inspiration Archives - INESE'S ART STUDIO

February 28, 2025February 28, 2025

Sunny colors in spring landscape with barn

Why do I paint what I paint? Why this landscape? I have done commissions when somebody else orders the painting subject and colors. However, when I choose the subject, I look for something which feels like me, and I go for it. I pay no regard to all classic or whatever painting rules. Instead, I usually guide myself with what feels right and suitable to me. That includes deciding when the painting is done.

This particular painting was started last year, around this same time. I did the first layers and left it since other things came up and I had to deal with them. As I have mentioned before, I have quite a lot of paintings which are in their initial stages. I don’t push myself – if I don’t feel like completing some painting, I leave it alone.

Recently, I decided to add some layers and see what I could do with this landscape. It looks good and has lots of appeal in the final version. Each painting undergoes numerous transitions, from the first blocked in layers to final details. I regret that colors are both, more yellow and bluer, and the red tones are sort of missing on photo.

Spring landscape painting with barn, painting steps

I paint what’s around me and what I know well. That is would be – forests, parks, backyards, creeks, trees, plants, flowers and garden. These subjects are applied in different combinations from still life to landscape and everything in the middle. I am not close to large water, and I absolutely do not have any mountains here. However, nature provides me with endless inspiration, especially trees and plants.

Spring landscape with barn, black and white version

Black and white version of spring landscape on studio wall

Just like always, I love checking out how the black and white version of this landscape looks. I think it is quite impressive, with all values in correct places, and certainly, it’s possible to see the landscape, barn and daffodils clearly. One can tell it’s spring even without colors.

Barn landscape painting, smaller version

Barn, spring landscape painting on studio wall

The situation with art materials and paints is very tough here. I have run out of most good quality paints; there’s no white paint left. I just use what I have, but I will definitely need to get some new art supplies from somewhere soon. I dislike internet shopping a lot, and I always preferred to see in person what exactly I was buying. No such option here right now.

Enjoy my new spring barn landscape with white daffodils and weathered fence. It looks sunny on the wall, indeed. Also, this view takes us to a beautiful day when blooms are out and leaves are opening. Let’s hope we get into the nice spring weather sooner!

All black and white version art prints, as well different size and format art prints are available from Fine Art America

Art collections by Inese Poga

If you are interested in purchase of original, handmade acrylic paintings, please, head to page

Shop original acrylic paintings

If you are interested in learning how to create art, please check out the group and private art classes pages. All art classes are in-person.

Group art classes

Private art lessons

February 2, 2025March 17, 2025

Spring landscape for cold winter days

Spring landscape with creek trees and reflection

Sunny spring landscape – spring in our space

We in Ontario are having all kinds of whether these days – from bitter cold and raging winds to melting snow and weak, but encouraging sunshine. White switches to dirty grey and to bright brilliant blue in the sky. While we are impatiently waiting for spring, more sunshine and green color covering the boring grey, it’s fantastic to engage in painting spring landscape. I do it every year now. I used to paint some snow scenes also, but not any longer. Many reasons for that.

The colors of awakening

As I mentioned in the previous post, green color symbolizes harmony and balance, just as it appears in nature, therefore, increasing inner calm. Spring landscape on the wall makes us feel better while it is still dark and cold outdoors. Everybody who uses colors has experienced the uplifting effect of sunny shades and satisfaction with life. Those, who are not sticklers for the result only, can enjoy the meditative process of using colors in many ways.

Memory and imagination instead of photos

This particular spring landscape was started about a year ago. So, it sat with other unfinished paintings and patiently waited for the final touches and paint layers. The good thing is, we can restart acrylic painting at any time, change things around, adjust colors or repaint the areas which don’t fit. I recently don’t use photos; I rather go for the scenes which are stored in my memory. Over the years, the memory grows and grows, and it is easy to recall anything what I would like to implement in a painting.

Painting trees from observation

I love painting trees and using them in my landscapes. In fact, my huge backyard has numerous trees and I watch them consciously and subconsciously any time when I am outside. I teach painting trees in my art classes also because there are so many bad paintings and wrong landscapes with trees. We have to remember that there are always spaces between tree branches and leaves don’t appear in cloud-like formations and lollipop shapes. The best thing to do is observe and then paint.

Paint quality or lack of it

Since the art store in our area closed down, it was the only art store, I am usually running out of paints and other supplies. I am happy that brushes last quite long time. This spring landscape required using white in different combinations. Unfortunately, Liquitex professional Titanium white paint is bad, it lacks in pigment saturation and, thus, causes problems when mixed with other colors. I find that paint quality has gone down big time since the beginning of this century. Apparently, also in this area, profit comes first.

