Yesterday I got defeated in the art competition called the Unrea Bjornament. It’s my third year in the competition and I’m kind of bummed about not getting further to be honest, but glad I participated as always. It’s a super good environment to push yourself and to improve.
In this post you’ll find my entries to the competition.
What is the Unreal Bjornament?
Unreal Bjornament is a “thunderdome” style art competition where participants are competing in pairs trying to kick the other out of the competition by making a piece of art the judges like more within the the time alotted to the contestants.
You can read more here: https://forum.firestartermagazine.com/boards/23-unreal-bjornament-3/threads/683-unreal-bjornament-3-information
The judges
- Ben Mauro
- Even Mehl Amundsen (Super famous Nowegian artist!)
- Jana Schirmer
- Maxx Burman
- Mark Molnar
- Lip Comarella
- Bastien Lecouffe Deharme
- Jama Jurabaev
- Rafael Grassetti
- Erik Staub
Thanks to Björn Hurri for setting this up for us every year, and thanks for the judges for spending their free-time to giving feedback to us!
The first round
The topic was “It came from nature” and this is what I made. It’s some kind of godly or god-like fairy creature. I had a lot of ideas about narrative for this one, but had to scale down and keep it simple.
I was against an artist called Zuohne, a person I haven’t interacted with in the community before. Was super happy to win the round!

Round 1, topic and pairings: https://forum.firestartermagazine.com/boards/23-unreal-bjornament-3/threads/698-unreal-bjornament-3-round-1
Round 1, results: https://forum.firestartermagazine.com/boards/23-unreal-bjornament-3/threads/709-unreal-bjornament-3-round-1-results
The second round
The topic was “Darkly ever after”.
This time a fought against Slumpen, a guy I’ve known for some time in the old discord community ironically named “Church Of Sinix”. He’s a fellow scandinavian artist from Sweden!
Went with gouache paints this time as well. I wanted to build on the fairy theme from earlier but in a different way. As the topic was a dark fairy tale I thought I’d go with a helping fairy but that whispers evil thoughts and murderous intentions.
Unfortunately Slumpen beat me with his dragon painting, and now I’m out of the competition. I hope the best of luck to him onward. He and I are one of the few who dare to do traditional type art for the competition.

Round 2, topic and round pairings: https://forum.firestartermagazine.com/boards/23-unreal-bjornament-3/threads/711-unreal-bjornament-3-round-2-topic-and-pairings
Round 2, results: https://forum.firestartermagazine.com/boards/23-unreal-bjornament-3/threads/723-unreal-bjornament-3-round-2-results
The end
That was as far as I got this time. The competition is still not over and you can follow along on how it progresses on Bjorn Hurri’s streams and in the firestarter forum.
I’ll definately join again next year too like always, and I hope you do too.