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 start building your 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 didn’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. So, 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!
Visual Vocabulary First, Style Second
This week is about visual vocabulary and how to widen it.
I often hear the worry about finding the style, but more rarely about widening the vocabulary. Style is a quality word, but vocabulary is more about quantity. Still, it’s as important, and you can’t find the style without growing the vocabulary!
Often when we create art, we use a limited variety of shapes and lines and often the most ordinary ones. For example, your strokes may be quite straight and have very little variety in thickness. Or your shapes can be mostly basic geometric shapes. When I started, I mainly drew circles and my pieces were very symmetrical in general.
Forget the Style, Grow the Visual Vocabulary!
When you want to widen your visual vocabulary, look at the details of your work. There are seeds that can grow into great things. For example, could you repeat a random spot that almost disappears into the background and build a subtle texture from it?
Look at your drawing line and think about whether it could deviate slightly from its path. Could you make a notch somewhere and thus make the shape more interesting?
Imagine you are a child who knows only a few words. Then it’s not important to question what the topic should be, but to find more words to tell any. Stop worrying whether you should create faces or landscapes and make a wide range of art to grow the visual vocabulary.
When you can draw a wide range of shapes, curves, lines and have many ways to color, repeat, break up and assemble them, you can produce visual stimuli on the paper that makes your imagination work. From this collaboration, art is born.
Outer Inspiration – Borrowing “Words” from Others
By looking at art, you can find words, i.e. shapes, that you want to incorporate into your own vocabulary, i.e. style.
Art history is like an encyclopedia where we can pick what we like. Any art can be seen as abstract – just focus on finding a variety of shapes and colors.
Your vocabulary can be inspired of not only fine art, but crafts as well.
Imagination Sets Who You Are
Too much outer inspiration causes copying, so don’t leave your imagination out of the equation! Imagine you are a singer who takes a popular song into your repertoire. Then you enter a singing competition and are told: “You sound a lot like the original singer of the song, but we want to hear who you are.”
So we need not only to expand our expressive language, but also to develop our imagination. Visual vocabulary and imagination are a pair, and art needs both.
For example, you can draw a circle and give it a meaning, but can others see it? With imagination alone, the expression remains hidden. With a rich expressive language, we can make art enjoyable for others as well.
Welcome to My Courses + What I Want to Teach
The goal of my courses is to develop both your visual vocabulary and imagination.
First, I want to get you to draw something a little differently than you have done before and thus enrich your visual vocabulary. Second, I want to make a crack in your everyday thinking and plant imagination in it. I want you to ask: “What if?” and to respond with something completely crazy – something that makes you feel free to tell completely new kinds of stories.
When art emerges from this starting point, richly and vividly expressing itself, you will find your style.