Autumn Colorings – Video Blog post!
This week, I have a video blog post for you. I talk about this journal spread that I made for my colored pencil diary, but there are also more autumn colorings, art ideas, and inspiration for creating in the middle of life’s small happenings.
In the video, I am talking about colored pencils, the upcoming class about paper dolls and human figures, my friend’s artistic success, blooming orchids, Japanese woodblock print style and style development, and I also draw a Halloween pumpkin from start to finish. There are all kinds of autumn news and autumn colorings!
Autumn Colorings – Watch the Video!
I hope this video inspires you to create and give some extra TLC to your colored pencils!
Links to Related Blog Posts
- The previous video blog post
- The journal spread of Vanda and how she looked a couple of years ago
- Posts about the paintings: The Spirit of the Rose, The Echo of Moss, Forest of Wishes
Links to Other Related Sources
- Eeva Nikunen’s website
- Alice in Wonderland Special at Colouring Heaven’s website
Related Online Classes
- Color intuitively without references: Intuitive Coloring
- Start a colored pencil journal: Fun Botanicum
- Draw scrap reliefs and paper dolls: Animal Inkdom, Magical Inkdom, Decodashery, Doll World is coming soon!
- Paint floral abstracts: Floral Fantasies, Floral Freedom
Fall or Fairytale? – Creating Your Forest
This week, I talk about the colorful bridge that art can build between real and unreal.
This is my latest oil painting called Forest of Wishes. My fall is filled with those – wishes! Wishes that can’t be fulfilled.
I wish winter would only last a day or so. I wish there would be regular life for regular people – not war, not suffering, not lack of anything. And while I am thinking about these melancholic thoughts, it feels like my creativity ignores them and lives in a fairytale. I want to draw you in this fairytale too. I hope these pictures inspire you to create and make life more magical!
Hello Fall – Hello Colors!
In art, colors can make a fairytale. My oil painting brought this older watercolor piece to mind. Like “Forest of Wishes,” this one uses blue in a similar way: to create a connection with the viewer. It’s a reminder that blue can be strong and soulful and approach the viewer, not just stay still in the background.
There’s also a video of painting this!
This painting started with the reference photo, but once the painting process got further, the expression replaced it. And splattering with a brush is a lot of fun!
The Magic of Growth
When I look at our garden, the wonders of summer become visible when trees prepare for fall. They have grown a lot, for example, this monkaburi – a pine tree that we planted a few years ago. Back then, it felt like it would take forever for it to form a gate over our heads, but now it already has a branch that grows over the path.
The magic of growth also happens when filling a blank paper or a canvas. First, there’s very little life, but by adding more colors, shapes, and layers, we can grow a forest.
Sometimes the forest comes in one piece, and other times in many little pieces.
The same applies to artistic growth: sometimes it happens quickly, other times more gradually. I like to break the rules of being a serious artist only and allow play to show me the magic.
I want to learn from Saima, our youngest beagle. She is obsessed with the ball, but when we mention that to her, she seems to laugh: “It’s only a hobby!” At the same time, fetching the ball seems to be both her passionate work, but also a tool for imagining and playing.
Fall Fairytale
In the forest of wishes, we want to use a different mirror for ourselves – not to see the limitations but imagine the potential. It’s an exciting place that has many dangers as well.
Going deep can take us deep down, but when combined with play, the humor steps in. Here’s my wish for a winter that would only last one day!
Ask: “Is it the fall or is it a fairytale – real or unreal?” And then answer: “Today it’s a fairytale, a colorful escape!”
Art can truly add magic to our lives. I feel that life isn’t real without the unreal.
What do you think?
Painting Roses and Their Spirit
This week, we get inspiration from roses – their spirit, resilience, and decorative beauty.
With this post, I want to encourage you to expand the use of decorative art. You can add decorative elements to any art style! See another example in the older blog post: From Decorative to Expressive Art
The Spirit of the Rose Stays Alive in The Fall
Roses surprise me every fall. When other flowers have given up weeks ago, roses still make buds and continue to bloom. Not as galore as in summer, but they try their best on cold nights and cloudy days. The spirit of the rose is born from warmth and light, but once it’s up, it doesn’t quench easily.
In our garden, roses are more my husband’s thing – I collect peonies! But in the fall, I have to admit how superior roses are, queens of the garden, one could say. When the colorful leaves take over the scenery, even the most modest rose flowers stand out simply because they are different in colors and shapes.
It reminds me of how resilience and beauty are connected. So mere persistence in creating makes your art beautiful.
Expressing with Small and Decorative
This painting is a small one, only 20 x 25 cm (approximately 8 x 10 inches). When I was a beginner in painting, the small size felt easier. But nowadays, I prefer big canvases, and if I want to create something small, I usually grab my colored pencils, not brushes. But on the other hand, I like the challenge that the small size gives.
