Belonging Somewhere as an Artist
This week, I share my word for 2024 and thoughts about the good and bad in the sense of belonging. I also have a new finished painting!
See more pics at the Taiko art store!
I haven’t used acrylic paints on a canvas for a long time. But now I wanted to paint faster and not wait for the layers to dry.
Painting Freely
This painting took me a couple of long evenings and I deliberately left it abstract, because the subject of the painting is not about the flowers, but about the power rising from the ground.
Here’s how the painting started: loose strokes and juicy colors.
It’s easy to fall in love with colors, but when you want depth, you also need muddy colors: browns and greys.
I like to use several different brushes in one painting, and my favorite brushes are very thin.
The title “Muutosvoima – Driving Force” sums up what I want to tell with this painting. Muutosvoima could also be translated as “power of change.”
I believe that the best power of change is not the hype created by others, but the inner enthusiasm that has a grounded tone. Because isn’t it so that flowers only bloom when the earth warms up? Sunlight alone is not enough.
Belonging Somewhere – The Good and The Bad
I’ve been thinking about togetherness lately. It’s a wonderful feeling. For example, last week when many people commented on my post, I felt happy that this blog brings us together. One of the best things that has come with the internet is that you can be pretty weird and still find like-minded people.
However, the sense of belonging has its danger. Art is about walking your own path. Encounters are important, but you also need to go in the other direction to create something unique. As a teacher, I have often thought about how I could better guide people in their own direction.
Art is like a pot that you have to break first and then put together again. The pot can be broken in many ways and at best, you find your own way to put it together. You need a driving force to break the pot and then persistence to rebuild it.
Finding Your Places in the Art World
In my career as an artist, I have often wanted to be like someone else. I have envied popular artists and then later realized that I wouldn’t want to create the kind of art that they do. I realized that I would like to be popular in creating something else and somewhere else.
With experience, the art world opens up. Instead of one hall, you begin to see numerous smaller rooms. What is popular in one room can be overlooked in another. Being an artist requires a lot of self-esteem and the power to move from one room to another.
When you find one room that feels like your own, the sense of belonging is at its greatest. However, it’s better to move between several rooms and find many groups. At best, the artist acts as a bridge between different things.
My Word of the Year – Do You Have One?
My word for 2024 is Integrate. This year I have allowed myself to do more diverse things, but on the other hand, I have tied all the pieces together so that one benefits the other.
Have you chosen a word for this year? How has it been realized?
About Creative Freedom
I have often wondered why I am an artist. The first answer that comes to mind is creative freedom. “Creative” and “freedom” seem like easy words at first. Everyone wants to be creative, right? And who doesn’t want to be free?
But creative and freedom are also difficult words. Especially if you think of creativity as the opposite of traditional or familiar, and freedom as the opposite of safety and stability.
I find many things in myself where I love tradition and security. You could call me a homebody, that’s how much I love being at home. If I had to choose between a museum of historical art and a contemporary gallery, I would definitely go to the museum. And I love decorative items and anything small and cute. Also, my studio is always super clean – not what is expected from an artist!
But I still want to be a liberated artist, create a mess, break the formula, and then discover something new out of it. Crafting, or copying reference photos, or drawing the same things year after year, has never been enough for me. I have wanted to blow up the lump inside me, which has accumulated from creative energy that has not been able to get out. That’s why my courses also have a lot of creative freedom.
The idea of the course Liberated Artist Revisited is not to create an image similar to what I do in the videos, but to solve a puzzle that we first create. Creative freedom begins when you realize that there is not only the art of creating but also the art of seeing. When you highlight what you see, you become a liberated artist.
Liberated Artist Revisited is a limited edition – only available for purchase until the end of March 2024! >> Buy Now!
12 Spring Art Ideas from Over the Years
This week, I share spring-themed art from the past 10 years and give ideas for creating spring art.
There’s a variety of ideas and I hope everyone can find some that inspire to get creating!
#1 – For Beginners and Dull Moments
Doodle spring flowers with the mindset “more is more”!
See the blog post: Subconscious Art
Course recommendation: Collageland
#2 – For Self-Explorers
Express your spring energy by following this step-by-step exercise: Bursting Circle
See the blog post: Bursting Circle
Course recommendation: Inspirational Drawing
#3 – For Free Spirits
Splash color and let everything grow from there!
See the blog post: Art is Freedom
#4 – For Those Who Want to be Freer
When you want to be freer, the art of seeing is as important as the art of creating.
See the video of making “March Still Life”: Painting in Liberated Style
See the blog post: Painting in Liberated Style
Course recommendations: Liberated Artist Revisited and Freely Grown
#5 – For Minimalists
Pick a small piece of watercolor paper, moisten your watercolor pans, and let water do the trick.
See the blog post: Easter Still Lifes in Watercolor – Video Included!
#6 – For Travelers
Paint a spring panorama. More examples: Watercolor Panoramas to Express Travel Memories
See the blog post: Watercolor panoramas to Express Travel Memories
Course recommendation: Watercolor Journey
#7 – For Beautiful Mess-Makers
Beautify the mess by adjusting the details: paint frilly edges and draw fine lines!
