This week, I have a free video for you! I hope it helps you to stay motivated and keep creating.
In the video, I am creating this small spread for my colored pencil diary and talking about how colored pencils help me to stay motivated. I share some thoughts about taking a break and getting back to making art. There are also lots of visual examples and an idea about Modern Me and Ancient Me. Imagining these two sides can help too.
How to Stay Motivated – Watch the Video!
I hope you enjoy the video. Let’s keep creating!
Beautiful work and you’ve answered my dilemma…after an artistic exertion comes the exhaustion which can last a long time…especially if life intervenes in the form of health challenges…thank you for your video and your beautiful work.
Thanks so much, Nilli! I am glad that you could relate to the video!
Thank you Paivi. I am watching this video in the early hours today. Yesterday we had a power surge and my computer crashed so I think my hard drive was killed. I have back up fortunately both on a separate drive and in my Norton app so after I get my nice computer technician in I’ll be up and running in. Thank heavens for smart phones. The timer on my stove has gone mad too . Interesting I thought. My immediate past has been chaotic with Dad’ death and my mother’s increasing journey into dementia, hastened by her catching omicron. So time now has disappeared from the clock I use most and I cannot print and scan to work on the journals I have been making. I have also just had a cortisone injection in my injured shoulder and together with high blood pressure I must rest. So time to bring out my coloured pencils, I thought, and your video validated that thought
I was very interested in your awareness of the dichotomy of the modern and ancient you. Initially I thought “Wow! Wait until she discovers they are not dichotomy at all” . Then much to my delight, later in the video you spoke of them working in tandem. “Aha” I thought watch this space!” The intuitive world , which is a constant flowing stream, even when we are not in awareness of it, feeds our outer world being in our creating time. When the inner world enters our consciousness we can trust that the gnostic knowing process is much further along than we know. It is already flowing to the next field.
I think your colouring pencil art journal is breathtaking Paivi. If you had this published I would most certainly buy it. It would awaken so much in me each time I entered into it. I think all of your work is a great treasure, taonganui in Maori, rich in your spiritual essence and gnostic consciouness as well as your outer worldly self expressing herself more and more fully.😍
Thank you for your insightful comment, Jan! Very interesting, our souls are aligned! I am touched that you like the journal so much. I also hope your devices will start to function again!
Hi Jan!
Hope you are doing better both with technology and your health! I so appreciate your very thoughtful answer here–it most certainly says what I think about the unconscious and the “inner artist”, a subject that needs to be brought to the fore more often and considered and discussed. As Päivi says, “our souls are aligned”! Let us continue on this amazing journey. Thanks for your comment!
Love,
Louisa
I thoroughly enjoyed your video. Watching your video was very inspiring!
Thank you, Shirley!
So enjoyed your video so much. You are so inspiring. Your colored pencil work is fabulous.
Thank you, Catherine!!
Watching you draw is so relaxing. I am sorry I’ve been away for awhile. I watch anytime you post something. Recently, with the demise of my 32 years of marriage to single life has really knocked me for a loop and has completely blocked my creative being. It’s been 4 months since I’ve done anything and if I try it ends up in the trash. Watching you today has given me strength and inner peace. Thank you for all your blogs, classes and ideas and suggestions. In watching you, it has made me realize that in order to for inner peace you must take time off, rest and regroup. I hope I can soon get back to
Work.. All my love and loyalty to you as a fabulous mentor and inspiration.
Wonderful to hear from you, Phyllis, and it seems that the video was timely for you. I hope you all the best in your new life and am pretty sure that the creative mojo will come back. When I painted my first big series of paintings, I had a big crisis when I realized that I can’t immediately start creating a course after the paintings. Will I ever be able to work again, I asked. But now I know I need to schedule some time off after a big project, whether it’s a new series or a new class, and then persuade myself to slowly start creating again.
As I watched you page through your journal, my heart expanded with peaceful joy, I watched and rewatched each time sensing the feeling filling me. Then as I watched your drawing growing from nothing to the breathtaking work at the end, my eyes filled with tears. I was overwhelmed by your artistry and understanding of your whole self. Although I do make my own little bits of art, and I am satisfied with what I am able to do with the very new skills I am exercising, I continue to find sublime joy in experiencing the profound skill of others. Thank you for sharing your gifts with us and for the inconceivably artful work you make.
Thanks so much, Jakki!! I am glad you enjoyed the video, keep creating!
What a beautiful video. Thank you.
Thank you, Carol!
Dear Päivi, I always so inspired when I watch your videos, and appreciate them so much. But my efforts are so clumsy that I become easily discouraged. I must admit though that I have only a small selection of pencils, and not good quality, so I will be buying good pencils and more colours soon, which might help keep me more motivated. My modern me loves buying pencils and pens and paper but appreciates a new sheet of paper or sketch book so much that the first marks feel like sacrilege. Thank you so much for your generous, lovely videos. They really are inspiring.
Thank you, Tosia! I too have the fear of not making a mess on a new journal, but I get through it by reminding myself how wonderful the full journal will be. Even if all the pages – or any, actually – would not be my best work, or even something that would satisfy me on its own, strangely, the fuller the journal gets, the more precious it becomes. The end result is always more than the sum of its parts!
Hi Päivi!
What a lovely “fun” lesson. I wonder how much I am “ancient me” and how much I am “modern me”? Some taster lessons I’ve taken over the past few years seem to say: “Be the MODERN YOU!” (One of the FB groups is called “Find Your Joy”!) So in the weeklong class we are encouraged to splash and throw paint and wildly mark the ground. It sounds like an easily done exercise, but not necessarily so–it requires the daring and courage of the modern side. I look at my finished work and wonder why it doesn’t look at all what I had hoped for. Then the comparisons with the other “students” begins (we are not encouraged to do this, by the way!) and I feel I have no talent. But in the end, it is just another learning experience and “ancient me” takes over with a sigh and there’s a return to old familiar ways. However, I have had a few “break throughs” and recently produced some abstract mandalas along with a 20 minute scenic painting! But I think I will always be drawn back to the representational style of “ancient me” even if “modern me” gets impatient and says: “Come on! Let’s be free and break out of that old boring mode!” My truest artist nature is yet to be revealed, I think!
Anyway, I love your expressive suggestions and all that you achieve and do, whether it is a mature oil painting or a charming pencil crayon lesson! You are an inspiration to so many and will be all your life I am sure!
Thank you!
Thank you, Louisa! I don’t think it’s possible to reveal the artistry without bringing in the ancient me in some ways.
Thank you for this delightful video–again you inspire me to create–it fascinates me as I watch; to see all of the pictures/ images that develop during your process–some stay and some are pushed to the background. They are beautiful–I have tried 2 of these colored pencil; I’m not sure what to call them–activities–and already feeling encouraged to continue. I have taken a year off from art–from watching your video’s or reading your blog; (fortunately I save everything that comes in a special folder) Oh how lost I would be if I hadn’t. . Thank you for being you
Thanks so much, Helen! It’s nice to hear that I have been able to inspire you.
Beautiful art and video! I love watching you create.
Thank you, Melissa! I hope it inspired you to create too!