Visual Vocabulary First, Style Second
This week is about visual vocabulary and how to widen it.
I often hear the worry about finding the style, but more rarely about widening the vocabulary. Style is a quality word, but vocabulary is more about quantity. Still, it’s as important, and you can’t find the style without growing the vocabulary!
Often when we create art, we use a limited variety of shapes and lines and often the most ordinary ones. For example, your strokes may be quite straight and have very little variety in thickness. Or your shapes can be mostly basic geometric shapes. When I started, I mainly drew circles and my pieces were very symmetrical in general.
Forget the Style, Grow the Visual Vocabulary!
When you want to widen your visual vocabulary, look at the details of your work. There are seeds that can grow into great things. For example, could you repeat a random spot that almost disappears into the background and build a subtle texture from it?
Look at your drawing line and think about whether it could deviate slightly from its path. Could you make a notch somewhere and thus make the shape more interesting?
Imagine you are a child who knows only a few words. Then it’s not important to question what the topic should be, but to find more words to tell any. Stop worrying whether you should create faces or landscapes and make a wide range of art to grow the visual vocabulary.
When you can draw a wide range of shapes, curves, lines and have many ways to color, repeat, break up and assemble them, you can produce visual stimuli on the paper that makes your imagination work. From this collaboration, art is born.
Outer Inspiration – Borrowing “Words” from Others
By looking at art, you can find words, i.e. shapes, that you want to incorporate into your own vocabulary, i.e. style.
Art history is like an encyclopedia where we can pick what we like. Any art can be seen as abstract – just focus on finding a variety of shapes and colors.
Your vocabulary can be inspired of not only fine art, but crafts as well.
Imagination Sets Who You Are
Too much outer inspiration causes copying, so don’t leave your imagination out of the equation! Imagine you are a singer who takes a popular song into your repertoire. Then you enter a singing competition and are told: “You sound a lot like the original singer of the song, but we want to hear who you are.”
So we need not only to expand our expressive language, but also to develop our imagination. Visual vocabulary and imagination are a pair, and art needs both.
For example, you can draw a circle and give it a meaning, but can others see it? With imagination alone, the expression remains hidden. With a rich expressive language, we can make art enjoyable for others as well.
Welcome to My Courses + What I Want to Teach
The goal of my courses is to develop both your visual vocabulary and imagination.
First, I want to get you to draw something a little differently than you have done before and thus enrich your visual vocabulary. Second, I want to make a crack in your everyday thinking and plant imagination in it. I want you to ask: “What if?” and to respond with something completely crazy – something that makes you feel free to tell completely new kinds of stories.
When art emerges from this starting point, richly and vividly expressing itself, you will find your style.
Intuitive Flowers with Colored Pencils
This week, we take an intuitive approach to flowers and color them freely with colored pencils. This method can also be easily adapted to watercolors.
Everyone’s flowers are different, but we can all start with the same steps. I will show you how to start and how to bring intuition into the process, and then you can finish the piece in your own style.
Let’s get the colored pencils and start intuitive flowers step-by-step!
Step 1 – Background
Start by intuitively picking one main color. I choose a color that I feel strangely drawn to, or a pencil that looks a bit sad and needs some quality time with me. I may sharpen or re-arrange the pencils before I start, so that I feel more connection with them.
With the chosen pencil, color the paper lightly and softly. Leave a part of the center blank so that you will also have white in your work.
When you feel bored, add other colors for an energy boost and spiciness, but always get back to your main color. The main color sets the mood and makes sure that every flower will breathe the same air.
I use soft-tipped colored pencils, such as Prismacolor Premier and Caran d’Ache Luminance. Thin layers are a joy to color and the strokes are soft. My paper is Fabriano Accademia Drawing Paper (200 gsm/94 lbs).
Step 2 – Circles
Color a new background layer so that you leave round areas uncolored. These are like ghosts that will be turned to flowers in the next step.
Make sure you have big, small, and medium circles, not just one size. Let some circles overlap and some disappear partly near the edges. This step is simple, but not very intuitive, because we tend to create circles of one size and separate from each other.
What does intuitive mean to you?
