Million shades of everything: experiment!

Acrylic painting, nature

Mixing colors: experiment

Did you know that it is possible to mix up quite a few thousands of colors just using ultramarine blue, primary magenta, cadmium yellow medium and titanium white? These color mixes are pretty much unlimited taking into account how slight change in proportion would alter the color. We don’t usually use only premixed colors or paints straight from the tube. Everybody is aware that yellow plus blue allows mixing up greens, and red plus blue creates purple shades.

The power of grey

Acrylic color mixing

Adding yellow to different shades of blue and red causes the graying effect and results in fantastic variations of neutrals. Why do we need grey shades and background neutrals? Well, they make other colors shine. We don’t have to always paint sunsets in order to observe how yellow shines on a grey-blue or purple, but we often need the fairly saturated neutrals to build up some scene or object. They also give all objects more substance.

Acrylic color mixing

Practice!

One can have color charts and theory books and check out all available information on color mixing, yet, not manage it when it comes to painting. How so? We know many things in theory. When it comes to applying the theoretical knowledge in practice, everything is completely different. Theoretical knowledge without decent practicing is worth zero. Therefore, practice!

Importance of experiment

I’m always encouraging students to experiment. Experimenting and exploring is the key to knowledge. There is never only one correct way of painting or drawing something. In fact, there are thousands of ways when we are trying to get similar results. Let’s take for example video tutorials.

Dos and don’ts

How to paint trees? How to paint clouds? How to paint forest? The answer is: whatever way you find it suitable for you because these tutorials will show how to paint trees according to artist X, or clouds as artist Y is seeing and painting them. Artist A might consider such trees incorrect, and B will tell you that nobody should paint clouds like artist Y.

Watching is not doing

While you watch somebody’s demo, it seems to be very easy. However, when you are one on one with brush and paints, things are not the same. The more colors you have, the more confused you might become. Many color mixes yield very close color tones, especially in acrylic when everything becomes much darker as it dries.

Having your own painting supplies

When somebody wants to start painting, they usually are not very excited about spending much money on materials. However, having your own paints, brushes and other tools is very beneficial. We just have to keep art supply list short and buy less.

Acrylic painting, nature
Experimenting is very important for any artist. Mix colors, apply layers, see what your paints can do.

Keep discovery for yourself

Do not allow anybody to steal from you the pleasure of discovery! Some people are very insecure initially since they believe they don’t know enough about painting. There are artists who have more experience, but nobody knows everything about everything. The other thing is that we develop our mastery and build experience only when we take creative risks and dare to explore and experiment.

Early spring, acrylic painting by Inese Poga
Early spring was done entirely during art classes and served as a demo painting

Learn through experiment

Therefore, experiment, experiment, experiment! It is good to ask a question when something is not happening the way you expected. However, there is no need to perform major search online just because you are not sure whether to use blue-green or yellow-green on some area. Do it your own way. It might take longer, but all efforts will pay off when you have painted exactly what you were trying to.

Your creation beats prints

It is much better to have your own painting on the wall than print. Print is a print. It will never have the energy of an original, therefore, it makes sense to frame also kids art because it has that special touch. Does our art have to be perfect? We can certainly try to get to that stage, but absolutely flawless and impressive art is extremely rare. It sometimes happens. Just working towards one great picture at a time brings us to the desired result. which will be the best ever.

Spring road, acrylic painting
Behind the ben: acrylic painting of spring road is 20 x 16 in or 51 x 41 cm art on canvas

Some errors which need to be fixed

Beginners try to paint with hardly any paint, or with a tiny droplet of it. In acrylic that means, it dries almost instantly. Use generous amount of paint and clean brush every time you switch color.

Values are important

Beginning artists always pay attention to color and absolutely no attention to value. We can change color very quickly, but we need strong, medium and light values placed accordingly to our plans in any painting. Therefore: experiment! Good luck!

Art classes: Sign up here

Adding color to winter days

Watercolor mixing, floral watercolor

The warming color

Adding color to cool winter days feels right. Or a bit better than simply doing nothing. I was hoping to get done much more, but darkness is very restricting. Even though, I’m drawing and painting at electric light, that has impact also because color changes. Sensitive colors and shades change to a great extent in different light, and the only correct painting light for me is the daylight. I’m obviously experiencing shortage of it and using warm and bright colors to offset the shortage of natural  light.

