Are you creative?
If you love art, you should start sketching. Spring and summer are the best seasons to start, then, by the fall, you can already paint. While many people are specializing and trying to be experts in just one area of life, it is great to maintain some universality and balance. Adding creativity to daily routine changes everything for the better.
Being artistic
Being universal might not be that easy because everything has many aspects, whether it is art, writing and literature, music, or theater and dance. I still believe we need variety of uplifting things that make us more human and sensitive to happiness, sadness, joys and troubles of life. Art does that. It opens up one’s soul and redirects thoughts towards something unique, unexpected and beautiful.
New skills, new habits, new perception
We freshen up our life and bring something new into it. Why not sketching and drawing? These are the first steps towards painting and drawing. Sketches look great either small or big. The small ones we can use in art journals. The big ones can be framed or simply hang onto wall.
Adding visual images to your thoughts or at least having visual images in your head gives one’s life more color, more brightness and vitality.
My journey
Sketching and drawing are the areas I have explored since early childhood. I did not have a good paper or good pencils and pens, but I had a huge desire to capture everything around me. The urge to turn visual scenes into sketch or drawing was so intense that I would draw during school lessons and later at University lectures. I had drawn lots and lots of portraits of my class and school mates, as well as of my family and friends. When I was outdoors, I was sketching and drawing garden, streets, buildings, plants and flowers: anything, really.
Sketching supplies and what makes it easy
Sketching is much faster than, for instance, acrylic painting or even watercolor or pastel painting. It is a convenient genre to take outside because we do not need much: just paper, pencil or pen. It can be done with adding a little bit of watercolor. It can be done in pencil, watercolor pencils or pastels.
Using good art supplies
I never use paper which is called sketching paper and is supposed to work well for sketching. It is too thin to add paint, and tears and smudges very easily. Use of paper also depends on the purpose of your sketch. If it is just a quick reminder of a scene, sure, anything will do. I use for sketching watercolor paper that is a grade below the best watercolor papers which are heavy Arches and Saunders-Waterford papers.
Pen outlines
Pen works and looks better on smooth surfaces. Watercolor marker paper was available a while ago, I haven’t seen it recently in our local art store. That was excellent paper for pen drawing, and I do not have or use watercolor markers. I have watercolor pencils. That is a slow way of developing watercolor painting; however, it does the job for people who are very comfortable with pencil and not with brush.
Try not using eraser
I would advise also not to use eraser until the subject has gotten some shape. Otherwise, one just keeps erasing without achieving any results. Focus and draw, trust your eyes, think about contrast, composition, values and effects, and not that much about perfect drawing. You can adjust it any time. Forgetting eraser at home when you go out sketching, will increase focus.
Old countryside house in pen and watercolor, 18 x 12 in or 46 x 30.5 cm
Million reasons to start sketching, drawing or illustrating:
if you are alone, but do not want to feel lonely;
if you have hard times getting the me-time and letting it all go;
if you are facing issues that affect your life badly and you want to escape them for a while;
if you are young or old, but do not want to spend all leisure time in front of a screen;
if you would love to develop a habit that helps getting rid of addictions;
if you feel that your memory is worsening and you want to sharpen it up;
if that is your dream, but you never got to it;
if you want beauty in your life and art on every wall;
go ahead and start sketching and drawing.
There is no better time than spring and no better place than outdoors to start sketching or painting.
Rocks and water, size, 22 x 15 in or 56 x 38 cm
On this large test watercolor painting, I explored a new masking technique. This painting was simply a test whether packaging tape works as a masking tool. It does. I cut around with X-Acto knife and, yes, it really works better than any masking fluid. However, it is applicable only to large areas, not the tiny ones. So, I kept adding paint, and this testing piece ended up looking like a painting.
Testing colors for a large watercolor painting. Looks great!
Here, I was testing the color combinations and layout for a larger watercolor painting. It looks attractive, yet it is just a pen and watercolor sketch.
Perspective is easy if you know how to proceed. Old buildings make a perfect sketching subject.
These are some of demo paintings done during and for my pen and watercolor classes.
More sketching: https://inesepogagallery.com/2014/03/02/sketching-in-watercolor-whats-the-advantage/
Lovely Post and painting Inese.. I love doing all of the above, yet would say I am not a professional in any of them.. I just enjoy the process and of creation.. <3 Wishing you well Inese.. <3
That is the right way to do it! The process is what matters and allows one immersing him/herself as if in meditative state of a beautiful freedom: create whatever you want or feel like. Well, too many people actually start on the wrong foot: they want the masterpiece painted with the first brush stroke. That is impossible. We progress, we watch our progress and we enjoy every minute of it. I know that you would agree that nothing compares to visual creation, not even writing poetry. I think the reason is that we can say with images what we cannot always say with words, and drawing language is absolutely international and there are no age restrictions. Thanks Sue for stopping by!
I was just outside raking and preparing to plant something. I have only two and a half weeks before the surgery, so, I have to get done everything. Therefore, I am working hard.
Good luck Inese with your surgery, I hope it helps my friend.. And yes here too busy time for planting and we are preparing our garden and planting seeds etc..
Wishing you well in your healing and growing season Inese.. <3
I hope I will be doing better this time, too. I am more prepared and I have more knowledge. That reminds me to go and get x-rays done. I totally forgot because I am dealing with lots of things at once.
Growing season is always fantastic. I would switch to all year long growing season immediately!
Me too, hard work, but so rewarding.. <3
Absolutely. I am heading to it right now!
