The Only Thing You Desire to Paint – Whether You Are Aware of It Or Not
I finally painted something that I have tried for years – my view of life and my personal mystery.
Art, Religion, and View of Life
Art and religion have been connected for centuries. Some see it primarily as a business connection – churches have ordered paintings and artists have made their living.
But I like to think that the connection is not only about money but that’s spiritual too. At best, art expresses what we think about life and death. This doesn’t mean that an image has to be gloomy, or that it has to illustrate any particular religion. Vice versa, I believe that every person has their view of life. Let’s call it a personal mystery!
Searching for Personal Mystery
Your personal mystery sets the direction of your deepest thoughts, but it’s difficult to put into words. Now and then, you can catch it emotionally. But intellectually, it can feel impossible to reach.
Even if your personal mystery is unique for you, it’s so authentic that it resonates with many other people too. When I go to historical places like the Church of the Savior on Blood, they have a flavor of my mystery. But still, it’s not quite in line with my deepest thoughts and feelings.
The Only Thing You Desire to Paint
Your personal mystery dictates your artistic goals. Whatever you say you want to accomplish, the deepest desire is to express your personal mystery. You can say you paint because you want to escape everyday life, but in truth, the escape is about reaching your mystery. No matter how successful you want to be, you also want to be authentic – and that requires discovering your mystery! Your visual style may seem like the primary goal but believe me, it’s secondary – just a tiny hammer in a big toolbox that you need to reveal your mystery.
No matter how orderly you begin the painting, the final goal of the process is to let go and become one with your mystery.
Painting Your Mystery
In the middle of the painting process, your mystery like a secret whisper, so sacred that it feels forbidden even to try revealing it. This secrecy sends mixed messages to your creativity and the process gets confusing and disappointing.
When painting the woman and all the colorful details, I started to hate the mess and get disconnected with it. The image felt too complicated and decorative, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I was traveling through strange places and wondering how to reach an unknown destination.
At this point, it’s tempting to give up. I put my painting away for months. My plan was to wipe the paint away with turpentine so that I can re-use the canvas for another painting. But about a month ago when I picked the unfinished piece again, I knew instantly how to finish it.
Five Tips for Revealing Your Personal Mystery
I don’t think there’s a straightforward formula for revealing the mystery, but here are some things that are helpful:
- Grow visual skills so that you can freely choose what you paint whether it’s representational or not. Learn to use references creatively, and study the principles of abstract art (my favorite book about abstract art).
- Grow confidence so that you can let uncomfortable, erroneous, silly, and “wrong” things happen while creating. You won’t find the mystery if you stay in your normal zone (breaking the rules)
- Grow imagination so that you can jump from one association to another and come up with a unique solution. Creating from prompts help with that (I recommend Inktober).
- Curate what you love and value. List things that inspire you and keep filling and editing the list (remember to include innocent little secrets)
- Become more aware of details and nuances in all art-related things. The more general you think (“I am an abstract artist”, “I draw faces only”, “these are pretty flowers”), the more difficult it is to connect with your uniqueness and find inspiration.
I used to think that when painting people, humans should look as realistic as possible. But I am more of an engineer and an innovator than a portrait painter. By trying to make the woman look like a real person, I had blocked my personal view of life appearing on the canvas.
When I realized that the woman is just an anonym observer, the painting was very straight-forward to finish.
My Personal Mystery
In my mind, science, beauty, and spirituality are all connected.
The biggest miracle for me is how the universe works, and how I can take parts of that to create a new world.
Historical buildings and paintings connect me to the origin of our culture and universe emotionally. To me, the painting looks historical enough to fit in.
In the future, I hope to create more pieces that express my personal mystery.
For Finnish readers: Come to see this piece and more of my art! I show about 10 artworks in a group exhibition this month in Helsinki. Lisätietoja täällä!
Out of a Creative Rut – Do What Illustrators Would Do!
