Building a Mystical Course with Hilma, Georgiana, and Virginia
Usually, after making a course, I think: never again! It takes time to get new ideas and energy. But this time, after finishing Wild Garden, I had a new idea right away, and it felt like someone was talking to me: “You must do this, Päivi. If you don’t, nobody else will.”
The upcoming course is called Mystical Minis. We will create abstract art with colored pencils.
We will make small drawings, and each takes only about an hour to create. At the same time, we see our inner world in a new light and build a self-feeding process for creating art. This course will bring both excitement and depth to your art-making. I believe it will leave a permanent mark on you, and I hope you carry the influence of it with you for a long time what ever art you make after the course.
Mystical Trio: Hilma, Georgiana, and Virginia
With Mystical Minis, I honor three women from about 100 years ago. Two of them are pioneers in abstract art: Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) and Georgiana Houghton (1814-1884). The third one is the modernist author Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). You can’t find another course similar to this one, I promise!
Mystical Flow
I have been super-motivated to create the new course. So far, I have also enjoyed making it immensely. Some courses are born with intention, while others come out naturally, and those love children need to be born without too much forcing. It’s the very same thing as in the art-making! This course wants to come out, and I will help it.
I usually question the course idea many times before I start making the course. I especially think about whether anyone will buy it and what kind of people would. But here, it feels like Hilma, Georgiana, and Virginia do not care. They just want the course to be born. They want their voice to be combined with mine, and that brings an extraordinary meaning to this work that truly feels mystical.
If you have been in my courses, you know that I am not a secretive person. I always try to explain everything as openly as I can, and I can’t help smiling. And when I asked Hilma, Georgiana, and Virginia, why they picked me, they said: we need somebody like you to complement us, just be you and everything will go fine. And I have trusted them and followed my inner voice to gather all of us together, not only Hilma, Georgiana, and Virginia, but also you who want to create a new kind of connection to your inner world.
Mystical Minis – When?
I am currently editing the videos. I don’t have the exact publishing date yet, but I expect releasing this mystical course late this year or early next year.
Making Florals More Modern
This week, we are making florals more modern! So, when you want to get away from a botanical look, and draw and paint flowers that are more abstract and expressive, here are my tips for you!
In my recent painting Gossamer, I have stretched my style to a modern direction. The painting was born much faster than usually if you count the actual painting time only. But that’s not the whole truth because I practiced this style several times. You too, can make your florals more modern in this way!
#1 Choose Your Muse!
Pick a painter that has a modern abstract style for flowers.
My choice was Helene Schjerbeck (1862-1946). She was a famous Finnish modernist, and even if I find many of her paintings a bit too melancholic, her style fascinates me.
Helene is more of a portrait painter, but she also painted many still lives. (By the way – I also have a blog post about mimicking Helene Schjerfbeck’s style in portraits in colored pencil.)
#2 Make Many Tiny Sketches on One Page
Paint or draw small sketches where you pick ideas from your muse’s paintings. Combine many paintings on one page. When the size is small, you need to simplify and thus, find the core of your muse’s modern style.
I examined several Helene Schjerfbeck’s paintings in watercolor and combined them on one art journal page.
Focus on the shapes and lines and answer to these questions while working:
- Are the muse’s shapes light or heavy?
- How angular are the single strokes?
- How light and shadows are expressed?
- Where can you find playfulness and creativity?
Helene Schjerfbeck’s shapes are rather heavy, and her strokes are quite angular. The light and shadows are treated like they are objects as well. The result is a puzzle where the material and immaterial are treated identically.
I didn’t first think that Helene’s paintings are playful, but when I browsed more of her paintings, I started to see humor in the way she painted the shadows. There is something human in their shapes. It is shown brilliantly in this piece “Trees and Sunset.”
I started to think that maybe for my muse, the shadows were like animals, or dolls, and that they could be a little like toys in my paintings too.
#3 Create a Bigger Study More Freely
Next, use your observations to create a bigger study. Work freely and mix the observations with your original style.
I used left-over oil paints and made this spread for my Dylusions Creative Journal. I really like how playful the shadows are, and painting this was a lot of fun!
In the detail pic below, you see how angular my strokes are.
When searching for images for this blog post, I found this small painting from Helene Schjerfbeck. My flowers are different, but still there are similarities as well.
My best tips for making florals more modern:
- While working, think about surface patterns in interiors and clothing rather than the actual flowers.
- Use angular strokes to build puzzle-like compositions.
- Similarly to the parts of the colorful flowers, see the shadows and light as the shapes of the puzzle.
#4 Make the More Modern Piece
After practicing, you can now create a piece where you spend more time for finishing. Modern strokes often appear quick and careless, but they are still packed with aesthetics and style. Those kind of strokes can take a lot of attention and focus.
Here’s a pic from the early stage of my painting Gossamer. I started with a narrow color scheme, and many of the shapes and strokes were more like suggestions – a whispering start, you could say!
In the finished piece, I especially enjoy the playful color changes in the background and the new playfulness is present in lines too.
#5 Old and New – Compare!
Here you can see my previous painting of the same size and the finished Gossamer side by side. The styles of the two paintings are slightly different, but not totally!
I used leftover paints for these two miniature paintings. The one on the left is more of my original style, the other one is more modern.