Positive aspects of painting

I hope you enjoyed looking at my spring landscape. I have 4 more I am working on. Last year was not in count because I spent the biggest part of it recovering from injuries. I have big hopes that this year is going to be much better. Nevertheless, painting is always calming, improving mood, taking away from any problems one might have. Stick with manual painting even though, there will be people who will use the stealing AI to come up as if with their own art. Manual painting does good for you and your brain. What counts is the human mastery, not the AI application.

Black and white art print of spring creek painting

Go big and be certain

I hope I have inspired you to also paint something in nice colors. Such as spring flowers, spring landscape, creeks, lakesides and awakening of the nature. We have to always remember that the art we create becomes us. There’s no point in copying, tracing and trying to recreate somebody else’s artwork. With every brushstroke our artistic ability grows. With every new painting, our hand-brain cooperation becomes more effective. And, please, go big. The teeny-tiny paintings make no sense, and no way you can learn painting like that.

Black and white art print of spring creek

Art classes, schedule and registration

Shop original acrylic paintings

Art collections by Inese Poga

Vertical, smaller version and black and white version are available as art prints.

May 13, 2024January 29, 2025

Interpreting your vision when painting

Bluebell forest, spring landscape, acrylic painting

Art and creative side of us relates to our ability to interpret our vision, our perception, our emotions about what we create to a great extent. I personally strongly disagree that everything is art, for the simple reason that it isn’t. Empty frame isn’t art, and a piece of wallpaper, just because it’s in frame isn’t art. Are a few paint blotches and a few unrelated brushstrokes art? Is our vision that poor or our ability that degraded that we are fine with not only animated and undeveloped shapes, but practically nothing?

The ability to draw and paint reflects our ability to interpret the world, our life, the planet, the universe as such. Our universe at that. While modern art tries to convince us that the shapes, forms and interpretation of a five-year-old is all there is what we call art, it isn’t true. When somebody starts learning manual writing, their lines and shapes are never perfect. They are all over the place. Some people never get beyond that. Why? They have no interest in perfecting it, they are simply unable to because their brain doesn’t process multifaceted things in more than one dimension.

Lake and trees, textured acrylic painting

What is a normal painting process? We have an idea, maybe view, maybe image and the next step is to figure out how we turn this vision into an image perceivable not only by yourself, but others, as well. That means planning underpainting, background, choosing our personal color palette. That is not what somebody tells you, but how you feel about it. Normal painting process involves composition, the most important part, feature or color which will be dominant, the abstract layers and the well-defined front ground. It also involves volume, contrast, values and all tools which create that: perspective, atmospheric and linear, shadows, direction of light and so forth.

Many art teaching sites say: no experience required. That would be fine, you start somewhere. However, if it is just a painting in one sitting, there’s just way too much information to be absorbed. Secondly, painting greatly relays on our physical ability and knowledge how to move brush, how much paint or water to use, what brush to use and the mostly neglected – brush cleaning step. Don’t clean the brush? All colors will be muted, muddy and not bright. It is an automatic step; we develop it over time.

Therefore, I always advice to start with a simple image which allows developing brushstroke, use of paint and color. One thing about people who just started to paint is – they never use enough paint. So, I repat numerous times, use more paint, use more paint. You cannot paint with empty air or water. The other problematic area is that we paint at first what is behind and underneath. We don’t use the final color, we build it up, layer by layer.

Nobody can learn turning their vision into decent art within a few hours. It’s just not possible. We allow our brain to process all information, and we also have to develop the automatic movements of hand. It takes time we get our hand to do what our brain and vision tell us. Therefore, at first, everybody paints like a small kid. No flowing lines, no great color transitions, it’s all rather very animated, simplified and sort of rough. Do you want to go further than that? It depends on whether you want to create something which says – you, your subject, your vision.

Flower paintings, pink and white paintings

Deep down, we always paint ourselves. Even when we are painting a landscape, a still life, a floral, a building or portrait. It should be us not only by the choice of subject, color palette or type of brushstroke. Basically, it takes time to learn how you can turn your vision into artwork which is yours, start to finish. My experience says, it’s better to learn from your own errors and achievements than trying to copy somebody else’s work. The only way to be you also in your vision is simply to do things what are close to you and your personal perception of the world.

