Exploring Light and Mass When Creating Semi-Abstract Art
This week, I show my latest painting and talk about creating semi-abstract art where some details are quite realistic, and others are more abstract. I also give five concrete ideas for creating semi-abstract drawings or paintings.
For the past couple of months, I’ve been working on four “sisters.” They are all the same size, yet each possesses a distinct personality. Halo was the first to be completed. She is the most delicate of the sisters, and perhaps the most beautiful. Fauna is nearly finished, just awaiting the final touches. She is a rule-breaker and a trailblazer who faces the world without fear.
Then there are the two who are still so early in their journey that they only have working titles. I often give my paintings temporary names that may change many times before the final version. The third sister is currently Ikigai, referring to “meaning of life.” She reminds me most of my mother; despite her shyness, she is strong, and though she might wish to blend in, she never truly will. The fourth sister, with the working title Jade, is the only one who has a landscape orientation. As the youngest, she views the world with the brightest, most optimistic eyes.
You will get to see Halo’s sisters once they are finished and photographed. I also always update the new paintings in the gallery page at paivieerola.com.
Light and Mass – Spiritual and Concrete
As an artist, I am fascinated by light. I often feel that once I’ve captured a unique atmosphere and lighting — something you might even call its temperament—the most important work is done.
Beyond light, I think deeply about the physical mass within a piece. In the case of Halo, for example, I contemplated how realistic the vase needed to be versus how abstract I could leave the flowers and other forms. After all, the phenomenon of light carries an inherent sense of mystery.
When light plays, it blurs the line between the concrete and the abstract. Just by looking, it becomes difficult to distinguish what is light and what is physical matter. I believe the same applies to us as human beings: the physical affects the spiritual, and vice versa.
Creating Semi-Abstract Art
This interface between spirituality and reality exists in all art, but it is, of course, most visible in semi-abstract art. Whether it’s a small sketch or a large painting, it’s fun to analyze which parts are tangibly real and which are spiritual in nature.
And when creating, it’s good to stop and think about which parts can remain abstract and which could be more concrete.
I challenge you to look at your own work through this lens! I also have some practical tips for …
Making Your Art More Abstract – Five Ideas to Experiment with!
For simplicity, I’ve used colored pencils and drawn flowers in the examples, but you can apply these tips to any medium and any realistic object.
Vanishing – Let some of the petals fade away so that the flower is partly invisible.
Lightline – By erasing, create a line that travels over the flower. The thickness of the line can vary, and it can also continue on the background.
Living Line – Draw a contiguous line that lives, breathes, and touches your soul. The line can form a part of the object, for example, the center of the flower, or express the object’s spirit and stay in the background.
Echo – Repeat the object so that its color is weaker and its position slightly different. You can also make the echo smaller or bigger than the original object.
Geometric – Include geometric shapes in your organic drawing. A geometric shape can be partly on the top or in the background, or become a part of the object.
I hope these tips inspire you to create semi-abstract art!
Learn more about creating freely – welcome to my courses!
Colored Pencil Tutorial “Limitless World”
This week, I have a step-by-step colored pencil tutorial for you. It’s called Limitless World. We color without outlines and end up with something that is partly realistic and yet more creative and limitless than any traditional drawing.
Supplies
This tutorial uses regular colored pencils, but feel free to try it with watercolor pencils, watercolors, or any media that can be layered. Choose the paper that goes with your supplies and is durable. I used Fabriano Accademia Drawing Paper (200 gsm/94 lbs). You can create the drawing in any size, but my piece is A4.
Introduction to The Colored Pencil Tutorial
You might be familiar with the work of Hilma af Klint. She is a wonderful example of how our inner world and intuition can guide the hand. Her art has been the main inspiration for my course Mystical Minis. In this project, however, we reach from the inner to the outer world—making the outer look limitless, too.
Before you start reading the step-by-step tutorial, watch a 5-minute introduction where I tell more about the project.
I hope you enjoy this colored pencil tutorial. Let’s start!
