Find Your Hidden Inspiration for Drawing Details
This colored pencil drawing is an art journal page. It is called “Growing Towards Light.” It’s inspired by the beauty of tiny details found in plants.
For a long time, I have wanted to write about looking at tiny treasures for drawing inspiration. It is the subject that I might have mentioned, but not put fully in focus. Last week two things happened that made me decide to bring it up.
Blooming Houseplant
First, one of our houseplants blossomed. The plant is probably a prayer plant, and it has such modest flowers that we almost missed the whole thing. But once I took few photos and examined them more closely, I was in awe of the blossom’s beauty.
I admire the shape of the stem, how beautifully angled it is, the sharp buds, dark seeds, and the delicate flower. It all looks like perfect, well-thought, well-executed combination of aesthetics and science. I feel not only inspired by the little details but how it also makes me think of the quality of my art: I should continuously raise the bar a little bit higher, work more carefully, become more patient and get further in my thoughts. It sounds a bit harsh as I am writing this, but when watching the nature, it is very inspiring. Maybe we all should sometimes follow the prayer plant: use the time to create a smaller work but take more care of the details!
Mr. Mac and Me
The second thing that is related to the subject of the post is the email that I got from Claire, one of the readers. One of the best things about writing the blog is the interaction. My favorite thing is when I get ideas and suggestions about what to examine next. Claire remembered that I am a big fan of Charles Rennie Macintosh and his wife (see this post when I visited Scotland to see their art). She sent me a link to the review of a newly published novel. The novel is Esther Freud’s “Mr. Mac and Me, “ It tells a story about Charles Rennie Macintosh through the lens of a 13-year-old boy who gets to know him. Very interesting! I added the book immediately to my wish list.
At the end of the review, there’s a quote from the book where the young boy talks about Macintosh’s flower drawings: “I go closer. I look at everything for what else is hidden. There’s the head of a duck folded into a sunflower’s stem …” For me, that implies how the beauty can be the result of many little details. That challenges us to build our art from well-formed shapes, no matter how small they are, and believe that each of them will increase the beauty of the whole artwork.
Drawing Details
Like said, the perspective in decorative art is in the details and their perfection. Instead of sketching something grand, the decorative artwork starts small and gets bigger by adding tiny details one after another.
These are some of my unfinished art journal pages. I love to draw with a thin black permanent pen. The inability to erase anything makes me start small! If a blank paper feels scary for you, create a watercolor painting first and then start doodling. My video “Watercolor 101 for Intuitive Painting” presents the method how to get started without any specific pre-thought idea in mind.
More Skills and Inspiration!
Grow your skills in creative coloring >>Buy the e-book Coloring Freely!
Video Blog: Finding Inspiration from Plants
In this video blog post I am creating this art journal page and talk about finding inspiration from plants.
If you got interested in creating imaginative plant-inspired pages, see also the previous blog post mentioned on the video: Create Abstract Botanical Art!
Create Abstract Botanical Art!
Last Friday I saw impressive paintings. When I see something that appeals to me, I try to analyze that in pieces. It is fascinating to find out little things that make a painting so memorable. I created this collage called “The Odd Nature” by using those factors. The whole subject – abstract botanical art – is mind-blowing.
Inspired by Hilma af Klint
Starting from the beginning: I was at Hilma af Klint‘s exhibition at Kunsthalle Helsinki. I had seen a few of her works before, but never this many at the same time. Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) painted botanical art and landscapes but then moved to create abstract art. She was a female artist and one of the pioneers of abstract art. When that is combined with her interest in spiritual ideas, no wonder she did not make her work public. In fact, she ordered that her work should be shown not earlier than 20 years after her death! Look at some of Hilma af Klint’s paintings on the Swedish Moderna Museet’s website.
Here’s what inspired me with Hilma af Klint’s art:
1) Odd compositions that were skillfully balanced.
2) Graphic, often decorative shapes which reminded me of plants and biology.
3) The combination of bright and muted colors with great contrasts.
Zoom in on Nature!
After the exhibition, I began to think about how far we often look at the world around us. To me, it felt like Hilma af Klint had divided living objects like plants into small components and then constructed new pieces out of them. So I began to zoom in on the photos I had taken from my garden this year.
When thinking about the structure of apple blossom, I remembered something which is small too: the little box where I save the tiniest scraps of my hand-decorated papers.
Creating abstract botanicals from the paper scraps would be the thing to do!
Color Inspiration
The idea for the color scheme and the atmosphere came from this photo, taken just a while ago. I painted the background blue purple by adding several layers with watercolors.
Collage Shapes
After the background had been finished, I began to create the abstract shapes.
You can easily create intriguing collage pieces by combining small scraps together. Your cut shape does not need to be perfect before gluing it on the background. You can think of the shape as the beginning of the final shape. You can add more details with paint and pen around the shape later.
Composition
When gluing the shapes before they are finished, you need to make bold moves in the composition. I advise not to think of the composition more than this: make sure that the shapes are not evenly spread in the background. After the preliminary shapes are glued, you can then continue working with them by expanding them with painting and drawing. At the same time combine some of the shapes together and create new, smaller shapes to balance the work.
In my work, the center of the work is left almost empty. There I created a tiny detail that adds dimension to the work: a blue horizontal line near the two small circles.
So why not pick up your scraps and honor Hilma by creating surrealistic botanical art!
Read also
Fun Designs from Decorative Papers – An easy technique to create collage elements.
How to Draw a Rose – A simple rose seen in the collage above. You might want to use it as a decorative element too.
How to Paint Watercolor Postcards in Vintage Style
I have beautiful, old floral postcards which inspired me to create some of my own. When making the cards I realized that it would be almost impossible to show the techniques with static images and text only. So I made a short video about how I improvised the cards. Only watercolors, two brushes, and a watercolor paper needed!
Watch a more comprehensive subscriber-only video!
>> Subscribe to my weekly emails!