Swedish artist Ragnar Persson, who recently released the book Feel the Darkness that you should own by now, just sent us some new drawings that he’s been working on for the past two and a half weeks. Some of them were supposed to be in a show called Bats, Birds & Beasts opening at a London gallery next week that got cancelled. The theme for this new series is nocturnal animals – yep, some snakes and even deer are nocturnal, or at least crepuscular (i.e. most active between dusk and dawn) – and he’s been so productive that we couldn’t even fit half of it in this post.

Hi Ragnar, what do you plan to do with these new drawings?
Some of them will be published in a newspaper-format zine in September, and I will also make a homemade zine with the whole series. I might do it now actually, it’s pretty slow at work today so I could use the Xerox machine.

Do you have any stories about the drawings?
I actually do write stories about them. Some are made up and some have elements of truth in them, but I don’t ever print or show them to anyone, as I find it difficult to formulate myself in text. I have stories for every drawing in Feel the Darkness.

I meant more, like, how they came about. But that’s amazing! You have to do something with that.
I know. I’m working on a children’s book too, but it’s taking quite some time.

What have you been doing on this summer, aside from drawing creatures of the night?
I’m trying to win a cottage! A Swedish dairy company are running a competition where you can win this amazing-looking little rundown red cottage in the woods. I googled it, so I know what it looks like. In my head it’s already mine, I have so many plans for it, it would be like a little haven. I want to do a musical festival in the woods and yeah, I have so many plans for it.

What do you have to do to win it?
I need to gather 15 barcodes from sour milk packages. I have eight now, so I’m almost there.

Fingers crossed. That’d be the perfect studio for you as well, being so close to nature and the fauna and all.
It would be so perfect.

Good Luck!