Step 1 – White Shapes
Pick any color. Create abstract white shapes by coloring the background.
Press fairly lightly. We will add more layers over the background.
Make sure you have a wide variety of abstract shapes in different sizes.
Tip: You can turn the paper in different directions during the process and decide on the final orientation later.
Step 2 – Colorful Shapes
Pick any colors. Color abstract shapes so that they form a new layer on top of the background.
Make sure that the colorful shapes extend over the white shapes and don’t follow their outlines.
Also, add new shapes on top of other colorful shapes. Press fairly lightly so that you can add more layers later.
Keep the expression abstract. Don’t guess what the drawing is about. Just color a variety of shapes in different sizes and enjoy the freedom.
When the paper feels full, but you can still easily see the background and the colorful layer, move to the next step.
Step 3 – Connecting Colors
Pick colors that are close to what you have used before. Use one color more than others. My main color is green, but I also use other colors.
Color over the previous layers so that the two layers are no longer separate. Focus on the edges and color a small area at a time. Leave only a few areas blank, mostly near the center.
In this step, you can adjust old shapes and color new shapes, too. Think about attaching two pieces: you can either glue (spread the color over) or tape (add a new shape on top).
Tip: Now you can decide on the orientation and get ideas for the drawing’s topic.
Step 4 – Discovery
Find people, animals, plants, trees, furniture, water, and any realistic objects in the abstract drawing. For example, I have someone in the corner who is like an observer of everything happening in the drawing.
Adjust the shapes so that the viewer will also realize what they represent.
Tip: Remember that we are drawing a limitless world, so odd things can appear! The drawing can make sense emotionally, even if it isn’t rational.
You can also use an eraser to adjust the objects.
Having an eraser pen is handy, and it’s very useful for the course Mystical Minis, too!
Step 5 – Advanced Level
When your drawing feels finished, you can either stop or take it to the advanced level.
Basic level: The drawing feels finished, and you feel quite drawn to it. For a viewer, it may look a bit chaotic, busy, and difficult to comprehend.
Advanced level: The drawing has an engaging atmosphere, and the viewer is gently guided around the drawing.
To achieve this:
- Increase contrast in the middle and reduce contrast near the edges.
- Increase intense colors in the middle and reduce the intensity near the edges. Don’t leave blank areas in the areas that are less important.
- Make the shapes less clumsy by adding notches and lines. Make lines curvier and thinner.
- Direct the viewer’s gaze with contrasting shapes and lines.
Tip: Some areas can be more realistic than others. The world of imagination has no limits!
What Does Your Drawing Tell?
I usually work in my little studio, but this time, I finished the drawing in our living room, and I think that the aquarium, the furniture, the glassware, and the birds chirping outside … they all found their way to this drawing. But every drawing will become different. What does your drawing tell?
This kind of intuitive process is natural and free, and at least for me, much more exciting than making a stiff sketch and then coloring it. I hope this colored pencil tutorial marks the start of a new journey for you—one we can continue together, for example, in the course Mystical Minis!
Video: Artist’s Life and Inner Inspiration
This week, I made a video blog post where I share what I have been working on lately. This watercolor piece is one of them.
In the video, I also talk about the inner inspiration – that not everything has to come from outside, but there’s a lot within our inner world already.
You get to see my planner for 2026, which is also my art journal. It’s a notebook that has pictures of Jasmine Becket-Griffith‘s art.
Artist’s Life and Inner Inspiration – Watch the Video!
My favorite topics – flowers, watercolors, colored pencils, and abstracts – are all covered in this video.
In the last part of the video, I share my joy about the newest course, Mystical Minis – abstract art with colored pencils – Buy Now!
Intuitive Abstracts with Colored Pencils
This week, we create abstract art with colored pencils so that we let our intuition lead us.
If we only draw realistic art, we miss the layer that is under it. I often call my abstracts “skeletons.” They show how my art is constructed and what its spirit is. By creating abstracts, I can adjust my visual language and discover new shapes, techniques, and color combinations without being constrained by how things “should look.” It’s like Wassily Kandinsky has written in his book “Point and Line to Plane”:
Not everything is visible and tangible or – to be more explicit – under the visible and comprehensible lies the invisible and incomprehensible.
