Intuitive Art Journaling
Art is more than re-coloring what we already see. This week, I talk about intuitive art journaling and inspire you to follow your spirit and create more freely.
Even if we continuously grow our skills as artists, the joy of art-making disappears if we use too much reasoning. It’s good to practice the technical skills, but it’s also important to arrange time for the intuitive ideas to emerge.
Two Words – “Intuitive Power”
“Intuitive power” – these words suddenly came to mind when I looked at my colored pencils recently. I have been painting a lot, and it has made me miss my colored pencils, those powerful helpers! So, while working on the last pages of my Dylusions Creative Journal, I have been spending some quality time with them.
I started with a house, but then moved on to color more freely. I wanted to catch the atmosphere of that place rather than stay in the material level, drawing windows and such.
The longer I have been an artist, the more I have wanted to work with invisible things. More than tangible things, I want to express the spirit and the complexity of the world that can’t be photographed. I want to create images that are more like keys to many questions rather than direct answers to one.
Intuitive Artist
Even if I have embraced and used the word “intuitive” for over ten years, I have now realized that it’s not just one word of the many, it’s “the word” for me. And I don’t mean to narrow myself with the word, but to expand my thinking and creating in the direction that feels natural to me.
More than a building, I want to visualize the spirit of the place – the sensations that it causes in me.
More than a face, I want to visualize the spirit of the person.
Art Journaling Without Words
Rather than words, intuitive insights can come up as pictures. So, intuitive art journaling can be as simple as creating a series of drawings. The connection with a certain color can be enough to get started.
Color is a hole, and if you jump in, you enter the immaterial world. Colored pencils are the easiest tools for breaking the ice between the inner and outer.
“Intuitive power” – what do these words evoke in you?
Following the Inner Color
Here is my latest completed oil painting “Elixir.” I start my abstract paintings with the idea that I follow an inner color.
Color Chooses Color
The inner color is the color I feel drawn to, so I tend to pick and mix the first colors intuitively. And then, they wish for other colors to accompany them.
Colors also evoke shapes, and the shapes bring in more colors. A raw and bright color selection changes slowly to a more sophisticated one. In this color-driven technique, the inner color changes as the painting matures.
I try to give my painting enough time to find its own soul and paint several sessions, letting the paint dry between them.
First a Child, Then a Teenager
When the painting is only a child, I don’t care about the composition or what it will represent. I don’t want to force a short childhood or early adolescence. When puberty begins, it’s tempting to call the painting finished. But only then does she begin to find her own, unique mission and get prepared for a long life.
Teenagers often tell how they want to be called. When this painting was still unfinished, she was Ophelia because she saw herself as John Everett Millais’s painting from the 19th century.
I usually give the final name only when the painting is almost finished. Then I know what I want to emphasize with the name. Maybe we humans should get our final name a little later too?
Early Goodbye
I take pictures of my canvas paintings outside if possible, because that’s where the light is most natural. My husband often acts as my assistant and holds the painting against the wind. Most of the time, I end the photoshoot by saying to him, “Hey, come take a picture of us together!”
Since I sell all my paintings, this is the moment when I’m saying a mental goodbye to them. I assure them: “You’ll be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.” Even though I often miss my paintings, I don’t tell them. I feel like their mission is bigger than mine, and my job is to deliver all this for others, not for myself.
I have practiced most of my oil painting techniques in a quicker medium, so in watercolor!
Wild Garden – You Can Still Hop in!
In Wild Garden, we will paint freely, intuitively, and expressively in watercolor from Sept 22 to Nov 14. We will begin with floral greeting cards and gradually move forward in expression.
The course has just started but you can still hop in!
>> Sign up now!
How Realistic Should Your Art Be?
In this post, I divide visual art into two parts. The division is a bit extreme, but it helps us to ponder about this: How realistic should my art be?
Realistic or Abstract?
Realistic expression emphasizes drawing, while abstract work more often emphasizes painting.
When we draw realistically, we express things through the external world.
When we paint abstract, we use shapes and colors more freely so the tools for expression come from the inner world.
