Fantasy Archives - Peony and Parakeet

Intuitive Coloring Explained + Extended Black Friday Sale!

Posted on November 24, 2021November 24, 2021Posted in Animals, Color, Doodling, Fantasy, Flowers & Plants, Paper CollageTagged colored pencils, drawing pen2 Comments

This week, I have a new free video for you, inspiration from my drawing classes, and there’s also an extended Black Friday Sale going on! Exciting!

Extended Black Friday Sale – Shop Here!

Online art classes by Peony and Parakeet. Drawing classes and more.

All classes are 25% OFF!

Now is the time to get the classes you have been thinking about!
>> Shop Here!

The sale ends on Nov 29, midnight PST.

Intuitive Coloring Explained – Watch the Video!

This video is an excerpt of the live speech that I gave for my art community Bloom and Fly this month. It introduces a fresh way to think about drawing and coloring. Lots of art-making inspiration is packed into this 6-minute video!

The classes mentioned in the video – Intuitive Coloring, Inspirational Drawing, Animal Inkdom, and Magical Inkdom, as well as all my painting classes – are 25% OFF during the extended Black Friday Sale. >> Shop Here!

More Inspiration from My Drawing Classes

The longer I draw, the more things come together. Not only so that I find more inspiration from the individual previous pieces, but also so that they describe a world that’s lively and ever-expanding. I also feel that my classes are like doorways to building a world of your own.

In Intuitive Coloring, we travel from one meadow to another lesson by lesson and play on the way.

Colored pencil art by Paivi Eerola of Peony and Parakeet. She creates this in the class called Intuitive Coloring. — Intuitive Coloring has lots of different easy and gentle techniques that your colored pencils will enjoy!

In Animal Inkdom, we start with little creatures and the animals get bigger lesson by lesson.

Insects from the class Animal Inkdom. See Peony and Parakeet's drawing classes.

Insects and butterflies are simple to draw, but decoration makes them look fantastic!

A hand-drawn butterfly by Peony and Parakeet. From the class Animal Inkdom.

Animal Inkdom is one of my most popular classes, maybe because it’s so playful! I had to edit out some of the laughs and smiles because I had so much fun drawing these that it would be a bit disturbing! And after Animal Inkdom, I couldn’t stop, but made an independent sequel – Magical Inkdom!

Horses, wings, and frames from Paivi Eerola's Magical Inkdom. It's a lot of fun to mix and match all the hand-drawn parts. More drawing classes at Peony and Parakeet. — Horses, wings, and frames from Magical Inkdom. It’s a lot of fun to mix and match all the hand-drawn parts.

Art is a journey, so combining previous work with the new one, has often made me see new possibilities.

Paivi Eerola's drawing classes. Here's a cat from Magical Inkdom and a journal spread made from older collage pieces, inspired by the class Collageland. — Here’s a cat from Magical Inkdom and a journal spread made from older collage pieces, inspired by the class Collageland.

Inspirational Drawing is based on doodling and creating meshes from lines, but also on picking inspiration from images. I still collect inspirational images and use them indirectly in this way.

Inspirational Drawing - one of Paivi Eerola's drawing classes where inspirational images guide how you doodle.

All Classes Are 25% OFF!

Now is the time to get the classes you have been thinking about!
>> Shop Here!

The sale ends on Nov 29, midnight PST.

Life in a Colored Pencil Diary

Posted on September 2, 2021September 2, 2021Posted in Animals, Art Journaling, Fantasy, Portraits & FacesTagged Archer & Olive notebook, colored pencils4 Comments

Recently, my life has not been a life of a middle-aged woman, but of a female tiger. With a new puppy, we have tried to find a balance in the family, and it has felt like a fight sometimes.

A tiger and a peacock. A spread for a colored pencil diary. Art journaling without words. A fantasy illustration.

At some point in every evening, I become exhausted and demand my herd to calm down. It’s usually 21:34 exactly, so it seems that we run an accurate schedule.

But there’s not much else accurate in our life, because the puppy requires us – like my husband kindly puts it – to go with the flow. We are not talking about a flow state here, but a flow of random things that keep the puppy either awake or asleep.

I feel that the puppy is like a peacock which my husband, I, and our older beagle Stella stare at – the central character of our zoo who makes us happy or miserable, and often both at the same time.

Making of a colored pencil diary. Drawing a face with colored pencils.

We have had stress. Stella got ill and my oldest budgie Bonneville died, both sudden events.

But when Stella got back from the hospital, I began to think that we will survive. That the peacock sometimes looks like a dove, and that the rest of us can just admire its flight through the youth.

But that would be another page for my colored pencil diary!

Colored pencil diary by Paivi Eerola of Peony and Parakeet. Archer & Olive's blank notebook as a visual diary.

