Making Florals More Modern
This week, we are making florals more modern! So, when you want to get away from a botanical look, and draw and paint flowers that are more abstract and expressive, here are my tips for you!
In my recent painting Gossamer, I have stretched my style to a modern direction. The painting was born much faster than usually if you count the actual painting time only. But that’s not the whole truth because I practiced this style several times. You too, can make your florals more modern in this way!
#1 Choose Your Muse!
Pick a painter that has a modern abstract style for flowers.
My choice was Helene Schjerbeck (1862-1946). She was a famous Finnish modernist, and even if I find many of her paintings a bit too melancholic, her style fascinates me.
Helene is more of a portrait painter, but she also painted many still lives. (By the way – I also have a blog post about mimicking Helene Schjerfbeck’s style in portraits in colored pencil.)
#2 Make Many Tiny Sketches on One Page
Paint or draw small sketches where you pick ideas from your muse’s paintings. Combine many paintings on one page. When the size is small, you need to simplify and thus, find the core of your muse’s modern style.
I examined several Helene Schjerfbeck’s paintings in watercolor and combined them on one art journal page.
Focus on the shapes and lines and answer to these questions while working:
- Are the muse’s shapes light or heavy?
- How angular are the single strokes?
- How light and shadows are expressed?
- Where can you find playfulness and creativity?
Helene Schjerfbeck’s shapes are rather heavy, and her strokes are quite angular. The light and shadows are treated like they are objects as well. The result is a puzzle where the material and immaterial are treated identically.
I didn’t first think that Helene’s paintings are playful, but when I browsed more of her paintings, I started to see humor in the way she painted the shadows. There is something human in their shapes. It is shown brilliantly in this piece “Trees and Sunset.”
I started to think that maybe for my muse, the shadows were like animals, or dolls, and that they could be a little like toys in my paintings too.
#3 Create a Bigger Study More Freely
Next, use your observations to create a bigger study. Work freely and mix the observations with your original style.
I used left-over oil paints and made this spread for my Dylusions Creative Journal. I really like how playful the shadows are, and painting this was a lot of fun!
In the detail pic below, you see how angular my strokes are.
When searching for images for this blog post, I found this small painting from Helene Schjerfbeck. My flowers are different, but still there are similarities as well.
My best tips for making florals more modern:
- While working, think about surface patterns in interiors and clothing rather than the actual flowers.
- Use angular strokes to build puzzle-like compositions.
- Similarly to the parts of the colorful flowers, see the shadows and light as the shapes of the puzzle.
#4 Make the More Modern Piece
After practicing, you can now create a piece where you spend more time for finishing. Modern strokes often appear quick and careless, but they are still packed with aesthetics and style. Those kind of strokes can take a lot of attention and focus.
Here’s a pic from the early stage of my painting Gossamer. I started with a narrow color scheme, and many of the shapes and strokes were more like suggestions – a whispering start, you could say!
In the finished piece, I especially enjoy the playful color changes in the background and the new playfulness is present in lines too.
#5 Old and New – Compare!
Here you can see my previous painting of the same size and the finished Gossamer side by side. The styles of the two paintings are slightly different, but not totally!
I used leftover paints for these two miniature paintings. The one on the left is more of my original style, the other one is more modern.
If the weather allows, I always take the photo of the final piece outdoors. This fall has been exceptionally long and warm. There are still leaves in the apple tree, and it’s November!
I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial on how to make florals more modern!
Following the Inner Color
Here is my latest completed oil painting “Elixir.” I start my abstract paintings with the idea that I follow an inner color.
Color Chooses Color
The inner color is the color I feel drawn to, so I tend to pick and mix the first colors intuitively. And then, they wish for other colors to accompany them.
Colors also evoke shapes, and the shapes bring in more colors. A raw and bright color selection changes slowly to a more sophisticated one. In this color-driven technique, the inner color changes as the painting matures.
I try to give my painting enough time to find its own soul and paint several sessions, letting the paint dry between them.
