Butterfly Art and Beyond
This week, I have some butterfly art, stories from the past, and plenty of inspiration for art-making.
Here’s the newest spread of my colored pencil journal. I think it’s a little different than the pages so far – more detailed at least! You can see most of the previous spreads in this video; tell me what you think!
With this butterfly fantasy, I want to take you more than a hundred years back in time – to the end of the 19th century when a famous Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946) painted Violets in a Japanese Vase in 1890.
Although Helene wasn’t as famous back then, she had traveled and studied abroad. And now, she had just got back home after spending a year in Paris and England. After painting people, Helene was now drawn to make nature-themed pieces. It felt refreshing to change big and challenging portraits to small landscapes and still lives. Flowers became Helene’s consolation pieces. When she was sent to St. Petersburg to copy Russian masterpieces and thus bring educational reproductions to Finland (“here’s how the masters paint”), she painted flowers for her own joy in the evenings. (See Helene Schjerbeck’s later style and my adaptation for colored pencils in this blog post!)
I can relate to Helene. My main work is big oil paintings – abstract florals or landscapes – but I also make art that soothes and maintains rather than breaks through. While the first pieces of the new series are drying and waiting for their next layers, I feel drawn to the boxes of pencils.
At the beginning of the week, after painting the whole Sunday, I wanted to draw something just for me. “Butterflies!” my inner child asked.
Here’s how far I got in one evening. This was before I traveled back in time to meet Helene – and another artist called Torsten Wasastjerna!
Fantasy Art in Villa Gyllenberg
In the middle of the week, my husband and I visited Villa Gyllenberg in Helsinki. It’s a museum that used to be the home of Signe and Ane Gyllenberg in the 20th century. The house was built in 1938, and it has a wonderful location near the sea.
A part of the museum is a furnished old home with an extensive art collection, including Helene Schjerfbeck’s violet painting.
Just recently, Villa Gyllenberg got a new extension for art exhibitions. The new space has high walls and plenty of space, but still, there was something too big to fit there straight!
This is Torsten Wasastjerna’s oil painting Falling Leaves, made in 1897. It’s 550 cm high and 370 cm wide, one of the biggest Finnish paintings ever. My husband agreed to model beside it so that you get an idea of how big it is.
Inspired by Torsten Wasastjerna
Like Helene Schjerbeck, Torsten Wasastjerna (1863-1924) got an education in fine art and studied abroad too. But his consolation was fantasy. He did commission portraits to pay the bills but loved illustrating fairies and angels. He even wrote books. The first one was called Dröm och Värklighet – Dream and Reality.
Torsten Wasastjerna’s fantasy world wasn’t as surreal as mine, but it felt close.
When I got back home, I was inspired to work on the butterfly piece with much more detail than I first had planned.
I added a person, a butterfly girl or a boy, to one of the wings.
Butterfly Art and Beyond
I am impressed by how dedicated Torsten was to his fantasy art, even if it was not valued by others.
It made me think that I, too, can create “butterfly art” that goes beyond the butterflies – that challenges both my imagination and dedication.
So, I spent more hours than normally with this spread, adding details and then adjusting their shapes and colors.
It felt like my pencils reached a new level, getting closer to my heart than before.
The world that is naturally and effortlessly born in my paintings fed the more illustrative work too.
All this makes me think about how important it is to go to see art and use that for inner discussions: how am I different, what are my consolation pieces, and how do I show my dedication to art? Then butterfly art can go beyond butterflies in the same way as Helene’s violets are not just “violet art.”
What do you think?
How to Stay Motivated – Colored Pencils and Free Video!
This week, I have a free video for you! I hope it helps you to stay motivated and keep creating.
In the video, I am creating this small spread for my colored pencil diary and talking about how colored pencils help me to stay motivated. I share some thoughts about taking a break and getting back to making art. There are also lots of visual examples and an idea about Modern Me and Ancient Me. Imagining these two sides can help too.
How to Stay Motivated – Watch the Video!
I hope you enjoy the video. Let’s keep creating!
Art Inspiration from Period Dramas
This week, I am sharing art inspiration impacted by period dramas.
Visual Deliciousness of Period Dramas
I am a fan of period dramas. Recently, I have been watching Gilded Age and Bridgerton. Both of them have beautiful outdoor and indoor scenes, and dresses too, of course! My eyes like the delicious visual world they illustrate and my heart always feels a bit lighter after an episode or two.
Even if the dramas have historical settings, their colors are not dull at all. A picnic in the forest looks vibrant and is full of sunlight.
I like how flowery everything is, and how the jewelry frames the faces of young ladies.
Being so inspired by period dramas, it’s no wonder that my art is full of romantic and old-fashioned elements. They speak fantasy to me.
Fantastic Old-World Impact
I think that every artist needs to find their approach to fantasy and fairytales – how to use imagination and what to express with it?
I am fascinated by the power of the inner world and all my pieces are inner sceneries in one way or another.
