Luckily, we have natural antidepressants. Soft and soothing colors in our space and in our mind’s space are some of these spirit-uplifting things. Color matters, and especially at places, where we spend much time.
Winter is nice some days, but, when storms last for weeks and sun don’t come out frequently, we are reminded that we need cheering up to do.
Do not allow weather affect you
I have a long history of experiencing how bad Seasonal Affective Disorder can become. It is abbreviated SAD. It is sad, indeed. We sometimes miss the fact that life passes by and we just have to skip so many pleasures of it when we are feeling depressed or upset. The bad weather can do that to you. To resist, we paint. At least, I do.
Cure yourself with color and art
I can tell from my personal experience that drawing and painting always helps overcome depression when it is about to set in. When I feel winter blahs are about to take over, I immediately put myself at the desk and start drawing and painting. It isn’t sometimes anything in particular; however, I have noticed that drawing and painting flowers in lovely, soothing and nice colors is an extra beneficial step.
The lovely subject: flowers
We have been drawing and painting flowers and landscapes with flowers in my studio in winter and early spring months since 2012. My students noticed and acknowledged that, too: soft, lovely colors and beautiful shapes of flowers made them feel like meditating with color. Time flew by, and they never even once remembered about their health issues, problems, aches, pains and mental disorders. The truth is that many people come to paint to lift their mood and to feel better.
Cure winter blahs with learning new things
There are serious reasons we feel more sleepy, inactive and unwilling to do anything during times when daylight is short and outdoors is not welcoming. The melatonin production is increased and that can make us sleepier than we would like. Is pushing oneself a little bit the answer? It most likely is because it will take some effort to get up from couch and stop eating the comfort foods or to get out and start doing something.
Learning something new
Learning something new is also an extremely worthwhile thing because it will make you feel more excited, more energized and more engaged. Drawing and painting is a very special activity because it takes your entire mind and all your senses to create art on white paper or canvas. Drawing and painting is very rewarding, too, because we see results soon.
Adding soft pink and coral colors
For additional effect, we can create art in lovely pink and coral colors and use it in our space. The best thing is to paint such art yourself. If you think you cannot draw or paint, you are wrong. Anybody who has some interest in art can learn drawing and painting.
My newest watercolor paintings
My newly finished paintings are all in lovely colors and they are mostly still life and floral art. I enjoyed every single minute while drawing and painting these watercolor paintings, and I would say this process literally lifted my mood every time I picked up the brush.
Some art products look so fantastic, that I sometimes buy them for my own use also.
Watercolor on Arches, roses, soft background, beautiful colors
3 orchid blooms, watercolor painting on 24 x 18″ paper
I hope you will get inspired and do some painting also. This is the right time to get started. This is the right time to start creating something beautiful in order to avoid winter blahs this year.
More info and registration for art classes: apply here
Copyright notice: Copyrights of displayed paintings, drawings, images of work in progress and images of finished paintings belong to artist Inese Poga. The use of painting and drawing images is prohibited if I have not issued a written permission.
What happened to all good themes on WordPress.org?
I’ve been sitting at computer for too long. As I told before, I don’t have a better theme on my website right now for a very silly reason: I just can’t find a suitable one, it seems almost impossible. All of them look great as demos. Once I start to adapt them to what I need, I end up seeing that one page themes don’t work; themes overloaded with all kinds of fancy stuff don’t work. Also, completely plain and flat themes don’t work, and so on. I tried 8 themes, lost money on one, and here I am: with the same Twenty seventeen.
No change is better than bad change
I decided to leave it as is because while I was doing my theme adjustments, I worked as a slave for two weeks, 14 hours a day. That was affecting my life and everything else I had to do. It’s summer after all, and one is not supposed to spend it at computer. I am going to Latvia soon, but prospects of traveling without cash are not very attractive. I will just have to make some.
Purple variety, delicious apples’ painting
Local sales
Once again, I will try to do something also locally which is very unlikely to be a successful thing because this neighborhood is quite dead in summer. I will try to sell something also over the internet from this same site.
Taking pictures of art
My biggest problem has been inability to capture the painting images. This problem has persisted for many years. I don’t think it’s only mine problem. Camera looks at painting differently, and the color balance depends on colors in painting. Blue, grey and blue green colors look better on pictures. Red, orange and yellow colors are problematic. I have paintings which have a lot of red, and I cannot show them online because there’s shine on it, It is usually impossible to bring back the color balance with editing.
Summer watercolor paintings
Taking pictures of art in context and with background
I have noticed that watercolor artists take pictures of their paintings using contextual background. I started to take such pictures of my art intuitively, some 8 years ago or so. I noticed very soon that everything with background looked fine. I mean, paintings regained their natural colors.
Size is not visible on internet display
That also gives some idea about the size because it is quite annoying to see how my very large art is displayed smaller than my small art on some sites. Just placing something next to painting or having surroundings show behind painting or when art is on the wall results in a photo which has well balanced colors.
Taking pictures of art and displaying online
This particular theme does not allow also displaying everything as I would love to. The featured image becomes too large. I tried to add my own css when doing theme adjustments. I made the blog posts page larger size, but decreasing the widget area resulted in losing the number of followers. I will have to live with this display for a while because too much editing the style caused all content text disappearing completely. I have real fun here!
