Half November Ari and I went to Vienna to join the MCAB Masterclasses am Brillantengrund Character design workshop Figure out – stand out from the crowd, under supervision of Mattias Adolfsson.

A few years ago we found a book by this Swedish artist on a book fair and we were immediately deeply impressed by his work. So we were really happy and looking forward to this journey when we received the confirmation that we were invited to take part in the workshop.

The workshop took place at the beautiful Hotel am Brillantengrund, where all participants and tutors had their comfortable accommodation und were taken care of very well by the hotel´s own cozy restaurant and Mama Mangalino. Great place, great food!

The workshop started on Thursday with a short introduction to the different courses, tutors and classes. The participants and tutors of the four masterclasses came from many different countries. It was a wonderful crowd of creative people.

And this is what we did:

Thursday – character day

1. Draw yourself as a character 

2. Transformation in five steps

Friday – cakes, characters, crowds

1. „The growing problem of cakes forming gangs in the cafés of Vienna“

2. Drawing different characters like Mona Lisa having a bad hair day, a biker pig, Lady Godiva and many more

3. Setting the characters in a crazy crowd scene

4. Last, but not least: Drawing a detailed city in an isometric perspective

Friday evening: Exhibition of Mattias Adolfssons fine art at Atelier Olschinsky´s beautiful showroom.

Saturday – Pens, tattoos, dinosaurs, comics

1. Fancy pens and tattoos on figures

2. Drawing dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum Vienna and a weird day of your life as a comic

Sunday – Pattern-day

1. Designing a pattern with funny things like for example outdated technology or ‘frutti di mare’

Well, I went for ‘frutti di mare’.

The last 60 minutes of the workshop we spent on designing the stuff of the other three classes: Bottle label design (with Steve Simpson), character design (with Sergi Brosa) and „something in 3D“ (with Jonathan Ball).

The day ended with a presentation of all the classes´ fine results and a cheerful evening at the pub.

It was such a great time, full of work, fun, good conversation and inspiration by the great people and place. Thanks to Verena Weiss and Peter Olschinsky (Atelier Olschinsky), for organizing everything in such a perfect way, and to the nice people of the Hotel am Brillantengrund, who were always kind and helpful. And thanks to Mattias Adolfsson for being such a great tutor showing us so much about his amazing way of drawing creatures and crowds.

It was a great pleasure to meet all of you!