Pablo Picasso has said: “Art is a lie that tells the truth.” Similarly, I would say that art is a fantasy that gives us what we need.
Bringing Fantasy to Life
I often talk about seeing art as a story or a collection rather than a single piece. In the new class, Fun Botanicum, we create a set of illustrations that are all unique but still a part of the series. This is a great project for setting a style and bringing different coloring techniques together.
Plants are a fun theme to explore what you can do with colored pencils and imagination!
>> Sign up here!
Before and After – Which Painting Style Do You Prefer?
This week, I share a revamp of a small painting and talk about painting style.
Here’s my newest piece that I am quite fond of. But wait! This isn’t totally new, but a revamped one.
Husband Didn’t Approve
Earlier this month, I made a small painting that didn’t get approval from my husband.
– “Unfinished,” he said.
– “No, it’s just loose and abstract,” I claimed.
But soon after, I considered adjusting something a little. My husband has good taste, and I appreciate his opinion. Like most Finns, he is brutally honest, and often that’s what I want to hear, even if it would hurt a bit.
But what to do with this one? Maybe just make a couple of clumsy shapes a bit curvier. But after having a wonderful conversation about conventionality with a friend who is also an artist, I felt that I could do it – go from one extreme to another.
Several Levels of Style
During the last couple of months, I have been trying to define my approach to art as levels of some sort – when should I go abstract, when do I want to make illustrations, and when my style needs to be decorative or design-oriented.
I have always thought that these levels are connected to what supplies I use. Like this:
If I paint, I am more abstract.
If I draw, I go in the illustrative direction.
And if I embroider, it’s just decorative work for relaxation.
But it shouldn’t always have to be like that. The opposite could happen too.
Untraditional Use of Supplies – Mixing Levels of Style
Last summer, I started to do slow stitching – random simple stitches on fabric. Surprisingly, what first felt like decorative needlecraft started to produce abstract art. This piece is not traditionally decorative at all.
And many of my recent images in colored pencils have been quite abstract and painterly, like this spread from my colored pencil journal.
The art world is full of presumptions based on supplies.
Colored pencil artists replicate photos.
Watercolorists throw water on the paper and wait for the landscape to appear.
Abstract painters do it for interior design.
Decorative is reserved for folk artists.
And so on!
But I have come to the conclusion that supplies don’t define the levels of my style. I can freely choose how much I want to show each level of style in one piece.
So, we can break what’s expected and do what we want!
Inspiration from Many Styles
The same unrestricted approach applies to inspiration.
I went to Sinebrychoff Art Museum to see floral paintings, but the most inspiring piece was a traditional textile – what??? When I looked at the photos taken from the exhibition, it felt like a dirty secret.
There were many old masterpieces in oil, but a small traditional textile captivated me.
“How can I be so inspired by that?
I shouldn’t think about that anymore.
At least, don’t tell anyone!”
But my creativity has a mind of her own when it comes to inspiration. If I look at my Instagram saves, sometimes I like to see old palaces or churches, and other times I find simple and rural terribly inviting. I love old portraits, but I am not particularly fond of painting humans myself. I consume all kinds of kitsch – banal florals, round-eyed dolls, plastic horses – like crazy, but I also love modern and straightforward that’s not similarly pretty at all.
And now, my creativity told me to revamp that abstract painting and go wild with decorative strokes.
“Take it to the Kitsch goddess,” she shouted.
“No one will like it,” I heard myself saying. But then it hit me that maybe we could do it together. I asked my inner Kandinsky: “Would you go decorative with me?” He nodded quietly but without hesitation.
And so it happened that Mrs. Decorative, Mr. Abstract, and Miss Illustrative all painted together. It was a lot of fun!
Which One Do You Like Best – Before or After?
Which painting style do you prefer? It would be interesting to hear, leave a comment!
I have no regrets and my husband approved too. While I am waiting for the painting to dry, I glance at it frequently, smiling.
The painting follows a tradition but still feels like a breakthrough. I can now see further and wider. I could mix different painting styles in one big piece and bring a wider variety of inspiration into one work. So often, I have tried to move to the next level in technique, but now it feels that I need to level up artistic thinking!
News from My Little Studio
I have lots of painting work to be done in April. My private exhibition in June is still half-empty, but that’s partly a happy problem. My paintings have sold well, and I have a new prestigious gallery representation. The gallery is called Gumbostrand Konst och Form. I think it’s a great fit for my art because they also sell design pieces. Here’s my page on their website.
My home feels like a work in progress.
The little studio space has unfinished paintings, and big blank canvases are waiting in the library room.
I also have a new online class going on – Fun Botanicum!
It’s so wonderful to see work from the students and have conversations about art. It makes all the other work less lonely, and I feel blessed to lead the lovely community. Especially now, when most of my spare time is spent worrying over the world situation, it feels good to be connected and also, serve others.
You can still hop in, sign up here!