First a Child, Then a Teenager
When the painting is only a child, I don’t care about the composition or what it will represent. I don’t want to force a short childhood or early adolescence. When puberty begins, it’s tempting to call the painting finished. But only then does she begin to find her own, unique mission and get prepared for a long life.
Teenagers often tell how they want to be called. When this painting was still unfinished, she was Ophelia because she saw herself as John Everett Millais’s painting from the 19th century.
I usually give the final name only when the painting is almost finished. Then I know what I want to emphasize with the name. Maybe we humans should get our final name a little later too?
Early Goodbye
I take pictures of my canvas paintings outside if possible, because that’s where the light is most natural. My husband often acts as my assistant and holds the painting against the wind. Most of the time, I end the photoshoot by saying to him, “Hey, come take a picture of us together!”
Since I sell all my paintings, this is the moment when I’m saying a mental goodbye to them. I assure them: “You’ll be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.” Even though I often miss my paintings, I don’t tell them. I feel like their mission is bigger than mine, and my job is to deliver all this for others, not for myself.
I have practiced most of my oil painting techniques in a quicker medium, so in watercolor!
Wild Garden – You Can Still Hop in!
In Wild Garden, we will paint freely, intuitively, and expressively in watercolor from Sept 22 to Nov 14. We will begin with floral greeting cards and gradually move forward in expression.
The course has just started but you can still hop in!
>> Sign up now!
Painting Seascapes – Making The Scenery Look Bigger
This week, we dive deeper into painting seascapes and other big sceneries. In spring, I thought my painting Atlantis was already finished, but after seeing the ship paintings in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in May, I realized that I had made my seascape painting too simple and small-scale, and went back to working on it. Now it’s finished!
Painting a Bigger Sea
Despite the size of the canvas, you can make the seascape or any scenery look larger by adjusting the composition and the size of the brushstrokes. Compare the finished version with the one below!
When you want to make a seascape look bigger, add tiny strokes, especially near the horizon, and adjust both left and right edges so that it looks like the seascape continues outside the painting.
The changes may look small when you look at the small photos, but in reality, they make a big difference. Here’s a close-up photo of before and after.
There are so many details that it was easier to make a short video instead of sharing more pics.
Seascapes don’t have to be boring and all blue. They can include all kinds of events and creatures, even buildings like in my painting.
A Series of Big Sceneries in Progress
It’s been a hot July in Finland, and my little studio is really warm in the afternoon. But I have big canvases in a queue, and the next one is already in progress.
New Course Is Coming Up!
Painting seascapes and other sceneries is exciting, but as you know, I also love flowers. I will be running a new watercolor course called Wild Garden from 22nd September to 14th November. Here’s a small teaser pic …
The early-bird sale of Wild Garden will start next week, so stay tuned!
Creating Menagerie
This week, I share a recent acrylic painting called Menagerie and talk about the process. This is an example of making the most of the rich visual vocabulary – the topic that I talked about in last week’s video, but now we focus more on the idea of the piece rather than the style.
Recently, I have been thinking about the news feeds and their many truths. Although things are presented in beautiful phrases and pictures, the truth is much more complicated, and there are layers behind them. The same applies to people. Even though we try to be human, we are still animals, too.
When I paint, I struggle with the same thing: should I paint a flower or a soul?
I want to create beautiful paintings, but on the other hand, a painting is like a person. If you treat the painting superficially, you don’t get to see its true beauty.
I seem to paint better if I can partly focus on something else!
My goal is to give my paintings the freedom to be themselves and this painting really revealed its heart to me.
However, my task is not only to reveal the wild nature of the painting, but also to gently train it.
Menagerie is sold already. I hope it will bring joy to its new owner.
Details of Menagerie
Here are detail pics of the finished piece. I like how the style of this painting is partly illustrative. It looks like it’s partly drawn with a brush.
I wanted to create an impression that the animals are captive but still wild and strong enough to break free.
This painting has many layers and details.
I tried to bring up the similarity between flowers and animals.
Here you can see the big flower up close. The brush strokes are loose, but still, I painted them with a lot of thought and care.
I hope this inspires you to create too!