Step #1: Pick Your Shortest Pencil and Color Lightly
The first layer is a seed for future layers, so create a variety of shapes.
You don’t have to feel anything; just focus on variety.
Step #2 – Add Colors and Shapes Over the First Layer
The new shapes and lines don’t follow the first layer but get inspiration from it.
Rather than following the first layer, take a different direction and create the opposite of it. If the stripes of the first layer go in one direction, now color something else in a different direction. If the first layer has a big shape, now add something that is not so heavy, for example, thin lines. Get out of the traditional solutions, and find new ones.
If you don’t have the patience to continue longer, you can leave your abstract to be just a color play. Here’s one of mine in an art journal. This is from 2024.
Step #3 Remember Thin Lines
Stripes are fun to color with zig-zag strokes, but by using thin lines, you will bring more of yourself to the drawing.
See how I have used lines in these art journal pages (See the full art journal in this post from November 2025). More than outlining, I like to let the lines wander freely.
You can also use an eraser for lines. The eraser pen is great for thin strokes, but you can also use a regular eraser and then color around the erased part to make the line thinner and more elegant.
Any straight line is just a stripe, but when the line gets curvier and becomes winding, the artist behind the pen comes up, and more intuition can be brought in.
A line that is curly like writing can appear inside a shape or make new shapes. Here’s an example from 2023.
Step #4 Color over Color
Mix colors by adding a new color over the previous one. Color lightly so that the previous layer shows through.
Step #5 Into the Darkness
Be bold and add dark colors too.
The dark parts make these simple pages look finished. The examples are from 2015.
Step #6 From Intuition to Intention
The further you progress, the more you begin to wonder what the image is about. Remember Kandinskys words: “under the visible and comprehensible lies the invisible and incomprehensible.” I like to keep the abstract drawing in the incomprehensible stage for quite a long time.
At this stage, I was thinking about sweets, fruits, and drinks. But then I just let go of that thought and allowed the drawing proceed further. The easy thing for me is to make a floral piece from “a skeleton.”
And even now, my drawing started to get more flowery shapes.
It reminded me of the drawing I made in 2024.
But I don’t want to draw flowers only, so I continued to work on the drawing.
Step #7 Hide Most of the Shapes
Don’t fall in love with every detail! My art is full of details, and I have often struggled with which ones to save and highlight compared to others.
Here too, I made lots of decisions about which shape to save and which alter so that it doesn’t show so clearly. It’s not just about improving the composition but about the atmosphere and topic. Here, I was thinking about jewelry, printed fabrics, all the fashionable things, and how great designs are derived from plants.
I don’t dress fashionably, and I don’t consider myself to be appearance-oriented, but I have always felt a connection to fashion design. It’s a strange relationship, because all I have to do is catch a glimpse of, say, a Dolce & Gabbana fashion show and my mind is filled with ideas for paintings. My intuition often offers me solutions that I recognize as fashion-related in one way or another. I do have a background, but in industrial design, so it’s a bit mysterious to me!
In the end, I tossed these shorties away: Thank you for your service!
I store my colored pencil drawings in a plastic folder.
Outer vs. Inner Inspiration
We often need outer inspiration to get started, but to continue, we need the connection with the inner inspiration.
Wassily Kandinsky wrote:
In spite of all the apparently insurmountable contradictions, the present-day human being is, indeed, no longer satisfied with the external alone. His vision is becoming sharper, his ear keener, and his desire to see and to hear the inner in the outer ever increases.
In the course Mystical Minis, we color small abstract drawings and move from the outer to the inner. You can’t find a course like this anywhere else. I have got inspiration from Wassily Kandinsky’s colleagues, Hilma af Klint and Georgiana Houghton, as well as the modernist author Virginia Woolf. Every exercise is different, but all are mystical.
Mystical Minis – Draw abstract art with colored pencils – Buy Now!