Helene Schjerfbeck – Step-by-Step Formula for Her Style
In this blog post, I will show you how to create a stylish portrait and learn from a Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946).
The Famous Helene Schjerfbeck
Helene Scherfbeck had an impressionistic and fairly detailed style. But during the years, she became a true expressionist, a master of expressing the most essential through simplifying. She painted a lot of portraits, and many of them have become very valuable. The Red Haired Girl II was sold for 1.5 million euros at Sotheby’s last year. One of my aunts admired Helene Schjerfbeck, and many years ago, she bought me a book about her paintings. The book is called “Helene Scherfbeck – Elämä ja taide” (Life and Art), and it’s written by Lena Holger. To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the style and didn’t even browse the book for years. But the more I have learned about art, the more enthusiastic I have become to study various styles. As I love to figure out a formula behind a style, it started to feel tempting to solve Helene’s secrets too.
Independent Visions – Helene Schjerfbeck in New York!
There’s also another reason why I am writing this. Currently, there’s a rare opportunity to see Finnish female masters in New York, USA. The Ateneum Art Museum, which is part of the Finnish National Gallery, displays an excellent exhibition at Scandinavia House from 29 April to 3 October 2017. The exhibition presents four early 20th-century Finnish artists from the Ateneum collection: Helene Schjerfbeck, Sigrid Schauman, Ellen Thesleff and Elga Sesemann. If you visit New York this summer, do go and see it, I promise you won’t be disappointed!
Here are a couple of Helene Scherfbeck’s paintings that you will see there.
I find the abstract nature of Helene’s style especially fascinating. The way she simplifies the spots where the light hits or where a shadow is formed is like she is building an abstract composition instead of painting a face.
Furthermore, the girl below is wearing a shawl that is like an abstract painting!
Mixing Helene Scherfbeck’s Style with My Personal Approach
One primary factor in building a style is the shape of the elements. I for one love organic elements and flowing form. Simple rectangles are not as appealing to me as more complicated and diverse shapes. However, I wanted to add Helene’s twist to a couple of watercolor paintings. As Helene Scherfbeck also painted still-lifes, I decided to paint a woman with a flower or two. First, I made a tiny painting and played with layers to create angular shapes. Then I painted a bigger watercolor painting with familiar flowing shapes but using the insights that I had got by painting the first one.
After these two paintings, I was ready to record a simple formula for achieving Helene Scherfbeck’s style.
The Formula for The Modern Woman – Step by Step!
During this drawing process, improvise, but also check that your drawing is not symmetric. It makes the drawing dynamic and reduces stiffness.
1) Draw a couple of arcs to create a face. Then add rectangles and triangles for hair. It is a fun and easy way to add hair without focusing on the shape of the head.
2) Add a neck and shoulders by drawing a rectangle and a couple of triangles that point to different directions. Then draw eyes, mouth, and other facial features. Use as many geometric shapes and simple lines as you can. After facial features, turn the work upside down and complement the drawing with geometric shapes so that it’s more like a balanced, asymmetric abstract painting than a portrait of a woman.
3) Soften the shape of the hair, the clothing, and some of the facial features. Then color the face, neck, and hair. Helene Scherfbeck often used grayish colors for the skin and a more striking color for the hair.
4) Add light and shadows on the face. Use mostly simple geometric elements. Then turn the work upside down and finish the abstract composition by using color to balance the painting. Remember to maintain the asymmetry!
5) Remove some sketch lines and add more finishing details if needed. If you used long lines, make some of them shorter so that your drawing is not so stiff.
Helene Scherfbeck’s Style – The Combination of Simplicity and Softness
Even if Helene Scherfbeck’s style is very graphic, she also embraced uneven edges and soft color changes. This softness combined with distinct, even clumsy-looking geometric elements is the essence of her style.
She also uses strong lines and bold colors to draw the viewer’s attention to the selected details. However, she does that very sparingly like there would be a limited storage of lines and pigments.