When painting roses in a small size, I need to have an extra focus on the quality of brushwork. Even the tiniest strokes should be elegant, especially if the painting is called ”The Spirit of the Rose.”
Decorative paintings often look very static, but I like to add movement with lines. At best, my small paintings are like short classical musical pieces with a clear melody, lots of short violin strokes, and clever piano tunes in major. It often helps me if I define the desired outcome by other art forms like music or movies.
But decorative art has its limitations. The spirit of a rose is not visible if you only paint one kind of rose and if all that you paint is roses. Add flower variations, how the flowers affect their surroundings, and how the surroundings gather around the flowers. Add elements that resemble the living spirit, and let colors interact too so that the roses are not separate but part of the living scenery. So, painting roses is never just about roses, it also expresses how you see the world.
Painting Roses – Decorative Flowers of Decodashery
Even if single floral motifs are often not so expressive, I am fascinated by the techniques of decorative art, especially folk art. A couple of years ago, I noticed that I need practice with the brushstrokes. I wanted to learn to paint in a decorative style and then combine that with a looser and more abstract approach that I already had in my style toolbox. I think that style should not be a matter of narrowing down but expanding, and I felt that more experience in decorative painting was something that I could benefit from. So I made a course called Decodashery and painted flowers after flowers to improve my strokes.
You see, preparing for the course requires deep understanding. A teacher isn’t only someone who masters the technique but one who can also break it into pieces and explain it. And by doing that, the skill becomes more stable and versatile. So, you can create quicker when knowing how things are constructed, and it’s easier to adapt the technique to your own liking. In the classes, whether you are a student or a teacher, the resilience grows, and the spirit of the rose becomes stronger: ”There’s still time to bloom, and I will do it!”
Drawing Roses and Flower Girls – New Course Is in the Making
This fall, I have not only been painting a new series but also developing a new course.
Its working title is ”Doll World,” and it’s about drawing human figures. I think it’s a skill that enables us to do illustrations that captivate the viewer and something that we all would like to do for fun too. We will draw flowers as warmups and decorate the dresses with colored pencils. I plan to run the class next year and open the registration next month. So stay tuned!
The Electrical Life of Any Artist
This week I have a consolation post for any artist!
We start from a movie and then let thoughts fly from top to bottom and come back up.
The Movie – The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
Just a couple of days ago, I watched an inspiring movie called The Electrical Life of Louis Wain. It’s a story about the illustrator Louis Wain (1860-1939) who got famous for his cat drawings. Louis Wain’s life was full of misery, he was poor, responsible for five unmarried sisters, lost her wife to breast cancer soon after the marriage, made bad business decisions, and suffered grief and mental illness.
And yet, Louis’s cat drawings were fun illustrations full of liveliness and details.
The Two Undertones of Any Day
The movie felt strangely therapeutic. Maybe partly because it expressed so well what I had been thinking lately: how life has both melancholic and uplifting undertones and how important it is to recognize and make room for both of them.
For Louis, life had two separate sides – the harsh reality and the wonderous world of imagination. I think that many of us can relate to that even if in our lives, the melancholic and uplifting undertones would spread more evenly. If I think about my artist life, there have been so many rejections that where I am now is a small miracle. And if I think about the future, more small miracles are needed to move forward.
Here’s a short video about my journey so far.
This video was published on my Instagram account first, so the proportions were optimized for that.
Those Who Believe in You
In the end, you only need to have one person who believes in you as an artist. Many times you can be that person for yourself. Like Louis, the world of imagination has the power to keep the uplifting undertone going.
But for me, there have been times when a small miracle has been needed – that someone else brings me up. When Louis found supporters in the movie, I thought of mine. They are a part of my electrical life story. Who could be yours?
It wasn’t easy to contact any of them – ask, apply, and reach out just after losing the belief and energy, but doing that has pushed me forward. Sometimes they have been friends, but many times strangers who have given me a chance to connect with their audience. In the art world, and especially in the fine art world, people are hesitant to accept outsiders. But once you get one door open, some others will open up too. The number of your supporters will grow step by step.
Opening Up for Small Miracles
In the beginning, art was something I did in secret. If I didn’t believe in my art, I simply stopped creating for a while. But the more I created, the more I wanted to find connections with other people. First with others who create, and then more publicly. After going public, stopping is much harder because you start to see wider: There must be someone who says yes.
I see that the melancholic and uplifting undertones are wrapped around each other like two plies in a yarn. By expressing both of them, not only a person but also her art becomes stronger – more touching and captivating. It’s then easier to make small miracles happen – have positive electricity as Louis Wain would put it.
What do you think? Have you seen the movie?
P.S. If you want to turn back the clock and learn from 6-years-younger Paivi, here’s your chance! Planet Color, is retiring on Sept 30, at midnight PDT.
If you are a beginner in painting and want to use acrylic paints more, for example, in your art journals, check this class! Planet Color is now more than 50% OFF before it goes away! >> Buy here!