Realistic art can still express the inner world and abstract art the outer world – it is more about the means than the actual content.
It’s good to alternate between the realistic and the abstract approaches, even if one of them would feel more natural. Here’s why:
Two Extremes – Same Result
First, imagine a person who only draws representational pictures.
The danger is that the longer she continues on this path, the narrower her perception of reality becomes. All the leaves are green, the roads are brown, and the flowers are red and yellow. Everything is outlined with a pen, and the outlined shapes are then colored. When she creates freely without references, her shapes become more and more similar to each other. There is only one kind of leaves and the flowers are always drawn in the same way. When she repeats the same thing long enough, the expression gets narrower and narrower.
The person wonders why drawing no longer brings excitement and joy, even though she actually draws exactly what feels most natural to her.
Second, imagine a person who only paints abstract.
The danger is that the longer she continues on this path, the narrower her perception of reality becomes. The person begins to repeat a very limited number of shapes and colors without realizing it. All the spots are vague and quite the same size. The person begins to wonder if her output is something really fine and profound or just a random mess. Her motoric skills and the use of colors fall short because she does not really have a reference point: after all, she is only painting the stream of consciousness.
The person wonders why painting no longer brings excitement and joy, even though she actually paints exactly what feels most natural to her.
Creative Block
They say that there are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
The two imaginary people have the same problem: their art no longer have miracles. They have stayed in their current comfort zone for too long.
How to Move Forward?
In this photo, you can see both abstract and representational elements; there’s very little division.
Ask, what is truly real?
- How do light and shadows express the object?
- How abstract is the nature of light? Look for motifs and patterns created by light.
- How light, on the one hand, blurs the boundaries of objects and, on the other hand, highlights details?
- How multi-colored nature is? Even a piece of grass contains a huge number of tones.
- Develop your eye and hand to embrace subtle diversity! Simple leaves or circles don’t express it.
Wassily Kandinsky has said:
“The observer must learn to look at the picture as a graphic representation of a mood and not as a representation of objects. “
Learning New Things Keeps the Artist in You Alive
It’s good that, from time to time art-making involves discomfort, questioning, and wondering about reality from strange perspectives. And when art starts to take you away from yourself, that’s not a bad thing either. Once you open up to what feels silly, scary, and not allowed, you’ll find that you’re closer to yourself and to humanity than ever before.
So, how realistic should your art be?
More realistic than what you currently create.
Pablo Picasso has said:
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
Wild Garden – You Can Still Hop in!
In Wild Garden, we will paint freely, intuitively, and expressively from Sept 22 to Nov 14. We will begin with floral greeting cards and gradually move forward in expression.
The course has just started but you can still hop in!
>> Sign up now!
Painting Seascapes – Making The Scenery Look Bigger
This week, we dive deeper into painting seascapes and other big sceneries. In spring, I thought my painting Atlantis was already finished, but after seeing the ship paintings in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in May, I realized that I had made my seascape painting too simple and small-scale, and went back to working on it. Now it’s finished!
Painting a Bigger Sea
Despite the size of the canvas, you can make the seascape or any scenery look larger by adjusting the composition and the size of the brushstrokes. Compare the finished version with the one below!
When you want to make a seascape look bigger, add tiny strokes, especially near the horizon, and adjust both left and right edges so that it looks like the seascape continues outside the painting.
The changes may look small when you look at the small photos, but in reality, they make a big difference. Here’s a close-up photo of before and after.
There are so many details that it was easier to make a short video instead of sharing more pics.
Seascapes don’t have to be boring and all blue. They can include all kinds of events and creatures, even buildings like in my painting.
A Series of Big Sceneries in Progress
It’s been a hot July in Finland, and my little studio is really warm in the afternoon. But I have big canvases in a queue, and the next one is already in progress.
New Course Is Coming Up!
Painting seascapes and other sceneries is exciting, but as you know, I also love flowers. I will be running a new watercolor course called Wild Garden from 22nd September to 14th November. Here’s a small teaser pic …
The early-bird sale of Wild Garden will start next week, so stay tuned!