About

“Art is not a skill, it’s a way of life.”

My name is Anne Koivumäki and I’m an artist from Finland. I have drawn my whole life, always a pen in my hand. When I was little, my biggest idol in drawing was my Mom. I wanted to become as good as her. So I draw and paint almost all the time. With my cousin we drew our own paper dolls before we started to play. At school I was constantly scribbling something in my notebooks. Art has really be a way of life to me. I don’t consider myself especially gifted or anything. I’ve just practiced a lot.

I didn’t attend any art school until after High School, although that school was not any traditional art school many people think of. My father introduced me to Industrial Design. It sounded nice combination of engineering and art, so I went to University of Applied Sciences at Turku, Finland. Now days I work at Marketing as an illustrator in Paper and Board machine manufacturer.
So I basically draw and color 8 hours a day. In my work I can apply my artistic talents to projects I have, but I like how different it is compared to the things I do on my free time.

I have never seen myself as being full time artist, but now because  of couple great art groups I’m part of, I have got courage to make a little step forward to that direction. After many request, I have opened a store for Prints of some of my paintings.

Even though I really have always been drawing and painting, only few years back I really started to create art more seriously. Before I almost always wanted to finish the painting on one sitting. I used 2-10 hours on one piece and that was it. Also I passionately hated working with Colored Pencils.
January 2015 I found an artist called Lisa Clough – Lachri Fine Art from YouTube. I was stunned what she could make with Colored Pencils. I found out what supplies she used and purchased my fist set of Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils. And that was love from first try!

My very first seriously made colored pencil work was this portrait of my dog, Alaskan malamute Lupe, also known as my Lovely Studio Assistant, Personal Trainer and Toe Warmer. It is 100 x 70 cm in size and took me over 100 hours to complete. But that was the point, to slow down and just enjoy the journey with my new pencils.
And that how my love for colored pencil started.

 

I hope you will enjoy following my steps forward in this journey!

I try to come up some informative blog post now and then, mostly about tips how to use colored pencils, but maybe also something else. Who knows.

I am also in Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, if you want to see more of my art, time lapse videos from some of my paintings and what I’m currently working with.