How to Freely Express Sunshine
This week is about the sun! Let’s dive deeper into how to express sunshine when you want to create freely without reference photos. My example is an oil painting, but you can apply the tips to any supplies.
Here’s my newest painting that begins the new series where I explore the stars and planets of the Milky Way. The subject of the first one is, of course, the sun! I named the painting “Runaway Sun” – “Karannut aurinko” in Finnish because I wanted to express sunshine in a dynamic way.
Closed or Open?
Often we paint or draw the sun as a static yellow spot in the blue sky, but I feel that the sun is different. It’s not a closed circle but a very open one. It’s radiating and moving, making things appear and disappear.
The painting was only a green mess when I took the picture above. “Oh no, the photo of Stella failed badly!” I thought when looking at it. But then, bad photos are the best. They challenge us to see what the world really looks like. Here, the sun has swallowed Stella and entered the room like a giant animal, so it’s not a little closed spot at all.
Isolated or Impactful?
The sun is the star, and the earth belongs to its solar system. The earth could be seen as a toy and the sun as the one who plays the game.
But in our art, the sun often has very little effect on its surroundings. We isolate the sun and keep it far away. For example like this:
But the sun impacts everything. It travels in the scenery like a runaway that goes here and there, but it’s impossible to catch as a single being.
When my painting progressed, it got strong differences between light and darkness. The sunny look requires shadows too!
Is the Sun a Thing or a Person?
Art is only a technical skill as long as you think about drawing or painting things. But if you treat the elements as living beings of some kind, the game changes. When your paper or canvas is filled with people or animals, not just shapes or flowers, everything gets more exciting and it’s easier to express sunshine too.
So, ask: Who is this person called Sun? How does she impact everybody in this piece?
Some will love it, and some will escape from it.
Yellow or White Sunshine?
Some people get any yellow for the sun, and some select their yellow carefully. But I think that one yellow is never enough, and without white, the sun doesn’t shine.
I usually work with a limited set of colors, but I change the tubes every session. So, if I use Indian Yellow in one session, for example, I switch to Lemon Yellow in the next. I do the same for other colors as well. When I create new color mixes from different base colors, my paintings will get a huge variety of tones and look more natural.
I try to always mix some color to most whites so that the variety of pastel tones is present too.
I also add color to blacks or make my own blacks. Browns and blues make wonderful darks!
Does It Express Sunshine? Test!
I like to do a test for all my paintings where I lay them on the table, walk away from the room, and then get back.
I wrote about the test in this blog post too.
By resetting my mind, I try to get an immediate impact of how the painting affects the surroundings and whether it’s captivating enough. The sunny painting should draw attention and warm the room.
Here’s my little studio one night with other paintings that are still in progress.
The paintings are too big for my little studio, but I have decided to manage!
Sunshine to Your Weekend!
I hope this post inspired you to bring more sunshine to your art!
Happy Easter!
Pink Inspiration
This week is full of pink art inspiration. I hope that this post will get you to find your pinks and start creating sweetness!
Dreamy Pinks in Colored Pencils
First, one of the journal spreads that we will create at Fun Botanicum, the newest class.
The softness that you can create with colored pencils is divine and you can highlight that with sharp strokes. The versatility of colored pencils always amazes me. With one pencil you can create the whole value range from light to dark so a few pencils go a long way. I like those shelves of individual pencils in art supply stores because it’s like picking candies!
Pink Handdrawn Playing Cards
These cards are from the class Magical Inkdom. They are drawn with a black pen and then colored with watercolors.
My husband asked when he saw me drawing these:
– “Playing cards? What’s the game?”
– Well, these are like collector’s items! And you can invent the game yourself!
Because if you make more than one, isn’t that like a little oracle deck? You can ask yourself how you feel by picking a card that reflects your mood.
Lots of Pink Petals
I am already waiting for summer and see my pink peonies bloom in June. If I was a small fairy, I could live in those petals!