Find The Passion Behind Your Many Styles
I often find it distracting when people talk about their personal style like it would be the final destination for their artistic journey. They say tat once they have found their style, it would be like coming home and they would never need to go back to explore. I think it can be a harmful mindset. It leads to thinking that artists could be divided into three categories: a) those who search their style, b) those who stick with their style, and c) those who are afraid of going deeper because they don’t want to stop playing. That kind of controversy is not good at all! Going deeper allows, not prohibits, playing! Creative people are meant to travel spiritually!
Instead of searching for your perfect style, your final destination, connect with your passion! Your passion can be like a base camp for your explorations, energizing you to take up new challenges.
Sign up for The Exploring Artist to discover the passion behind your art
and to become more confident with the big word “artist”!
Want to Find Your Art Style? Need to Focus?
This blog post is dedicated to you who have been creating art for some time, and want to find your art style and a clearer focus. I have a bit different take on these issues than what you would probably expect. I think that forcing your creativity is not the way to go. Instead of making yourself to focus on one idea, I suggest that you learn to integrate your many ideas. And instead of trying to find your perfect art style, start building your artistic identity by doing some soul searching on a deeper level!
Finding Focus and Your Art Style – Watch the video!
I talk about focus and art style while creating the gouache painting. Watch the video below!
Sign up for The Exploring Artist to discover the passion behind your art
and to become more confident with the big word “artist”!
See the full program description for The Exploring Artist and sign up now!
When you sign up before June, you will get an early bird discount!
Technique, Style or Identity – Which Comes First to You?
Technique
During the recent ten years, I have wanted to learn and experiment with art techniques. It has been fun to combine all kinds of media and see what comes out. And even when using one medium only, techniques have been important to me. Like recently, when I have learned to paint like the old masters. But with techniques, come the rules: first this, then that. It feels safe at first, but then, it can also be too restricting.
Style
To me, the personal style means something that I am comfortable with doing, and that makes my work recognizable. But for a long time now, I have felt a sense of sadness when people say that they want to find their voice. One of my favorite creative play has been to play with styles. Being very intentional about the style issues can take the play out of the game.
Identity
The more I have tried to focus on techniques or style, the more I have thought about the third thing, the artistic identity. I tried to keep all that inside me, but I am not very good at hiding things, so I was about to explode before finally, in the last month, I wrote on Facebook:
“Style or Identity? – Even when working full-time as an artist, I sometimes still have problems in calling myself an artist. I wonder, why there’s so much talk about finding your style and so little about finding your identity as an artist?
It includes me too. I often talk and think about style issues when I should think about identity issues. It’s easier to analyze the line, the theme, the mark making, than talk about things that go deeper.
I mean things like:
1) Why do you make art?
2) How do you define the quality of your art?
3) What’s your role in the art community?
4) What’s different with you from the artists that you admire?
5) When and how do you know that you have succeeded as an artist?Most of these questions are valid whether you are a beginner or more advanced. The answers change when your journey progresses.”
When your order is 1) identity, 2) style, 3) technique
you allow more play,
you take on bigger challenges,
and you connect more with other artists.
Stay tuned for a new challenge-based coaching class to grow your artistic identity!
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Paul Klee and the Art of Learning
This blog post is a personal story about being a student of Paul Klee. I will also share my thoughts about art classes and about their effect.
Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook
It was a late evening at the beginning of July – one of those white nights that take place in the middle of summer in Finland. When the sun is up, it’s more tempting to stay awake than to go to sleep. It also felt better to pick a brush and paint than to slow down with knitting or watching tv. My brain activity was high. I didn’t want just paint, I wanted to learn something new.
While pondering about learning, I remembered a thin book that had been on my shelf for a while. It was borrowed from a library a few weeks ago and I hadn’t opened it since. The title was called “Pedagoginen luonnoskirja” – Pedagogical Sketchbook, written by a famous abstract artist Paul Klee in 1925. The original version was written in German. In 1953, it was translated into English and finally into Finnish in 1997. The long timespan proves that the book has some ever-lasting content. But when I began to examine the first chapters with the brush in my hand, it seemed very uninspiring. The pages were black and white, no color, but the worst thing was: it looked like a math book! It had formulas, diagrams, references to geometry, anatomy, physics … What was I thinking about when I borrowed this book!
