. He just wanted it to be as gritty and bloody.

The original cover.

We suspected that the cover was connected to the poem about Ylermi, so I worked with the story where Ylermi kills his wife and child. In my image the ghosts are haunting him in the most loving manner.

At first I tried staying very true to the cover but was never really happy with it. I felt that the image was somewhat corny and was very far from what I wanted to portray. So on the last minute I just started from the scratch. Here are the steps to the final cover :)

Original line art. My boyfriend drew the clother of Ylermi as I had no idea how an outfit in that era Finland would work.

Flats

Fleshing out the cover but I was not happy

So I drew it again

WIP