For me, it’s an emotional connection to colors and bringing out the spirit rather than the material. If you think intuitive is what feels easy, you’re holding back your development in making art.
Step 3 – Notches
Turn circles to flowers by coloring notches with the background colors. Make all kinds of shapes this way. I try to avoid symmetry, because flowers are rarely perfectly symmetrical. The more imaginative the shapes are, the more spirit I see in them.
You can also add some color to the flowers if it helps you to form a tighter connection, but do it only lightly in this step.
Step 4 – Colors
Add more colors – and not only to the flowers but also to the background. I like to think that the spirit of the flower is larger than its outline. The flower radiates the spirit, and the color of the flower is more in its surroundings than in the flower itself. This makes the background as fun to color as the flowers.
Make stems thin and curvy when you want the flowers to look delicate.
Step 5 – Repeat!
Add more details with the techniques of steps 1-4: more background color, more circles, more notches, more colors.
The more experienced you are, the more patience you have. Intuition is a rusty vehicle. The connection improves with time, and your piece will begin to speak to you.
Grow Your Skills at Fun Botanicum!
Fun Botanicum is a great course for all who want to grow their skills in drawing plants and learning more techniques for florals.
Intuitive Flowers and Colored Pencils
For me, being intuitive also means being flexible. I cherish every little flower, but also accept that not every flower can remain in the final piece.
A flower can bloom and give her soul to you, and then become a background spirit only. In this piece that happened a lot.
My drawing took about four hours to make.
What does intuitive mean to you? Do you aim for intuition when you are creating art?
Poetry Girl and Bosom Friends – Start Drawing Again!
Let’s get you out of the creative rut and have quality time with your inner child – the poetry girl in you! Join us for a course that will get you excited about making art again! >> Sign up here!
Poetry Girl and Bosom Friends
In Finland we have two lovely words: “runotyttö” and “sydänystävä” – “poem girl” and “heart friend”. Runotyttö means a dreamy young person – poetry girl – and sydänystävä means a close friend – a bosom friend. I think the best courses are like the bosom friends that bring out the poetry girl in you.
They make you see new possibilities, but they do it in a gentle and fun way.
>> Sign up for Hearts and Stories!
Here’s how we get out of the creative rut in the course Hearts and Stories.
Out of the Creative Rut – Step 1
First, we will restore the joy of drawing simple shapes.
Out of the Creative Rut – Step 2
Second, we will go for an adventure that travels from one small picture to another.
Out of the Creative Rut – Step 3
Third, we will find a connection to fantasy through characters.
Out of the Creative Rut – Step 4
Finally, we put everything together so that we are excited to continue creating.
Art is a mood and a direction. It shows where you are, and suggests where you want to go.
Join us for a course that will get you excited about making art again!
>> Sign up for Hearts and Stories!
Art Journal as a Storybook
This week, we are looking at an art journal as a storybook, full of fairy tales that are not borrowed but our own.
With this video, I want to inspire you to create whimsical art journal pages that illustrate personal stories. In these pages, mundane things become more fantastical, and there’s no pressure to draw realistic sceneries, real persons, and such.
I say in the video: “As a child, I drew lions without thinking if they were realistic enough. I loved lions, so I drew them, it was that simple. When I cherish the inner child, I don’t expect realistic perfection, neither do I try to control the story.”
Creating a page in your storybook journal can be a creative adventure that gets you hooked on creating.
Art Journal as a Storybook – Watch the video!
In the video, I use watercolors, colored pencils, and fel-tip pens and create a spread in my Dylusions Creative Journal. I start with creating the central heart on a separate paper ( Fabriano Accademia drawing paper, thickness 200 gsm/94 lbs), and then pick one of my boxes of joy to find more hand-drawn collage pieces.
I don’t start with the background, but glue the pieces first, and then combine them by coloring. This vice-versa collage process is fun because we can make odd images work together by drawing and also make them to tell a story.
I also like to start with a simple shape and work from a small detail to a bigger picture. I think this way of creating is exciting and adventurous, and it’s always a joy to see what comes up.
Hearts and Stories – Sign Up Now!
Let’s turn your art journal into a storybook and make the most out of simple shapes!
Hearts and Stories will begin on March 17, 2025. >> Sign Up Now!