The attached images are of paintings created over longer time, not like yesterday. I have had hard times posting recently because of my health issues, but I still think these paintings deserve attention and maybe can inspire somebody else to keep trying until it all works. Every painting probably should be the featured image, unfortunately, with so many, I cannot choose just one.

Enjoy!

October 31, 2023October 10, 2024

The golden flow of fall season watercolor

Fall reflection landscape painting in watercolor

Many of my watercolor paintings are created as demonstrations, spontaneously, without much planning. It’s difficult to know what each group or student wants, so I have to switch swiftly from one subject to another, from one color palette to the next. Fall season watercolor paintings shine through the light and numerous shades of red, burnt sienna, golden ocher, warm, deep or cool yellow shades, orange, grey, purple an so forth. Fall season watercolor paintings allow using many approaches and techniques.

I am sticking this time to fall season watercolor, but we have done also many new acrylic artworks. It is a good time to be indoors and immerse oneself in bright colors. I paint in layers which means I create a map of a painting with weaker tones at first and then gradually bring it to the necessary value and color temperature. None of that is visible on my photos which look mostly yellow. There’s a reason I dislike Apple and their iPhone. No chance to get true colors. I’ve tried everything, but it’s too automated to recognize all colors at once.

Nevertheless, the actual paintings are large (24 x 18” or 61 x 46 cm) and look quite impressive, just as required for display of the fall season watercolor versatility. I’d love to let images speak for themselves, even though photos are all wrong.

Fall season watercolor, autumn creek painting

Fall season watercolor painting for sale

The attendance at classes is fairly good and I have to repeat some observations. If you intend to learn painting, you have to go big. Postcard size images don’t allow to implement many things. I haven’t seen any student yet who learned painting using video tutorials and online courses. Quite the opposite – nobody knows anything about brushes, paper, how to use whatever they have and so on. There’s no knowledge of direction of light or values. We usually start from scratch. First purely basic techniques and then more complex matters.

Birch forest path painting in watercolor, large

This time is a fantastic for observing nature. Many people try painting trees, structures and buildings, but the first step is to look at them as they are in nature or in reality and try to remember what exactly a tree looks like. There are numerous sorts of them, but none here has wider and fatter branches than the trunk. The branches thin out rewards the top. Natural things have randomness to them and it’s important to remember that nothing in nature grows equal distance apart. Basically, your subjects are everywhere and you just have to look at them.

Fall season watercolor, golden lake view

It’s a great season to start painting. The most gains and successes come from practice and observation. We make errors to learn from them. We learn from doing, not exactly watching. Watching gives an idea, but doing is superior to watching. Or talking, or thinking about it. Doing makes one master of the trade, so, the next step – take your brush, paints and paper and on to painting the colors of fall season!

Group art classes

Original watercolor paintings for sale

Art collections by Inese Poga

July 12, 2023October 18, 2024

Summer landscape – fantastic subject

What to paint in the summertime? If you are in the countryside, traveling or live in the suburbs, I believe it’s impossible to avoid painting at least a few landscapes. What do we include in the summer landscape? Everything which speaks to us or says loudly: it’s hot, it’s wonderful, and it’s summer. My summer landscape is based on my surroundings and what I see outdoors. My private park has numerous wildflowers, and it is actually rather wild with huge old trees, various greases and plants.

We can interpret any landscape in numerous ways. Choosing certain color for wildflowers, buildings, sunny or cool color for grasses, adding trees or water, roads or fences – it depends only on artist where you want your viewer to go. I would like my viewer and art collector to feel happy about what nature provides us with, enjoy the views which might not be around forever. In that regard, I am documenting the natural beauty before we kill the Earth completely. Thee is so much beauty in the simplest summer landscape.

In my opinion, taking pictures of art and then posting them as separate images without background, literary destroys the art. I do that still because many places require to do so. Original art breathes and emits plenty of great, uplifting energy. All devices and cameras take away a lot already, and the small image you can see on the phone isn’t really my painting. It’s gone through numerous adjustments and algorithms. Regardless of that, I hope the energy within my summer landscape paintings is still visible.

These particular paintings were created between 2010 and 2021. There are many more, but one post can include only few images. I believe I already added too many pictures, but – when else to allow color to sparkle and imagination to run freely? I intend to initiate Studio 65 sale to celebrate my birthday. That’s pretty much the only celebration I will have. Most of paintings are available as originals and also as prints. Originals are available from my art studio in Ajax, Ontario, Canada. Prints – anywhere.