When you talk with artist Martin Ander, you quickly realize the humbleness of a seasoned professional who’s been on an incredible journey. What first started as a small job drawing album covers for friends has since morphed into individual and commercial success with designs for Fjallraven and RVCA. His solo show at the The Museum of Drawings in Sweden broke attendance and sales records eventually leading to the exhibit touring the world—not bad for a style Anders calls, “a mix of everything I’ve ever liked.” We talked with the Swedish artist, about his skateboard past, 60s psychedelia, and why he can never leave a surface clean and must cover it with dots. 

How did you start as an artist? Can you tell us a little bit about your background?

I was born in 1976, my father was an art director and illustrator and my mom worked in publishing, so art and comics have always been around. I’ve always been drawing a lot and my parents encouraged me to do so. When I was 11 I got into skateboarding and discovered graffiti, underground comics and poster art which inspired me to draw even more. A few years later I started doing posters and album art for my friends’ bands and the local skate shops and that led me to bigger jobs, which led me to even bigger jobs and eventually to a career.

How would you describe your style of art?

I don’t know, I would say that my style and technique Is a mix of everything I’ve ever liked, from comics and skate graphics to graffiti and graphic design. I’ve also drawn a lot of inspiration from punk flyers, gig posters, movie posters, book covers, packaging design and 60s psychedelia.

The dot work adds an interesting element of detail. Where did this come from?

Ive always drawn as if my work was going to be screen printed, I love that medium. I needed a way to do gradients and halftones that would still be easy to screen print. As a kid I loved M.C. Escher and Basil Wolverton, they used a lot of dots. I first started doing the dots on just drop shadows, now I can’t stop, but lately I’ve started to mix them up with different kinds of cross hatching which is not as time consuming. I have a hard time leaving surfaces clean when I draw, so usually I just keep doing dots on a piece until it looks good. 

What does your creative process look like?

It depends on if it’s a job or my art. But usually I already have an idea on what I want it to look like before I start working on it. It all starts with sketching. I make small and really loose pencil sketches to get the composition right and to see what goes where, then I make a bigger sketch with more details, I scan this sketch and print it out even bigger. Then I put the big sketch in the light table and redraw it, change things that I don’t think work and add even more details. When everything looks perfect on that sketch I put that och the light table and ink it on a clean paper. When I have inked all the outlines into details, then I ink over the details that were too small. It’s a balance thing, I can’t really explain it. I’m trying to find the perfect balance in details and in black and white. If it’s in color I scan the ink drawing and color it digitally.

What’s been the most fulfilling part of your career to date?

Museum shows! It all started with being a part of a group show called Swedish Illustration 100 years at The Museum of Drawings in Laholm in the south of Sweden. After that I was invited to do a solo show at the same museum. It became really popular and it went on tour to other small museums. Not long after I got all my stuff back I was contacted by Sörmlands Museum, the big regional museum in the part of Sweden I lived in back then. They asked me to do a big retrospective exhibition to show both my art and my commercial work. It was during covid, so I had one year of planning and a really good budget, plus museum technicians to build basically what I wanted to have. It opened the day after the covid restrictions ended and broke the visitors record for the museum and the sales record in the museum shop. It lasted for 6 months, I showed over 500 pieces and items at that show.

Other highlights was dropping my first retrospect book and when I got to do a signature collection with Swedish outdoors brand Fjällräven which is a highly respected staple in Swedish culture. At the same time I had a signature collection with surf/street brand RVCA out. My friend Karl Grandin texted me from a super hip shopping street in Tokyo saying that my name was all over the windows on both the Fjällräven flagship store and on the RVCA store on the other side of the street. Crazy.

 What’s next for you in the world of projects and taking your art to different levels?

I just want to keep on doing what I do, but bigger and better. I also would like to do more art and be more involved conceptually in my commercial work.

Are there any artists you look up to for inspiration?

I’ve had the same heroes the past 30 years. Jim Phillips, VCJ, Rick Griffin and Wally Wood and Swedes like Tove Jansson, Joakim Pirinen, Hans Arnold and Sture Johannesson. My friends Ragnar Persson, Karl Grandin and Finsta also inspire me on a more personal level.

What projects do you have on the horizon for 2025?

I’m doing a public art mural in May and I have started working on a new book and planning for a show during 2025.