I am currently reading James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. It’s about growing skills and making changes in life a small step at a time. James Clear doesn’t believe in setting goals as much as building a new identity. James tells about a person who lost weight by thinking “what would healthy people do” every time he had to make a decision about eating, sleeping, and exercising.
Out of a Creative Rut by Asking What Would Illustrators Do
Since last fall, I have been practicing “what would illustrators do.” I have wanted to make art that is less abstract and more joyful and rememorize the things I learned when studying design several years ago.
When building the latest classes Animal Inkdom and Magical Inkdom, I have wanted to include more small projects than before so that you can quickly grab a pen and draw more regularly. James Clear advises building habits by combining them with our current ones. When we do something like having a cup of tea in the evening, we can also grab a pen and doodle a bit. It’s not much, but when it’s repeated regularly, the results will come.
To me, drawing small collage pieces has brought back the joy of drawing. I haven’t always had the time to do a lot, but I have made it a regular practice because “that’s what illustrators do.”
Drawings are Like Pets – Treating Them Gently
I have also developed gentle self-talk by thinking of these animals as my pets. That way, I don’t try to control the outcome too much or negatively judge a single piece. They are my pets, and I love and care about them because “that’s what animal lovers do.”
Breaking a Creative Rut and Moving Forward
At the same time as I have developed the illustration classes, I have also built my illustration portfolio.
During the next couple of months, I am doing more “what illustrators do” when I am making images for a book. I will share more pics about this commission later.
Practicing illustration has also brought new perspectives to my fine art projects and what I want to create in general. So, I highly recommend practicing “what illustrators do” – especially if you are in a creative rut or have a too strong inner critic.
Start now – Animal Inkdom Is for Sale!
This weekend: Buy Animal Inkdom for 59 EUR (normally 79 EUR).
The sale ends on Sunday midnight Sept 1st, 2019 (PDT).
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Between Fine Art and Illustration – Combining Both Into One Artwork
This week, I continue showing pieces that will be presented in the upcoming group exhibition “Flower Gardener’s Diary” (Kukkatarhurin päiväkirja, 9.- 22.9.2019, Hietsun Paviljonki, Helsinki). This one is called “Flower Fairy’s Year.” I will be presenting both paintings and drawings, so I wanted to create a piece that would build a bridge between fine art and illustration. I hope you find this project inspirational!
Inspiration Piece: Wheel of Fortune
When building the class Magical Inkdom earlier this year, I made a fun drawing called Wheel of Fortune. It has a center that’s separate from the rest of the piece, and it can be rotated so that the heads of the figures change. The bigger drawing is attached on thick cardboard so that it feels like it’s a game board, not just a flimsy piece of paper.
I wanted to use the idea of a separate centerpiece and sturdy base for this project too.
Fine Art Centerpiece: A Miniature Oil Painting
The project started by finishing a miniature oil painting that I suitably had in progress. It’s only 4 by 4 inches.
The painting was made very traditionally. I sketched the face with charcoal, and then made an underpainting with umber and white. I used Bernardino Luini’s portrait of Saint Catherine as a loose reference for the facial features.
The color layers were thin so that the previous layers stayed visible too. It took a bit of courage to give a green wash to the face, but I really like the result. Decorations were easy and fun. They are quick lines and shapes that make the saint look like a floral fairy.
With oil, the most difficult thing is to wait for every layer to dry separately. Other than that, I find oil easier to handle than acrylic paint.
Illustration: Decorative Flower Frame
For the frame, I cut a piece of Bristol paper. It’s about 10 by 10 inches.
I wanted to include flowers from January to December so that the frame is like a clock that has months instead of hours. The drawing was made with Copic Multiliners (I mostly use 0.05 tip), and I colored it with watercolors.
Plywood Base
My original idea was to cut two layers of cardboard so that the topmost layer would have a 4-by-4-inch hole. But when I told my husband that “Ideally, the base would be wooden”, he went to his workshop and came back with a hand-carved plywood base!
