Colored Pencils – Intuitive Approach
This week, I have a video for you! It’s about painting freely, but not with paints but with colored pencils! In the video, I talk about intuitive coloring and painting and their similarities. I also make a page for one of my art journals. Lots of art inspiration – enjoy!
Color Like a Painter – Watch the Video!
Intuitive coloring with colored pencils – isn’t that fun?!
Classes Mentioned in the Video
- Inspirational Drawing – drawing and coloring freely from inspiration >> Buy Now!
- Floral Freedom – painting abstract florals in acrylic >> Buy Now!
Eurovision 2021 Collage Party & Flash Sale!
This week, we are celebrating Eurovision Song Contest and I am running a Flash sale – Decodashery is 50 % off!
Hurry and buy now! The sale lasts only a couple of days. It ends on Saturday 22nd May 2021, midnight PDT (9 am Sunday in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where the contest takes place this year)!
Eurovision Song Contest Brings People Together
I have always watched Eurovision Song Contest, but after we had here in Finland in 2007, I became a big fan. When I sat in the audience of a rehearsal between Finnish men from the countryside and two urban Europeans, it felt like we truly are a big diverse family. And last year, when there was no contest, but only a television show, I cried with my fellow Europeans when seeing the empty streets of the big cities.
But last Tuesday, when this year’s first semifinal started, it felt incredible and I knew that I wanted to make something to celebrate the contest here on my blog too. So I selected a few from this year’s songs and asked the little paper people of mine to dress up and got creative with lighting when taking photos of them. Eurovision 2021 collage party – let’s start the show!
France
Let’s start with my favorite of this year – France’s Voilà.
The song is so elegant and beautiful, I love it!
Lithuania
Lithuania’s Discoteque is another favorite.
Even my husband likes it, and he is very critical when it comes to Eurovision Song Contest. He also helped me with taking the photo!
Moldova
Moldova’s Sugar has definitely the best video. The videos and the stage performances are often a bit different, but I absolutely love the delicious colors in the video and am excited to see the song in the second semifinal this evening.
Sugary brightness goes so well with the song!
Sweden
Sweden’s Voices is really good – of course! Our neighbour Sweden always beats Finland in music and we try to accept that bravely.
I switched off the lights and took a flashlight to get the stylish darkness that I admired on Tuesday when Sweden was in the first semifinal. They got through to the final, of course!
Australia
Yes, I am typing it right, not Austria, but Australia! Australians have been fans of the contest for so long that they are now part of the big European family. I think this is the fourth time already. Sadly, Technicolor didn’t make it to the final, but I definitely want to celebrate the love for Eurovision across the globe, so here’s my setting.
Then I switched off the lights and moved a studio light so that it looks very … well, technicolor!
Malta
Malta’s singer Destiny has a wonderful strong voice. I think she is the best singer this year, and I had a paper doll that looks quite like her (despite the skin color!).
So here’s to Malta’s Je Me Casse!
Eurovison 2021 Bonus – Norway
Norway’s Fallen Angel is so funny weird that I wanted to make my version of it.
An angel wolf and a sheep as a devil! Not quite like in the show, but you get the idea.
I hope you enjoyed this post, the contest, and the flash sale of Decodashery!
I usually never have a discount this big so now is the time to grab this wonderful class!
Decodashery – Use any paints you have – watercolors, gouache or acrylics, you choose!
Create for the Inner Child – Painting and Drawing on Scraps of Paper
This week I have a new free video for you! It’s about using small paper scraps for playing and dreaming, but it also goes deeper. I hope you’ll enjoy it!
Whether you want to play, be “on the bridge” or paint freely, welcome to my online classes!
Building and Breaking – Revealing Artistic Potential
This week, I talk about the hidden potential behind artworks and how we can reveal that by not only building but also breaking.
Modern Maximalist
I have just designed a collection of surface patterns called Modern Maximalist. It’s drawn digitally in Adobe Illustrator and more modern than my work usually is. However, I love modern, especially the 1960s and 1970s styles. I was born at the end of the 1960s, live in a house built in the same era, and my love for retro has been too hidden in my art. But still, I didn’t want to design the collection based only on the images of others, but to build a bridge from my art to design. So, most of the motifs were based on this watercolor painting that I made a couple of weeks ago!
More Artistic Potential by Building and Breaking
Often when we create art, we build. We communicate the big picture and compose bits and pieces so that they work together. We get happy accidents (and sometimes some not-so-happy ones) and aim to make an image where the overall atmosphere takes over the details.
But to reveal more, we also need to break. Then the romantic flower that was painted to represent a dreamer, becomes a more stylish and symbolic figure.
Yellow flowers and all the yellow washes can be more geometric when they are away from the big picture.
The juicyness of the fruits and other decorative details can be reorganized.
Picking Ideas from Other Images
We can also add more fuel, and break and pick from other images. This design called “List Maxima” uses motifs from the painting, but also the idea of a list that came from playing with the name of the collection, and fashion pictures that showed puffy and full dresses of the maximalist style.
By breaking and picking, we also develop our ability to curate – to see which inspiration suits what we have already done. It’s an essential part of a style-development and and growing artistic vision.
I saw a pleated skirt on Prince Charles’s wife Camilla Parker-Bowles, not a maximalist style at all, but wonderfully modern so I broke and picked the image and got creative from that.
Artists often say to me: “I need to focus!” But by focusing on narrowing, we non-creatively force ourselves to do one thing. By breaking and picking, we can curate all kinds of inspiration and be creative so that it grows our artistic vision.
Revealing the Artistic Potential
No matter where you are in your artistic journey, your art benefits from the idea of building and breaking. Build to go deeper into the experience and break to reveal more ideas and potential! In practice, building often means painting, and breaking is often connected to drawing – even if, of course, you can use any techniques that suit you.
What was first a watercolor painting, could now be a quilt!
Building and breaking can alternate endlessly when we combine new ideas and results with old ones.
Here I am breaking and picking to create something new into my art journal.
Here’s what I built by cutting and glueing new prints and old hand-decorated papers.
And I couldn’t resist checking if this could work as a repeat too!
I hope you found this post about building and breaking inspiring!
Need help for finding your artistic potential and building artistic vision? Sign up for my coaching program called Artistic Vision!