Paul Söderholm 2002

My name is Paul Söderholm. I was born in 1969 in Hanko, Finland. I live with my wife and dogs in Raisio near Turku in the southwest of Finland.

My full-time job is IT Administrator at a regional newspaper (actually the oldest newspaper in Finland, Åbo Underrättelser, founded almost 200 years ago). IT Admin is the official title. Because it is a rather small newspaper I get to do a lot of other graphically related things – actually I get to do all the things other people cannot manage :-) which makes me more or less a troubleshooter. The most common troubleshooting is advanced colour correction and getting data from unsupported file formats (people do send us images in MS Word-format and expect us to make a perfect print of them in the paper!) to output.

I am also a freelance graphic artist, illustrator, cartoonist, web designer, lecturer etc. and registered my firm Gnurf in mid-90s. When it comes to digitally created graphics my main tool is definitely Xara X! It is my ultimate workhorse with the company of Photoshop and CorelDRAW. I won't even start to ramble about how easy Xara X is to use, or how everything is possible with the application! Most of you who visit this site know all that already, don't you?

A lot of the work you will see in this exhibit are things I have done at work (either as a freelancer or at the newspaper). I am afraid that some of the stuff will appear quite dull, since it is info graphics that is meant to be clear and easy to understand. But on the other hand I want to show you how effective Xara X can be when you just have an hour or so to create your maps and other graphics from scratch.

—Paul Söderholm
www.gnurf.net

Some links that may be of interest:

Google search on Hanko

English pages on Turku

The official Christmas city Web site

Editor's Note: Paul has also provided a wonderful Guest Tutorial dealing with the creation of a wave-filled ocean.

The Art of Paul Söderholm

All images ©Paul Söderholm
[Click the thumbnail image to see the full-size images]

Xara image by Paul Söderholm

Gnurf Drawing

Xara image by Paul Söderholm

Secret Agentum

Xara image by Paul Söderholm

How to...

Xara image by Paul Söderholm

Christmas Stuff

Xara image by Paul Söderholm

Maps

Xara image by Paul Söderholm

Walking the Dog

Xara image by Paul Söderholm

Name

Xara image by Paul Söderholm

Drag and Drop

Xara image by Paul Söderholm

Fighting Swans

Xara image by Paul Söderholm

Hotellinx

Xara image by Paul Söderholm

New Year's Stuff

Xara image by Paul Söderholm

More Maps

Xara image by Paul Söderholm

Viva Venezia

XARA Artists Wanted! We are always looking for new artists to feature on this page. If you would like to be considered for one of the future featured artists, Click Here to contact us. Please don't send images at this time. What works best is for you to place some of your best images on a Web page and send us the URL. If we decide to feature you and your images, we will contact you and provide further instructions.