Nothing compares to real painting
Most art looks better in reality. It can be so annoying at times that after taking about 30 pictures of a painting not even one is good enough to post.
Flowers and fruit: summer compositions
I appreciate your interest
Anyway, have a look at my art and I will also post more exercises for those, who love painting with watercolor and are learning and experimenting with sketching and watercolor. Maybe I should make a specific Facebook page for that? We’ll see how it goes. I believe pictures of paintings look better in context and with background. Some are above and below.
The best way to start painting with watercolor is using pen and watercolor wash. We all want our art to be great and impressive. However, if you are new to some medium or absolutely new to drawing and painting, you have to bear in mind: nothing happens right away and with the first brushstroke. I have had absolute beginners who were somewhat disappointed that their first piece of art wasn’t exhibition quality. Well, that is normal.
Patience
Every skill takes time, efforts and work. Creation of drawing or painting involves lots and lots of information. Some people are courageous by nature and love to experiment, and that is very beneficial. Some people are perfectionists and they believe everything they do must be either perfect or they are ready to give it up: don’t use this approach.
Focus on potential
My personal attitude towards something new in painting: different subject, medium, tools or technique never focuses on perfection. I focus on potential. Something might work out and something might not. There will be easy parts and probably difficult parts. That way. I call this attitude: let us see what happens. Progress is usually gradual. That is why we start with simple things and move to more complicated things.
Pen and watercolor
Pen and watercolor wash is a great technique for beginning watercolor artists. Some like it so much that they stick to this technique and turn it into their personal style. If you are insecure about drawing lines with pen, sketch them using pencil. You can draw over with pen and delete everything else. We have now clean drawing in black ink, and the white paper is not damaged.
Any subject will do
Anything can serve as a subject: from your morning coffee cup to flowers in a vase or at the fence, from a bird at your window to sprouting vegetables in a garden. Any scene with some object is good, but flowers look extremely nice when done in pen and watercolor.
Everybody can draw
When somebody says they cannot draw, I don’t believe that. Most often that means they tried 1 or 2 drawings and these drawings were not splendid. So, they conclude that they cannot draw. Talk to me after 100 drawings. That is a decent start. It is also much easier to point out what else one should do in order to create better art when they have engaged in more than just a few attempts.
Pen and watercolor flowers and spring scenes
Pen and watercolor, Spring daffodils painting 12 x 12 in or 30.5 x 30.5 cmStylish and simple spring rose, all done with black pen lines and watercolor washApple blooms in pen and watercolor: great starting subjectPen and watercolor apple blossoms, the finished paintingSmiley purple pansy faces, pen and watercolor washSpring mood with apple blossoms, butterflies and beautiful colors
Pen and watercolor wash is easy
Why to start with pen and watercolor? It is forgiving, it is easy and fast, and it allows learning watercolor application more effortlessly. The pen lines provide additional support. It is a flattering technique since practically any painting or drawing looks good regardless of how sufficient one is with watercolor. I have done numerous pen and watercolor paintings over years, just because it is fun, it is easy and looks fantastic.
Copyright notice: Copyright of displayed paintings, drawings, images of work in progress and images of finished paintings belong to artist Inese Poga. The use of painting and drawing images is prohibited if I have not given a written permission. That includes no pinning on Pinterest.
The best part of being able to create art is depending on our intentions and goals. There are no limitations in subjects or ways to create something. It is almost an absolute freedom, and pretty much nothing but only our personal attitude or situation can set us back.
Freedom in creation means doing what one wants and prefers. If it is technique that doesn’t work for you yet, you will just have to practice more. In this post: white and pink flowers in acrylic.
I sometimes meet people who think creating a painting is extremely easy. Most likely, instructions that say: paint like a master in one hour or time-lapse demos where a few hours of work are squeezed in just 1 minute, make one believe that a decent size art takes only a few minutes. Well, try to paint just a wall or better start with smaller surfaces like a door. Even that takes time, not to mention creating art layer upon layer with targeted and fine-tuned brushstroke.
Creation takes time and efforts. When somebody looks at painting they sometimes doubt how that can possibly take 2 or 3 weeks working every day for about 6 hours. It depends on medium, definitely. Acrylic is much slower medium than watercolor. Whenever some part is dry, it is almost as if starting everything from new. Acrylic is much slower than oils also. That is why it takes a lot of layers and building up color and value.
When somebody tries painting on their own, they can feel how everything takes work. Some believe that the messy first layers are a sign of a hopeless art. That is simply wrong. I sometimes demonstrate how we layer, change and improve any painting by just adding dark colors and highlights, or modifying perspective and number of details or elements. In that regard, acrylic is very forgiving and very user-friendly. The only limitation is time we spend on painting and time we are willing to spend on it. Our personal attitude and preferences change over time, as well. It’s no surprise that we might not like subject we adored a while ago or we like colors we hated before.
That is normal. That is progress or another direction.
Having flower paintings all around makes one feel fantastic. Even when my health is giving glitches, it’s a pleasure to be in the gallery and enjoy the elegant lines and uplifting colors.
If you never tried to create any art, it is a wonderful time to start. The sketching season will be on soon, and that is just a pure pleasure being outdoors and literally absorbing the surrounding life, nature and beauty.
I hope to get some followers back since I lost of all of them while migrating the blog. I don’t think I have set up even all buttons yet, so, everything will come, just give it some time.