Petals, petals, more pink petals – that’s how the flowers are constructed! These are from the class Decodashery.
Pick a small brush, some pink gouache paints or watercolors, and paint small spots in layers!
Red and Green are Pink’s Best Pals
Here’s more pink gouache art – a small journal cover that also has reds and greens.
I love this color combination. Each color makes the other shine brighter. I can almost taste the colors when I look at them.
Pink Glow in the Dark
Pink is also a wonderful color with darks. You can paint a pink glow that makes the image look romantic.
Here’s a blog post where you can see process pictures of this painting.
Powder Pink Inspiration
One night my husband showed me new Swatch watches. I wasn’t so interested at first, but when I saw the photos and got the concept, I got so inspired that I am using that inspiration for the new series of oil paintings!
Here’s the new pink Swatch called Mission to Venus. I am definitely going to somehow incorporate all this into a painting! Not literally, but conceptually.
The powder pink with decorative details speaks of a beautiful adventure to me.
This watercolor painting has powder pinks too.
I painted this one a few years ago when my mission was to find the best way to paint flowers freely in watercolors without using a reference. I have a class about it too Floral Fantasies – Watercolor Edition!
Pinks and Other Pastels
What about selecting some acrylic paints and going wild on an art journal?
Add darks on the bottom and let dry. Then mix white to the colors and have fun with pastels. Use different brushes to have some variety in strokes as well.
You can be rough like above, or go in a more delicate direction with thinner brushes.
Black with pink is also a great color combination!
Pink Inspiration – How to Go Deeper
If you are a color-oriented artist as I am, pink is never just one pink. Challenge yourself to make all kinds of pinks from light to dark, from warm to cool, and use them all in one painting. Nature doesn’t select just one pink, so why would you?
The same goes for shapes, lines, and ideas. The more you embrace the variety, the more exciting the art-making becomes, and the more you create. Restrict supplies and increase imagination!
I hope you have an adventurous Pink Inspiration Day!
P.S. You can still sign up for Fun Botanicum and make wonderful colorings of plants!
Creating Hope – Artist’s Mission
This week, I show three small paintings and talk about my mission of creating hope.
Even if we have had some winter wonderland sceneries recently, the weather hasn’t been so great in Finland – icy roads, rain, darkness … And now, the horrendous news came about the war in Ukraine.
But this post is not about war, but the opposite. Namely, a long time ago, I realized that my word is “hope”. Here’s the story:
I visited a hospital to see my old ant, and another old woman grabbed my hand. She wanted me to say something that would take her pain away.
I still remember her desperate eyes begging for consolation.
We discussed shortly but then I ended the conversation by saying that I am quite young and I don’t have all the wisdom. She nodded, turning off the glimpse of hope she had got when I entered the room. At that moment, I knew that I wanted to do more of that hope thing, but how.
Nowadays, I try to transfer hope to every painting, and to every class as well. Yesterday I dug out small canvases that looked quite hopeless. I had started them last year and used leftover paint from bigger paintings. Then they had looked just ugly paintings that might not ever get finished. But now, all they missed was some hope!
So I painted hope: saturated colors over muted ones, light glow over heavy shapes, rising wings on the top of descending petals – signs of life.
I wanted to remove the harshness and replace it with gentleness.
I also added the much-needed drop of utopia as well.
After leaving the hospital, I cursed myself for not giving the old woman what I called false hope. But now I think that the correct word is fantasy.
We all need fantasy to keep going.
Fantasy didn’t come to my young engineer’s mind, and it would have required the kind of bravery I didn’t have. But now, when I paint, I can do brave too.
The qualities that don’t seem to be a part of me, can still exist in my art.
It gives me hope as a human.
Whether I use oils and canvases or colored pencils in a journal, all I create is hope. A gift that was initiated by a stranger in a hospital bed.
I am looking for March when the new class will begin!