Wow, I love this Inese, so peaceful! NICE work. BTW, clear shelf liner paper works in a pinch too as a resist (for larger areas)
Thanks! I did not know that. Basically, I had the wrapping tape. I do not have the shelf-liner, but I really should get it for kitchen shelves, too. Good idea. I love all shortcuts, especially when they are inexpensive and easy to use. Yes, I looked at these, and I kind of liked. I should have the rocks as a real painting. As I got the big blobs of rocks in, I unintentionally kept swiping around with the brush. It is the same with drawing, I keep adding lines, until I feel sorry to throw it out. That happens with me a lot, I do not intend to draw or paint, I do not plan nothing, and the brush or pencil just go. LOL, I should take things more seriously. When I am seeing how some artists draft and plan and mask everything and approach with caution so many aspects of painting, I have to remind myself not to always do everything just as a practice work.
Inese – your paintings is such wonderful colors and joy…Your lines brings much more peace and positive energy!!
Thanks! That is great to know!
I really like your style here. It has warmth, depth and connectedness in the landscape. Lovely work!
Thank you so much! I really appreciate this nice comment!
You’re right, spring is such a good time with all the bright colors in the flowers and plants.
Thanks! We are also finally getting feeling of spring. Bright and sunny and warm today. It is too bad, we will have to move some time during the summer. This place has great outdoors, huge backyard and my garden was very large, too. I’m not planting much since I will have to leave it behind anyway. This was so sudden, we did not have any idea it would be this summer.
I am so happy since i started drawing and painting on a regural basis. It consumes a good amount of my free time (if not all of it…) but it is totally worth it!
Thanks! Yes, that is exactly what I mean. It consumes time. However, among many thing things that are time-consuming, but result in nothing, drawing and painting is a very productive time consumption. It is great you said that you are so happy about starting these activities. I hope you keep being happy and enjoying the endless opportunities that art gives us.
I totally agree! Among the time consuming things this is one of the most productive! Lets see where it takes us 🙂
Well, it has taken me to more than 40 years of painting. I wish I recovered faster from the surgery to start posting new images, etc. It will take you to a very good place: one is never bored, never feels lonely. It helps overcoming other disappointments in life. However, there is not that much money in this, unless, you have a good circle of influential people who help promoting you or have a good exposure at well-visible galleries or online sites. As you know, every place is extra crowded nowadays, we are talking millions, not just thousands of artists.
I believe art is very worth doing for personal gains which I have listed in many of my articles.
Inese, you bring back memories of my days I tried to be an artist, I used to have a nice job that allowed me to work exclusively a few hours on the morning hours, and had free Friday Saturday, and Sunday, so during the working weekdays I would spend my evenings after work from 2:PM until 10:00 PM they kicked us out, at the city main Library, on those pre-internet days libraries was the only way to go, if you didn’t want to spend a fortune in books, and the main library had late closing times, unlike today, with reduced hours, and frankly no need to go to the library anymore when almost everything it’s at your fingertips.
During my free day I will exercise my new acquired knowledge painting all day until light would be no good, of course things changed, and was forced to immigrate and have a more demanding job with little time to do anything else, at least during the light hours.
I painted for two and half years, I learnt a lot but figured I will need many years of practice yet, to become to produce something really good, then my attention turned somewhere else. 🙂
That is interesting! I guess you have a good artistic feeling and, most likely, you could paint and continue because it does not matter how good one becomes, it is way more than that.
However, I know how this is when there is not time for anything else, except the main work duties.
You have found writing philosophical articles, and they literally show your huge intelligence and the love to reading.
I was like that, too, I was reading a book a day between 12 and 17 years and I would also draw illustrations to each book. I started University at 17 because I was an excellentist in all school subjects.
I went systematically through all biographies, history, science, geography, etc. starting with ancient Egypt (that was in Russian times, no capitalism related books were allowed), moved to ancient Rome, medieval ages, I loved Da Vinci biography so much, renaissance, French literature and art, Italian literature and art, Spanish literature and art, certainly we had all Russian literature and art which is a huge field. My favorite was always the Russian poetry, hence, I can read it in original. Then I moved to North America literature, and I loved Edgar Alan Poe (I was 15) and I went through American poetry, then I grabbed even some Japanese (I did haiku translations in new writers society), Chinese and middle East art and literature (we were so excited about Omar Khayyam, I knew a lot by heart). I do not believe any translation can ever convey the exact music of a language perfectly.
Well, painting was never my only job. I just was drawing since some 3 or 4 years. I know we went to visit somebody very old when I was just 3 years. They had all staircase painted with all kinds of nature scenes and lots of self-made paintings. I guess that may have been oils. Who knows? However, that was the first moment when I realized how you get what you like on a flat surface. That may have been the moment which helped me figure out how to do this because I was trying to draw house and room, and I did not know how to show 4 legs of a table for instance because I knew clearly there were not only 2 as somebody would draw in childhood in a side view.
I know that was the first impression and impact. I was 3 years old. I remembered this one day when I was trying to understand how I got involved with art because nobody can draw or paint in my family, and nobody ever taught me either. It just happened. It always simply happens, I look at something, and it pretty much draws itself, I mean, the hand draws, but I do not need to look much at paper, I do look at that thing which I draw or paint. I hate acrylics because they dry so dark and all my initial idea and lights are gone. I loved oils but became very sensitive to them.
Thanks a lot for your artistic comment!
Inspiring post and wonderful artwork. Thank you for sharing Inese.
Thanks so much! I appreciate all likes and your nice comment. I will revisit your blog, as well, I’m just busy at the moment.