From Decorative to Expressive Art
Last Friday, I traveled two hours by train to a yarn shop at Tampere. Not just to purchase new yarn, but to meet a famous knitting pattern designer Stephen West who had been invited to Finland. While I was attending his workshop, I was excited by the knits he showed and the stories he told. There were silent moments. We, Finnish women, counted stitches and pondered about what we heard. We Finnish can look very serious, quiet and occupied, even if we are about to burst with excitement. Stephen put it kindly: “Finnish carry themselves well.” That introvert attitude is also visible in this recent mixed media artwork, “Self-Portrait as a Knitter”. The person’s focus is so much on details that the inspiration, the yellow spot in the back of the head, doesn’t have room to show up.
From Over-Decorative to Expressive-Decorative
Sometimes similar kind of thing happens when we create art: the inspiration does not show in the result. There can be so much decoration going on, that not much room is left for the expression. We cover the background with little motifs and surface patterns, instead of enhancing what’s already there.
I admit it’s fun and fulfilling to work with thin brushes, pens, and pencils. Making a circle after a circle is like knitting a shawl, stitch by stitch.
However, it’s good to add a little more variety and contrasts so that the expression comes through. It’s like changing the yarn or needle size once in a while!
And like in handknits, just when you think your work is ruined, you need to calm down and do the finishing.
When knitting, you sew the seams, iron everything carefully and add the final balancing details.
When creating art, you bring up the most important details and connect the dots so that everything falls into its place.
You Can Create Both Expressive and Decorative Art
Sometimes there are debates whether decorative art can be expressive as well. But you can be both decorative and expressive. You can give meaning to your motifs. You can let motifs be pieces of a puzzle instead of covering everything evenly.
More decorative-expressive art with watercolors: Watercolor 101 for Intuitive Painting
If you are a knitter, check this out too: Folk Bag Workbook
Add More Creativity to Your Art!
Here is my abstract still-life with watercolors, acrylic paints, and colored pencils, called “Harvest Stillife.” It’s created very intuitively, without any idea of the end result when started. But like so often before, when I selected images for this blog post, I found recent photos that must have been in my mind when I made this.
I love the complexity and the number of details that can be seen in these shots from my garden. Many who struggle with creating art overlook the complex nature of reality. In these photos, they only see a flower, bush, and some berries. Instead of labeling the obvious, you can examine all the color variations, different shapes, sharpness and blurriness of the elements, depth, patterns, the way each color connects with the next … Then you can try to summarize what the hierarchy of all these factors in the photos could be, how all this could be modeled. It seems too complex to describe in a simple way. That’s when creativity starts working for the solution, figuring out what things to bring out without losing the connection to all of it.
A big part of the visuals today has a simple, graphic look. If you get exposed to that a lot, you might think that simplicity is the key to creating good art. I believe it’s totally opposite: complex things are the best source of inspiration. Trying to see complex systems behind simple stereotypes feeds our creativity much more than trying to simplify the simple.
The same idea applies to painting: Embrace the complexity by adding a lot of variation and then bring out the essential.
Painting an Abstract Still-Life
Watercolors and acrylic paints:
Placing a plastic wrap over the wet watercolor paint to add more delicate details:
Ready for finishing:
A detail of the finished look, done with colored pencils and a black drawing pen:
Creating abstract still lives so that they appear naturally is so much fun!
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5 Steps to an Abstract Landscape
Let’s paint together! The idea for this painting came from nature. Have you noticed that when the sun shines after the rain, everything sparkles! It’s so beautiful!
Soil, the sun and rain – even if they are different from one another, they all work together to make plants prosper. In the painting, the soil is made with colored pencils, the sun with acrylic paints and the rain with watercolors. These art supplies are so basic but they also work so well together! Watch the video and create your own abstract landscape – “Soil, Sun and Rain”!
More instructions for watercolors: Buy Watercolor 101 for Intuitive Painting
Farewell to Summer with Watercolors
September has been surprisingly warm in Finland this year. I took a photo a couple of days ago and even if it’s warm and the sun is shining there’s a certain melancholy in the air.
I don’t usually mimic photos, but this time I made an exception. I used the photo about a half of the process and then finished the painting more freely. As I was recording videos for the upcoming painting workshop, I already had all the cameras and such in place. So I made a short video showing how I created the painting.
Painting with Watercolors – Watch the video!
It was still warm today. Stella was more than happy! Needless to say, she loves the sun.
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