See the blog post: Freely Born Watercolor Florals
Course recommendations: Floral Fantasies and Freely Grown
#8 – For Journalers
Decorate a journal cover with your original art! See more instructions in this blog post: Painted Paper Collage
See the blog post: Painted Paper Collage – 6 Tips for Intricate and Fun Art
Course recommendations: Collageland and Decodashery
#9 – For Bird Watchers
Take this challenge to move from illustration to fine art:
Step out of your comfort zone and think about a bird shape as a canvas for expressing its surroundings.
See the blog post: Pros and Cons of Becoming an Artist
Course recommendation: Floral Freedom
#10 – For Art Lovers Who Procrastinate
Reduce watching those photo-realistic colored pencil videos and start coloring freely. One heart shape can lead to many and start your flight to the world of imagination!
See the blog post: 5 Reasons Why I Love Colored Pencils
Course recommendations: Intuitive Coloring and Fun Botanicum
#11 – For Wannabe Fantasy Artists
Find the story first, then its surroundings! A character is not only described by his face.
See the blog post: Wonderland Art – Inspiration from Alice in Wonderland
Course recommendations: Magical Forest and Magical Inkdom
#12 For Artists at Heart
Our creativity has winter and spring too. We need each other to keep the inspiration going – to turn the winter into spring.
A challenge for you: How can you make a new start – create a new spring for your art?
See the blog post: New Beginnings in Art-Making
Course recommendations: Liberated Artist Revisited
Bonus Idea #1: Spring Art Display
Gather your art on a side table for display! Make a collection of all kinds of pieces – even the smallest drawings and collage pieces can look fun this way.
I have a plastic plate that is the same size as my table.
It protects my art, and it also protects the tabletop when painting in watercolor.
Bonus Idea #2: Listen to This!
I also have a music recommendation: “Kevät”
Kevät is spring in Finnish and the song was presented by a Finnish girl band Tavaramarkkinat in 1985. Here’s an English translation of the lyrics. The tone of the song is melancholic. This kind of controversy between melancholy and joy is one of the most inspiring things in spring, I think!
P.S. PostScript for Spring Art Ideas
We still have a lot of snow in Finland, and I miss spring so much! In these spring art ideas, I wanted to combine my yearning for spring and the celebration of being a full-time artist for ten years. The actual anniversary is in September, but I want to celebrate this life span the whole year of 2024.
One part of the celebration has been making the course Liberated Artist Revisited where I invite you to paint with me – to follow directions from Paivi many years ago, and then create more with the current Paivi. At the same time, you can ponder, how your art-making has changed and will change.
Because of the 10-year celebration and the nature of personal stories, Liberated Artist Revisited is a limited edition – only available for purchase until the end of March 2024! >> Buy Now!
5 Tips for Quick Abstract Flowers
This week, we paint quick abstract flowers freely without any references.
I have a black Dylusions Creative Journal and make small paintings there occasionally. It is especially good when there’s still paint left on the palette at the end of the painting session. I think it makes sense to use all the paint, and not throw the leftovers in the trash.
I don’t use any gesso but paint directly on the page.
When I painted pieces for the course Liberated Artist Revisited, I noticed that there had been a long break in acrylic painting and some of the tubes had started to harden.
It motivates me to paint in the black art journal again because I don’t want those paints to go to waste. And sometimes it’s nice to paint something small quickly and see what comes out most effortlessly.
Quick Abstract Flowers – Five Tips!
I like painting abstract flowers, and thick paints are very suitable for abstract flower paintings. Here are my five tips for painting flowers quickly.
1) Start from the Old Mess
The fastest way is to start from an old painting.
I have a lot of pages in my journal where I’ve hastily painted shapes with leftover paints.
Continuing the beautiful mess feels much more effortless than starting a new one from the beginning.
For example, here’s one page that still waits its turn to become a finished painting.
Most of my beginning messes are much more messy though!
2) Dark-Bright-Light
Include all three degrees of darkness in one painting.
Make color mixes and compare them in terms of darkness. By including all three – dark, bright, and light – you can achieve depth and atmosphere.
Make clear larger areas so that you can point to different places in the background and say, there is dark, there is bright, and there is light.
Flowers can have all three – dark, bright, and light colors.
3) Forget the Real Flowers!
Don’t think too much about the real flowers.
Don’t think about what a rose looks like or what flowers you want in your painting. All that stiffens your expression.
Focus on the colors and let the flowers form from the brushstrokes.
After all, a flower is just a few colorful strokes and a line for the stem.
Use your imagination when you look at your work in progress!
4) Leave Room for Spirit
Not everything needs to be defined or look like a flower.
Flowers are concrete matter, so let the colors express the spirit!
If you want to be extra quick, sharpen just one flower near the center and leave the others more abstract and vague.
5) No Forced Feelings
Open yourself up to an emotional experience.
The speed of the painting depends highly on how soon you get an emotional connection with yourself and what you are doing. Let even the darkest thoughts come. For creativity, everything genuine is equally good.
The beauty of making art is that imagination creates abundance and eternal life from almost nothing – from the leftover paint and leftover energy. And the more often you create, the more you get out of it!
Liberated Artist Revisited – Buy Now!
In Liberated Artist Revisited, we time-travel to meet the teacher – Paivi from 2015, and create new art with her.
This course is both for the left and right brain. The young Paivi gives systematic instructions while the older Paivi enjoys her freedom and ponders about art-making and life in general.
Liberated Artist Revisited is a limited edition – only available for purchase until the end of March 2024! >> Buy Now!