Putting All The Pieces Together
I painted the plywood black near the surroundings of the miniature painting. It makes sure that the plywood won’t show if the piece is observed from different angles. I varnished the oil painting with Gamvar and let it dry overnight. I put a plastic plate over the frame to reduce the curviness of the paper after painting it with watercolors.
Then I glued the painting to the base with gel medium and attached the frame with double-sided tape. Finally, I marked a line of 0.5 cm from the edge of the base and made sure that the motifs extend there. This piece will be professionally framed, so I didn’t want to leave too much empty space around the edges.
Between Fine Art and Illustration
In the art world, there’s a lot of talk about choosing between fine art and illustration. Many define fine art so that it comes up solely from the artist’s own creative expression when illustration illustrates a story or can easily be used with the text. One way to separate them is the number of copies. Fine art pieces are often unique or manufactured in very limited quantities only when illustrations are more of everyday art, consumed by the masses. Some say that it requires talent to create a piece of fine art, and just art education to create a piece of illustration.
In my artistic path, I have found the definitions both helpful and destructive. It has been essential for me to expand to illustration – to learn how to visualize text and written ideas. It has made me more connected with the surrounding world, and it has also brought me more work. However, I feel that art is free, and without exploring that freedom, it’s also difficult to create insightful illustrations. So I have tried to keep up with both worlds.
However, I hate when people say that you have to choose between fine art and illustration. For me, bringing the two approaches as close as possible has been a working solution. I think this project shows really well how one is not the enemy for the other.
I can’t wait to show you more pieces that I have finished for the exhibition! I will also have many framed and will blog about how I selected the frames in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned!
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Embellish with a Hand-Drawn Frame
Do you remember this piece? I drew it in June but back then it looked much more modest. It was only black and white, and there was no hand-drawn frame.
I rediscovered the drawing when I was going through recent drawings and paintings. I will attend a group exhibition called “Flower Gardener’s Diary” in September. I have quite a lot of work that goes under that title. In fact, if the exhibition would be called “No Flowers This Time”, I would be in trouble.
Doodling a Hand-Drawn Frame
I had given it a title “Flowers for the Soul” for this piece, but I thought I could rename it as “Flower Gardener’s Dream” if I would polish it a bit.
I cut a larger piece of paper and started drawing rough doodles around it. I can doodle quite quickly because I have been practicing a lot lately. I haven’t only drawn a bunch of exercises and additional examples for the class Magical Inkdom but also learned a lot when watching myself in the videos while editing them. It reminds me of athletes who train themselves mentally by watching their performances. Fortunately, doodling is not an Olympic sport because it would be my obsession to be the one who represented Finland!
It always amazes me that what is first just an ugly doodle, becomes a decent drawing after adding shadows and details. The magic of time and effort!
Coloring the Image + My Favorite Color
If I had to name the favorite color of my watercolor set, I would probably say Daniel Smith’s Rich Green Gold. It’s an ugly-looking paste that looks more like Poor Wasted Mud, but when you add water to it, you begin to hear music, feel the atmosphere of a big palace, and you straighten the back because the rich woman inside you is wearing an elaborate dress.
Most of that cool yellowish color is Rich Green Gold. Who could not love that luxurious color!
Two Versions – With and Without the Frame
I used double-sided tape to attach the image on the larger paper with the frame. Here are the two versions side by side. Which of them do you like better?
I am happier with the colored version because it highlights the night scene.
After all, this is about us who love flowers so much that they fill our minds also when we are sleeping.
Hand-Drawn Frame Obsession Continues
I have also been finishing some oil paintings that have been in progress for an embarrassingly long time. Having a deadline is a powerful motivator, eh? I don’t show them all in this blog post, but save them for upcoming weeks. Here’s a snapshot of the tiniest one. She is some kind of flower fairy too, and I am thinking about making a hand-drawn frame around her too. Because this is an oil painting on board, it would require some extra assembly. But I think it would look wonderful if there would be hand-drawn flowers around her. What do you think?
Come to draw fantastic art (+ fantastic frames) with me –
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Right after the registration, you will get all the lessons published so far, and you are good to start drawing! >> Sign up here!