Matti Louhi, Paatalo book cover, 1985

Matti Louhi (b. 1936) is a prolific Finnish illustrator, who has designed and illustrated over 700 book covers in a career spanning more than 50 years. He is perhaps best known for his covers for the works of Kalle Paatalo (1919-2000), particularly the "Iijoki series", Paatalo's series of autobiographical novels that span 26 volumes, and a staggering 17,000 pages combined. Despite their vast scope, these books were very popular in their time, with sales averaging over 100,000 copies per volume. Louhi says, however, that he only read one or two of them in the beginning, and after that Paatalo summarized to him over the phone what the book was about and what scene he wanted to be on the cover.
Louhi had great versatility in his other design work and says for the Paatalo covers, he created a specific style that he didn't use in any of his other work. In doing so he managed to create and maintain a visually unified look for the entire vast series, which is a remarkable feat concidering it was not done all in one go, but one book at a time over a period of 25 years. This is the cover for vol. 15, published in 1985.
In the printed cover the tones are way off, the brown midtones have been reproduced noticably light.