P.S. For more colored pencil inspiration, remember to sign up for Intuitive Coloring!

Intuitive Expression – Mix of Fantasy and Real

Posted on August 19, 2021August 19, 2021Posted in Animals, Fantasy, Processing IdeasTagged colored pencils6 Comments

This week, I share a couple of pieces that I made in colored pencils and talk about intuitive expression.

Mischief-Maker - colored pencil art by Paivi Eerola of Peony and Parakeet. Intuitive expression in drawing.

I try to keep the everyday events out of my art, but it has been hard recently. We have a little mischief-maker who dominates the family life.

Intuitive Expression in Colored Pencils

I started the piece with the techniques that I had developed for Intuitive Coloring. I really enjoy coloring this way.

Coloring freely and intuitively. Getting most out of intuitive expression. By Paivi Eerola of Peony and Parakeet.

The more I worked on the picture, the more clear it became that Saima, our puppy, is there in a form of a bird!

A detail of a colored pencil drawing by Paivi Eerola of Peony and Parakeet.

Saima has very expressive eyes that reach my heart and soul. But she definitely has ideas of her own!

Look at that little girl! No wonder that real life inspires my art currently.

Mixing Outer and Inner World

“Hey, Paivi,” I said to myself. You can’t just share puppy pics! Make another drawing that’s not about the puppy.”

So I started this one, deliberately not so freely as the first one. But as soon as I put all kinds of things hanging from the horse, I realized that it’s like Saima carrying all kinds of stuff!

But then, I thought about nomads, bonfires, dark nights, and a wilderness. Despite being a homebody in the outer world, I am a vagabond in the inner world!

Drawing horses in colored pencils. Combining intentional and intuitive expression.

I really like this idea of using geometric shapes to add tension and drama.

Fire - a colored pencil drawing by Paivi Eerola of Peony and Parakeet. Colored pencil horse art.

The expression is very different from the fantasy horse that I made last week.

The Inspiration for Intuitive Expression

Creativity doesn’t make a difference between fantasy and real life. All inspiration is equal. I have been thinking about starting a dedicated journal for these kinds of pieces that begin from one end and reach another.

What do you think?

P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for Intuitive Coloring!

Dreaming with Colored Pencils

Posted on August 13, 2021August 13, 2021Posted in Animals, FantasyTagged colored pencils8 Comments

This week, I share a fantasy horse illustration from my colored pencil journal and show how the new puppy has started her job as a studio dog.

Fantasy Horse by Paivi Eerola of Peony and Parakeet. Colored pencil art.

“Hey Paivi,” I said to myself, “Now when we have a new puppy, it would be cool to have some illustrations of it on the blog.”
“But pencils are my escape!” I heard myself shouting. “I want to use them for dreaming, not for everyday things. I want to draw a horse instead!”

Dreaming with Colored Pencils – and Horses!

For me, the figure of a horse is like a hanger for all the things I love. My horses are not realistic, but play horses that connect me with the world of fantasy and everything pretty. Many like to draw faces for the same reason, but for me, horses work better.

Saima and Stella were in the studio resting while I drew. Saima doesn’t like sleeping alone, and she prefers my lap to Stella’s, so she was not fully happy.

I think the dark feathers were inspired by her. I love soft puppy fur, tassels, pompoms, and feathers, but also metal watches and all kinds of decorative swirls.

I used to have a black ink pen for this kind of detailed illustrations (see the classes Animal Inkdom and Magical Inkdom), but recently, it’s been colored pencils from start to finish. The upcoming class, Intuitive Coloring, has inspired me to draw and color more – or should I say as much as I can, because taking care of Saima has often been a full-time job for my husband and me!

Our house and my little studio have changed to serve Saima’s needs. We count days when she’s older, and we can decorate again, but at the same time, we are aware of how fast time flies and that we must take most of Saima’s curiosity and cuteness.

Dreamy Look with Six Pencils Only

Here’s a closeup of the feathers. Instead of coloring them black only, I used pink, blue, yellow and green, to make the dark color shine.

Colored pencil fantasy art, a detail. By Paivi Eerola of Peony and Parakeet.

I only used six pencils for this project – pink, two greens, yellow, blue, and black. However, by layering colors, I was able to get a wide variety of tones.

Using only a few pencils to create colored pencil art.

Here’s a closeup of the horse. The long mane was so much fun to color!

A detail of a horse illustration by Paivi Eerola of Peony and Parakeet.

I hope to see you in my next class, Intuitive Coloring. Thank you all who have signed up already! The early-bird sale ends on August 23rd, so sign up now! I am looking forward to dreaming with colored pencils together in September!

Color the Emotion

Category: Fantasy