What to Do When You Admire an Artist
This post is about art, admiration, and spirituality and enabled by Arts Promotion Centre Finland. This is the ninth blog post of the project; see the first one here, the second one here, the third one here, the fourth one here, the fifth one here, the sixth one here, the seventh one here, and the eighth one here!
This week, I finished the last oil painting of the new series. It’s pretty large – about 27.5 x 35.5 inches – and I think it completes the series well because it’s the most dynamic of the seven.
My goal in the series was to express spirituality through abstract art. The plan was to explore Wassily Kandinsky’s idea about releasing the inner sound of the shapes and get inspired by art from the 16th to 18th centuries. This last painting is a salute to my favorite artist: Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).
Going Deeper – The Experience of Working with a Grant
Sadly, my three-month period of working with the grant is now coming to an end. During that, I painted a series of seven oil paintings, wrote several blog posts and weekly emails, plus a fictive essay in Finnish that that will hopefully get published somewhere. I still have the summarizing report to write and several paintings to varnish, but all the main work is done.
During the past months, my little studio has been filled with paintings. Every morning, before anything, I have gone there to both worry about the project and to enjoy the kind of excitement that only uncompleted work can give.
Despite the theme of spirituality, I haven’t lit any candles, meditated, or prayed. But I have slowed things down and taken time to question without forcing out the answer. At the same time, a clear schedule and content plan have brought structure to my days. I am grateful for the opportunity of doing this kind of deep work.
Many times when we create art, we hurry. A part of it is that we want to see the piece finished, but there’s more too. Art can make us feel uncomfortable and bring up memories we would rather want to leave behind. But making art can also point out stiffness, clumsiness, and differences between who we are and the artist we admire.
When You Admire an Artist – Rubens for Example!
Dear Peter Paul Rubens, I want to paint like you. I want to master the curvy lines, the soft transitions from one shade to another, the effortless flow in the composition, and something that I can’t name but that makes my heart beat faster every time I see one of your masterpieces.
With masterpieces, I mean paintings like “Four Continents” or “Four Rivers of Paradise” – this artwork has two alternative titles.
Experts used to think that the painting had four continents and four rivers. Europe is the woman on the left, and her partner is the river Danube. Africa is the black woman, and her man is the Nile. The woman in the center back represents America, and her man is Rio de la Plata. The woman on the right is Asia, and her man is the Ganges. However, there’s a competing interpretation of the river figures. They may represent the four great rivers of the ancient East/paradise: the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Gihon, and the Pishon.
Rubens was born in an era where a shape could not be freed in the way we now can. He had to build a representation layer that people could explain and understand in a specific way. We humans have a strong need to label things. For example, when people see my work, they immediately begin to describe what they see.
But my paintings can produce many interpretations because I try to make shapes so that they raise several different kinds of associations. When painting, I focus more on how the shapes and colors interact with each other, not on one interpretation of what they represent.
Rubens didn’t have the luxury to leave the shapes abstract – it would not be treated as a completed painting in the 17th century.
And still, his expression has such a sense of mystery that it draws me in and forms a spiritual connection with humankind.
Creating with Hurry vs. Taking Time to Imagine
Recently, I have started to feel that it’s ok that I am not Rubens, Kandinsky, or any other admirable artist. By taking time for imagination, I still can feel a connection with them.
Rather than trying to reproduce what my favorite artists have created, I imagine that my little studio is a time capsule where they hang around. My sensitivity for them can get mixed with the rest of my imagination, and produce my kind of work, still supported by them.
The core of art is that we are free to imagine. We are allowed to break the limits of time, explore the inner world, and go beyond literal ideas and explanations.
This journey has taught me that it is possible to live with wild thoughts no matter what direction they take. Like a rare animal, a thought can be shy and fast, and thus, require sitting before the trust is formed.
I started the project with the definition of spirituality, but now the greatest lesson seems to be to let go of any single definition and find more, no matter what the subject is.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this post. Who do you admire, for example, if not anything else!