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!
Maximalist or Minimalist? Style Experiments in Art Journal Pages
This week, we experiment between maximalist and minimalist styles.
Every time I open one of my art journals, I feel a sense of relaxation. It’s time for experimentation and risk-taking. In art journals, failure can also be success. Page by page, I learn to know myself better and thus, express things that can also be relevant to others. Now I wanted to experiment with style and picked my Dylusions Creative Journal for that.
Maximalist – Multiply!
I know that I’m more of a maximalist than a minimalist, so I started with that and made a spread with the principle of “more is more”.
I’ve started to be fascinated by buildings, both exterior and interior, and here too motifs began to create a sense of space as they turned into ornaments.
It was so fun to add a new detail on top of another that I forgot to take more pictures of the different stages, but I started with watercolors and soon moved on to colored pencils.
I’m fascinated by abundance and luxury. I connect that with the courage to be brave and let it all out. When I feel like that, the maximalist style is born effortlessly.
Adding details and dividing one shape to many can be done over and over again. I could have refined my drawing even more!
Maximalist or Minimalist – Adult or Child?
For me, maximalism is associated with adulthood and minimalism with childhood, although many probably think the opposite: that as a child you sprawl and as an adult you can prune. But when I look at my childhood drawings, I can say that my poor drawing skills made me a natural minimalist as a child.
It was a little unpleasant that the organizer has written the prize in the drawing,
but now it just adds a nostalgic flair to it.
But let’s remember that even as an adult, we can grab a light marker and start coloring with clumsy strokes and without outlines.
Minimalist – Simplify!
I colored the shapes of horses directly on a blank piece of paper without outlines. When I colored the background, I then refined the shapes.
As a child, I loved playing with plastic horses and red tights were my favorite accessory.
While making this art journal spread, I felt a deep connection not only to my childhood in the 1970s, but also to my teenage years in the 80s.
Back then, everything was still possible and ahead. The horses galloped wildly in my small room, but my mind was already far away in the outside world.
The controversy between the style and the content is the key here. The picture is clear, and the colors are raw, but the atmosphere is intense and a little mysterious.
It is as if I were each of those four horses. At the same time, a playing child, a baby seeking support, a galloping youth, and an adult whose life is still a mystery.
When I compare these two spreads, I think that I could give the minimalist a little more space, and it would not reduce the expression, maybe vice versa?
What do you think? See the pics below and leave a comment!
Exercise: Maximalist or Minimalist?
Try the same experiment in your art journal!
Creating Menagerie
This week, I share a recent acrylic painting called Menagerie and talk about the process. This is an example of making the most of the rich visual vocabulary – the topic that I talked about in last week’s video, but now we focus more on the idea of the piece rather than the style.
Recently, I have been thinking about the news feeds and their many truths. Although things are presented in beautiful phrases and pictures, the truth is much more complicated, and there are layers behind them. The same applies to people. Even though we try to be human, we are still animals, too.
When I paint, I struggle with the same thing: should I paint a flower or a soul?
I want to create beautiful paintings, but on the other hand, a painting is like a person. If you treat the painting superficially, you don’t get to see its true beauty.
I seem to paint better if I can partly focus on something else!
My goal is to give my paintings the freedom to be themselves and this painting really revealed its heart to me.
However, my task is not only to reveal the wild nature of the painting, but also to gently train it.
Menagerie is sold already. I hope it will bring joy to its new owner.
Details of Menagerie
Here are detail pics of the finished piece. I like how the style of this painting is partly illustrative. It looks like it’s partly drawn with a brush.
I wanted to create an impression that the animals are captive but still wild and strong enough to break free.
This painting has many layers and details.
I tried to bring up the similarity between flowers and animals.
Here you can see the big flower up close. The brush strokes are loose, but still, I painted them with a lot of thought and care.
I hope this inspires you to create too!
Develop Your Art Style Without Forcing
When you want to develop your art style, you don’t have to force it. Stop feeling frustrated not being focused enough and s tart growing the visual vocabulary: learn how to create a variety of shapes and lines and find different ways to use color. Whether you want to paint abstract art or fill your art journal with fun drawings, this week’s video is for you.
Develop Your Art Style – Grow Your Visual Vocabulary
This week I want to bring back the topic I wrote about at the end of May: Visual Vocabulary First, Style Second. I felt that the importance of this topic could not be expressed well enough in the written text. This is also a very important issue for me in my own development as an artist. It is like a big onion with a lot to peel.
Not Everything But Essential Stuff
When I was making the video, I kept thinking that it doesn’t express everything. That I should also talk about deeper levels of imagination and expression. And it also bothered me a bit to say in the video that the subject is not important and ask you to just focus on growing your visual vocabulary. But I don’t mean that what you express wouldn’t be important. I mean that when the content is taken to a generic level, for example, whether you should be painting landscapes or portraits, it’s superficial.
So I dare to publish a video that doesn’t express everything about making art, because it’s probably more useful when it offers a more limited view. The video dives into visual vocabulary, because in my opinion it is the solution to more issues than anything else related to making art. Here too, I emphasize the “in my opinion,” because there are of course many different ways to approach art making.
Develop Your Art Style Without Forcing – Watch the Video!
I personally believe that in art, being a creator makes a person visionary. Although art is also a work of the mind, the mind expands by creating, just as language skills grow through speaking. I am a pretty fast speaker by nature and it has been quite a task for me to get my English to a level where I can speak at a reasonably natural speed and fluently. When I notice grammatical errors while editing videos, I remind myself of the same importance of doing.
Even though we are not perfect, let’s keep creating and always moving forward!