Color the Emotion

Pick a few colors and create without stiffness.

Watercolor Flower Obsession

This week, I have a fun video for you. In the video, I create a watercolor greeting card and talk about my obsession of painting flowers.

Watercolor greeting card, size A5, by artist Paivi Eerola, Finland. Born from the watercolor flower obsession!

The card is A5 in size, so about 6 x 8 inches and I have painted it on watercolor paper.

watercolor painting supplies

My smallest brush is very narrow and I could have coped with two brushes. In the course Freely Grown, we use the similar process, but finish with colored pencils, so it’s much easier than working with tiny brush strokes.

Watercolor Flower Obsession – Watch the Video!

In this video I confess how goal-oriented I am about painting flowers but also talk about the importance of play.

This video has a lot of material, you may want to watch it more than once to see them all! Also, here’s the link to last year’s greeting card, watch that video too!

Boutique of the Heart

In the video I talk about a boutique that’s not a commercial thing at all, vice versa:

“I believe that we can create the best boutique out of our own art. Imagine your workspace as a paper shop where you sell hand-painted cards, bookmarks, hand-drawn stickers, patterned papers – everything that is already art as such, but from which you can look for inspiration for bigger works. I have even come up with a name for this kind of personal shop. It’s Boutique of the Heart. There’s only one customer in the Boutique of the Heart – you, and one seller and manufacturer – you! The longer you keep the shop, the more you learn to love the things you draw and paint yourself.”

Hand-drawn fancy lady carrying a heart. Illustration by Paivi Eerola.

My message is that the essence of art is in play. Thus no matter how high you want to reach, you can still create art with a playful attitude and have your Boutique of the Heart. I know there are art instructors that solely focus on the techniques and those who are about fairytales and imagination, but I feel I am something between. I want to create art with people who want to move forward in art-making, but who also love imagination and free expression.

We can have obsessions, but there should always be time to play too.

What do you think?

Weekly Art – Creating Regularly in Any Mood

This week, I talk about making weekly art and the feelings behind creating regularly.

"Elämää alavilla mailla - Life in the Lowlands" - a watercolor painting by Paivi Eerola, Finland.
“Elämää alavilla mailla – Life in the Lowlands”, watercolor, size: A3

I feel that although artists talk a lot about techniques and creative process, something gets left out. It’s a time perspective. I don’t mean how much time it takes to make one piece, but what it’s like to make art week after week. If you create art, you will surely recognize this: sometimes you feel excited, sometimes you don’t. People’s moods vary and you can’t always choose the best day.

Not the Ideal Mood

I felt nervous when I started doing this watercolor. The best part of the morning was already over and I was splashing color very fast. My weekly art session had a messy start.

Playing with watercolor. Starting an intuitive watercolor painting. Creating weekly and regularly.

I found an unopened bottle of granulating medium in my stash and thought it might speed things up.

Spraying water over a watercolor painting.

But I found the medium a useless acquisition. Some of the pigments are naturally spreadable and the spray bottle works better for them. All this took time, and my nervousness was still present and there was a new feeling too: self-doubt.

Not Feeling Confident

When you make art week after week, success is based on self-confidence more than mood. It’s easier to be confident at the beginning than later.

Intuitive watercolor painting. Painting in progress. By Paivi Eerola, Finland.
How to dig out the flowers? Buy the course “Freely Grown”

I usually paint with intuition and don’t use any models, so I often end up feeling hopeless. All I can say then is something like: “Keep going!” with a fake smile, and I don’t know if that helps at all.

Different Mood – Different Ideas

But art doesn’t put one mood above the other. Different mood brings different ideas. For example, if I am feeling nervous, there is an opportunity to be less conventional and express something that I would not otherwise come to mind.

Painting weekly. Struggles and rewards in regular creating.

The idea of ​​this painting culminated in the Finnish expression “alavilla mailla hallanvaara.” It means “the danger of frost in the lowlands” in English, but the beauty of the statement is not in its content, but in how it sounds in Finnish. While painting, I began to think about those lowlands that suffer from rain and cold. Similarly, as painters paint week after week, flowers bloom constantly there, also in bad weather.

Creating art weekly - finishing a watercolor painting.

For me, in art, it’s not important in which mood it’s started, but that the end result contains both a trigger and a solution. Here, wind and rain bend the grass and break flower petals, but at the same time they make room for light.

Who Are You Creating Art For?

