Doodling Archives - Peony and Parakeet

How to Draw, and How to Enjoy and Keep Drawing

Posted on January 18, 2019January 18, 2019Posted in Animals, Doodling, Flowers & Plants, Visual Voice / Style2 Comments

Yesterday, I ran a webinar about drawing. It’s always a lot of fun to talk about the topic I love so much. Thank you all who joined me!

The Joy of Drawing

I wanted to include the word “joy” in the title of the webinar because, in the end, it’s what keeps us drawing. I shared ideas about what supplies to use, what to draw, and how to solve those situations when you don’t grab a pen even if there’s a chance.

Unfortunately, the recording of the webinar wasn’t the best quality, maybe the snowstorm that has just blown over Finland had some effect on it. But luckily, I had some extra footage and I also made some more to compensate the parts that affected the experience. The video has a lot of ideas and examples, so it’s worth watching.

Animal Inkdom – Come to Draw with Me!

Let’s draw wild animals and decorate them with fun motifs and patterns. My new class Animal Inkdom is dedicated to the joy of drawing.

Animal Inkdom, a drawing class by Paivi Eerola from Peony and Parakeet. Draw wild animals and decorate them with patterns and motifs.

Animal Inkdom begins on Monday, January 21, sign up now!

Video Blog: Finding Inspiration from Plants

Posted on October 2, 2014April 8, 2018Posted in Doodling, Flowers & Plants, VideosTagged decorated papers, gel pens, ink17 Comments

In this video blog post I am creating this art journal page and talk about finding inspiration from plants.

If you got interested in creating imaginative plant-inspired pages, see also the previous blog post mentioned on the video: Create Abstract Botanical Art!

Video Blog Post: Free Doodling

Posted on September 11, 2014April 7, 2018Posted in Doodling, VideosTagged colored pencils, gel pens, markers61 Comments

Here it is – my first video blog post! Here you can see how I create a small artwork by doodling freely with colored pencils and markers. It took about 30 minutes to create the drawing. You will see every single phase, but a part of it is fast forwarded.

This was terribly exciting, so please excuse my slow talking and grammar mistakes!

From Photos to Art Nouveau – Doodling on Photos

Posted on July 3, 2014April 7, 2018Posted in Art History, DoodlingTagged drawing pen, gel pens, markers, printer

One of my favorite styles, art nouveau, thrives from natural forms. So, when I am walking in the garden, I see art nouveau everywhere. I often have a camera in my hand, and I snap photos while admiring the flowers.

When checking photos after one of those walks, this snapshot of martagon’s flower buds caught my eye. It almost shouted art nouveau to me. Its shape reminded me of the Mackintosh lamp shades seen in Scotland a month ago.

Art Nouveau Martagon

I printed the photo on Canon matte photo paper. Simply using markers and gel pens, I doodled streamlined shapes to move the martagon to the era of renewal and decorative beauty.

In the original photo, the direction of the elements was downwards. I wanted to change the composition so that it would be upwards. The upward direction would refer to the spiritual renewal, a centric theme in art nouveau. I doodled several upward shapes like the flower seen in the upper right corner.

The colors of the plant were also a source of inspiration. I wanted to keep the narrow range of colors seen in the stem but also brighten the muted tones with splashes of bright green and pink.

Drawing on a photo was such a fun process that I will do it again. One idea would be to create art nouveau portraits. Art Nouveau style doodles would look great on portrait photos too. Actually, like in the best days of art nouveau, anything can be “beautified”!

Doodling on Photos

This was not the first time I used the technique of drawing on the photo.

In 2010, I combined doodles and a photo. This page was also very easy to do:
1) doodle with pens on the background paper
2) attach a photo and then doodle on the photo.

More projects with doodling on prints

These posts also combine printed images and doodling:
>> Subconscious Goals
>> Creating Wood

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