If the weather allows, I always take the photo of the final piece outdoors. This fall has been exceptionally long and warm. There are still leaves in the apple tree, and it’s November!
I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial on how to make florals more modern!
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!
Half-Empty Art Journals I Should Fill Up
Last month, I went through my art supplies and wrote a post about the supplies I shouldn’t use anymore. After the post, I gave most of those useless-to-me supplies away. Now I have reviewed my art journals and have come to the conclusion that I have too many half-empty ones. I should fill these up and at the same time, end one era in my artistic journey.
I don’t mean I shouldn’t have any art journals or sketchbooks anymore, but I think I could do well with only one or two. I have grown my skills by drawing a lot, but now I feel I am more of a painter. Most of my creative energy nowadays goes into painting, and I mostly make either watercolor or canvas paintings. So, the books don’t serve me as much as they have in the early years.
Ten of my art journals are half-empty. I don’t think it’s realistic to fill them in a short time. On the other hand, I have small pieces and hand-drawn motifs that I could attach to the pages and make collage art. Anyway, I wanted to share my inventory. Time will tell how quickly these will be filled!
Art Journal #1 – Smash Book
Who remembers the Smash Books by K&Company? I have several, but only one of them is unfinished. This one has the best cover as I have attached my fabric drawing to it.
This journal has all kinds of pages, but I want to show you the spread that has slow stitching. I have just glued the hand-embroidered fabrics on the pages.
Maybe I could continue this journal with the fabric theme and search for other hand-embroidered pieces from my needlework stash?
Art Journal #2 – Accordion Book
This art journal is really fancy. It’s an accordion book with a separate casing. The paper holds watercolor well but it’s smooth enough for drawing and coloring too. I have got this as a gift from a student of my courses.
This journal has quite a many filled pages, but as it’s an accordion book, I could fill the rest of the pages with a watercolor painting that would continue from one page to another.
Art Journal #3 – Spiral Bound Sketchbook
I shared the process of making the collage cover in this blog post from 2020.
When I start making a new course, I often buy a new sketchbook, and that’s what happened here too. This book has mostly portrait drawings. They were drawn when practicing and gathering ideas for the course Innovative Portraits. Some portraits are very abstract like the one below.
This book has still many empty pages. Here, I could gather other face drawings that I have made over the years. I think that at some point, every artist wants to draw faces.
Art Journal #4 – Small Sketchbook
Most of my art journals are filled with colorful art and contain fairly little writing or black-and-white sketches. This little sketchbook has some interesting ideas and it’s more like a notebook about art-making.
This sketchbook is almost full, and could be filled very quickly with the ideas for the upcoming paintings and courses.
Art Journal #5 – Colored Pencil Diary
This journal is an Archer & Olive Notebook that I call my colored pencil diary. I have filled many pages already. For example, see the blog post about coloring without limits!
My favorite part of the book is the chapter that has fun plant-themed pages. I made them for the course Fun Botanicum.
Even if this journal has many filled pages, it still has a lot of blank pages. However, I feel the journal is ready to be called finished. Should I remove the blank pages? What do you suggest?
Art Journal #6 – Bullet Journal
I love bullet journals but don’t usually draw in them. However, in 2018-2019 I bought a dot-grid journal just for small drawings. These became inspiration pieces for the course Animal Inkdom.
The drawings leave room for writing, and there are many empty pages left. I think I should remove this journal from my art journal shelf and use it for bullet journaling once my current bullet journal gets full.
Art Journal # 7 – Tiny Sketchbook
My smallest art journal is still quite empty. It has some lovely drawings, though!
Should I continue this, or just take out the pages and glue them on another art journal? When I carry a journal with me, I prefer a bigger one.
Art Journal #8 – Dylusions Creative Journal Square with Black Pages
Dylusions Creative Journals are sturdy and their paper is quite thick. I like to practice painting by filling their page. Black is a nice background, especially when I use leftover paints from the palette.
This is the kind of journal I still want and need. It will get filled over the years and there’s no pressure to do it right away.
Art Journal #9 – Moleskine Watercolor Notebook
Moleskine watercolor notebook is a small journal, but it has lovely panorama spreads and nice paper. See this blog post for more inspiration!
I am going to continue this one, for sure!
Art Journal #10 – Dylusions Creative Journal Square with Cream Pages
Dylusions Creative Journal with cream-colored pages is my favorite art journal. This journal works well with colored pencils, for example, see this drawing tutorial of Vermeer Girl!
The inside cover is colored freely with felt-tipped pens. I used thin marker paper for the drawing and then glued the paper on the cover.
I started this journal about five years ago, and have almost filled it. But I like to keep working on the older pages, making them more beautiful. Like with the black journal, leftover paints find their way here.
The paper holds water fairly well, and I use watercolors, acrylics, and oils there. I only wish that the paper would be bright white, not cream-colored. When the journal is full, I will record a flip-through video of it.
Half-Empty Art Journals – Question!
I have a shelf that has many full art journals. I have now put the half-empty ones on the right, so that they don’t get mixed with the full ones.
How many half-empty art journals do you have? Leave a comment!
Wild Garden – Paint with Me!
In the upcoming course Wild Garden we will paint flowers freely, intuitively, and expressively in watercolor. Watch the video and sign up now!
Wild Garden will begin on September 22, 2025. Sign up here!