Within time, the mood evens out and focus is on the finishing. Then I also change who I think as a recipient.

I often start the weekly art by saying that “this piece is for me,” but when I finish I try to reach “for us.” There “we” includes all who like my art, both old and new friends in art. I don’t want to make art only “for you”, because then I lose myself while doing it, and not ” for them”, because it’s hopeless to hope that maybe someone would like the work even if we wouldn’t.

A detail of "Elämää alavilla mailla - Life in the Lowlands" - a watercolor painting by Paivi Eerola, Finland.
See more pictures and a video of this painting at Taiko.art!

So, weekly, this happens again: the wrong moment, the wrong mood, the choice of brushes and colors, calming down, “I’m just doing it for myself”, uncertainty, slowly emerging ideas, concentration, triggers and solutions, happiness, and a feeling of gratitude that I can do this again for us.

Do you too create art regularly?

“Start Small”

In the spirit of “Start small”, have you tried this?

Draw lines and color the shapes! Art can be this simple.

Start small - an easy exercise for watercolor pencils.

But isn’t it so, that everything just flows when you have the inspiration, and when you don’t, even a simple exercise (picked from the new course Joyful Coloring) can feel tedious. 

Browsing for inspiration is never quite the same as participating in a course.
My goal in Joyful Coloring is not only to widen your mind about how you can create
but also to keep your inspiration level up. 

Yes, we “start small” but with inspiration, we can also do bigger things.

Watercolor pencil art

Watercolor pencils feed inspiration because they make coloring faster.

Joyful Coloring

Come with me to start small, and then create landscapes and seascapes, ornamental flowers, colorful fantasies, and modular magic.

Joyful Coloring - an online art course for watercolor pencils

Joyful Coloring – The new course begins on Sept 16! >> Sign up Now!

Drawing Sceneries with Watercolor Pencils

This week, I have a fun drawing idea: fill a paper with many small sceneries!

Drawing sceneries with watercolor pencils. Watercolor pencils art by Paivi Eerola, Finland. Colored with Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle pencils.

For this project, I have used watercolor pencils and Fabriano Accademia drawing paper (size: A4). The paper is very nice with colored pencils and goes well with watercolor pencils too.

Inspiration for Drawing Sceneries

Creating mini-sceneries is easy when you start playing with the scale. Think about a bumblebee – how it first flies over fields admiring the view and then finds a mini-world inside a flower.

A bumblebee inside a peony.

Your mind can be a busy bee, collecting a variety of ideas – big and small.

A detail of a collection of mini-sceneries by Paivi Eerola. Drawing sceneries with watercolor pencils in a fun way.

Your hand can then pick some of those ideas and put them into one picture like it would be a treasured collection in a secret museum. “Faberge eggs,” said my husband when I showed my picture to him.

Watercolor Pencils

Caran d'Ache watercolor pencils, landscape colors.

I often use regular colored pencils but slowly I have become interested in watercolor pencils too. I have had a few Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle pencils for a while and I love their quality – vivid colors, lovely to hold, and work well without water too. A couple of weeks ago, I bought 20 landscape colors to accompany what I already have.

Mini-Sceneries – Start Here!

Start your collection by picking a circle template, for example, a lid. Draw circles so that they overlap partially. Put one idea into one circle and color each of the circles separately.

Drawing sceneries with watercolor pencils. Combining many mini-sceneries on one paper.

This can be a “one in a day” project. Take your time to focus on each circle.

Watercolor Pencils in Use

Watercolor pencils are great for quickly filling larger areas. Color the area lightly and then add water over the colored area.

Using watercolor pencils for drawing small sceneries.

Let dry before adding a new layer on the top.

Drawing Sceneries – Playing with Styles

My favorite thing is to combine nature-related ideas such as landscapes and flowers with decorative motifs. I like to draw dots, other simple shapes, and lines so that they form frames and ornaments.

Ideas for watercolor pencils. By Paivi Eerola.

In this project, the circles are nature-related while the background has a more ornamental approach.

Using Caran d'Ache watercolor pencils for drawing sceneries.

When you keep the background unified, you can use many styles in one piece. One paper then becomes a diary where anything handmade looks great together because it’s made by one hand and one mind.

Drawing in Ornamental Style

Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle watercolor pencils and ideas for drawing sceneries. By Paivi Eerola

This project is another variation of the earlier blog post: Colored Pencils – Ornamental Approach. If you have taken the course Intuitive Coloring, would you be interested in creating something like this on a course next?

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