Abstract Art Theory for the Left Brain
But then, I remembered that my artistic side wasn’t playing along when I found the book at the library. Being so thin, it could hardly be seen on the shelves filled with thick art books. Seeing its cover, my engineering side that got interested: can there be formulas for art? Is this the book that teaches the left brain to understand the right brain?
So even if I had my art journal open on the table and paints ready on the palette, I decided to switch gears and start reading the book – slowly and carefully like engineers do. After a couple of minutes, I was hooked. I was mesmerized by the world the book presented. Phenomenon familiar from my physics studies were tied into modern abstract art. The book was broken into three parts. Each part contained short chapters. like tiny lessons. I decided to begin studying each chapter so that the engineer in me would read it first. Then she would explain it to my artistic side who in turn, would fill an art journal page by playing with the concepts.
Side note: Interested in the book? Here’s a link to Amazon.com. There’s also a free PDF of the book available if you google it but I don’t link it here, as it may be an illegal copy.
Paul Klee’s Ideas in Practise
When I eagerly studied the book, I felt I had a teacher, Paul Klee himself. It was exciting to listen to him talking about muscular movement, material structures, disturbed balance, how the perspective is experienced or how the blood circulates in a body. And most of all, how it’s all connected to visual communication and visual art. I imagined being one of his many students and even one of the most enthusiastic ones. I was constantly raising my hand, not only asking questions but also questioning: how did you come up with this idea, why have you omitted this fact?
Do These Ideas Suit My Style?
Even if I was painting and reading like a maniac from one chapter to another, I was also in doubt. Stiff figures that I painted looked very old-fashioned to me. I had a teacher who hadn’t experienced the digital age, who hadn’t seen or created any contemporary art. “Tell me, Paul Klee, do these rules apply to many styles, including mine?”, I kept asking.
But despite of the constant battle in my mind, I couldn’t put the book away. I went from one chapter to another and eagerly waited what my teacher would present in the next one. And when the last chapter was completed, I felt sad to leave the classroom and say goodbye to my teacher. During the session, I had completed three big art journal spreads. They all looked like the middle of 20th century to me. The session seemed to be nothing else but a fun engagement when the sun finally set down.
The Aftermath of Learning
During the next weeks, I saw sudden glimpses of Paul Klee. When I was taking photos, drawing, painting or just observing, Paul Klee’s theories began to merge with my own thinking and with my own style. The three spreads that I had made were exercises only. Once I left the classroom, I was free to apply those theories where suitable. This is what happens in every art class. You might think that the exercises are not fit for you. You might have doubts if the class fits your current style. And when you leave the class you might think: “Oh well, I don’t know if I ever do this again.”
But like the blood needs oxygen, creativity needs new theories, techniques, and ideas. They are no threat to your style, they are essential to continue developing your style. That’s one main reason why I challenge you to learn new techniques at Imagine Monthly (you can still sign up!). That’s also a reason why I will be inviting you to join my newest online painting workshop, starting in October.
Coming Up: New Painting Workshop
I am really excited about this! Be assured that I will have something special for the beginners and a lot of new to focus on for the more advanced painters. The theme for the class is expressing nature. The registration for the new workshop will open next week with a short-time early bird pricing. I will give more details about the class then.
While building the class I have practiced the techniques and ideas on a big canvas. This painting is still in progress, but I want to show it to you just to be able to compare the art journal pages above and how Paul Klee’s teachings have merged into my own style. That’s what’s my goal with you too: that you’ll have a fun time with the classes and that you will be able to mix new things with what you already know and love.
Update 4 years later: I have a new class based on Paul Klee’s and Wassily Kandinsky’s teachings – Floral Freedom! >> Buy now!