Colorful illusion of spring

As long as I remember myself, I never liked winter. I feel that I deserve way better than this freezing air and this wet snow or icy wind gusts from around the corner. I am not trying to get up when I should, and staying up much longer at night, that’s not helping. My productivity is down in winter and I find all kinds of excuses to justify the wasted time. It might be so that I’m completely dependent on seasonal cycles of the nature. I’m definitely a summer person, and darkness and cold are completely arguing with every living cell in my body. Well, I know, winter will pass, too, and painting in bright colors takes me to spring.

Art as a rescue medicine

My only rescue medicine is art. It’s impossible to imagine how I would survive these dark months without colors, paints, sketches, drawings, ideas and paintings! Thankfully, these things occupy my brain and mind completely taking into a meditative state of no reaction to surroundings, problems or issues. I believe art is the best way to fight these upsetting and lazy moods. The only times when I experience real flush of energy are before art classes, workshops and events. The opportunity to make canvas blossom gives me wings and I’m bursting with fresh ideas and suggestions. I’m very generous when it comes to sharing ideas and new knowledge.

Add color to your day

“Add color to your day” project is coming along, but not without a resistance. I will eventually figure out how to implement three 1.5 hour sessions during the week in order to use only watercolor paints, allowing them to flow, taking away bad emotions, and therefore these sessions will be providing people, who have similar winter moods, with positive energy and opportunity to overcome the situations they’ve stuck in. That might be health or relationships, or our own nature, it doesn’t matter what exactly. Color and art can cure everything, even people, who are unable to physically perform something difficult. New images for these sessions are on the way.

A little bit of warmth

To share with everybody a little bit of warmth, I’m attaching a few watercolors. These are layered watercolors without using masking fluid. For some images, we created pen outline drawing at first.

Winter watercolors

January watercolor in warm colors: we just kept adding different layers and glazing, and adding more and more of them. I know we should have used something like masking fluid, but there was no time to wait until everything is dry.

Pen and watercolor sketch of poppies: it’s cold outside, but painting in warm colors brightens up any place, any mood and any day.

 Original watercolor paintings for sale

The art of giving gifts 2: traditions, colors and symbols

Art of giving gifts

Giving generously

This is the time of giving, forgiving and showing our love and gratitude to people, who are in our lives, to people who we know and to everybody who we don’t even know, but believe they need some Christmas mood lift.

The Latvian proverb goes like this: Dear God! Help us be so well that we could give others generously and not beg them kindly. Giving generously involves giving gracefully, with pleasure and beautifully.

Have golden heart

The ancient Latvian proverbs, folk songs and fairy tales were given verbally from one generation to the next one for many thousands of years, and they carry the Latvian moral and ethical code. They always emphasize that it is not a big deal to have much of golden money because much bigger deal is to have a golden heart. Well, we know how it is in reality: we need both, and yet, we need the latter one way more.

Traditions

Many centuries have passed by and life is not the same, obviously. The Latvian Christmas was initially mixed with the celebration of winter solstice, and we have so many superstitions and traditions regarding this time of the year! Thousands! Did you know that it is not a coincidence the Christmas or Advent wreath is round? This shape symbolizes the year and the human lifetime: the end meets the beginning, so our children pick it up where we left things.

Advent and Christmas wreath

The circular shape of the wreath also represents God, with no beginning and no end. Circle means completeness and abundance; and it is also related to the eternity. The evergreens in a Christmas wreath are used to share the message of the eternal life. The tips of a spruce tree branch remind a shape of a cross, which means this wreath is going to protect us from everything evil.

The Western world got its first wreath around 16th century, in Germany. Latvians were using wreath and circle shaped ornaments and decorations ever since they existed. The solstice is the time to call the sun back, and it needs to know the place where to return. Latvian wreaths and ornaments initially symbolized the eternity, the divine and the Sun. Whatever its meaning and whatever it means to us, the Christmas wreath is a beautiful thing. So are all the decorated gifts. Adding greens from the backyard adds so much freshness. We love the green color because it symbolizes the life and everything what is alive.

Be generous

It is important to be generous, not only at Christmas time, but always. We think giving a gift is a small gesture of kindness, but in fact, it’s much more. It is how we interact with the rest of the world. The more we give, the more we receive back. Small or large gifts, they all have to be wrapped up nicely because that shows we care about the person who is receiving our gift.

How to wrap up your gift

I kept my gifts in the traditional colors: heart red, evergreen green and added a bit of gold, silver and green-blue.

An idea wrapping up round objects: make it look like a vase with blooms of ornaments and pine cones.

Roll up a tube of a firm paper. It has to extend the length of the gift item. Tape one edge of paper to the back of the gift object. Wrap around the wrapping paper. Tape one edge on the back. Fold in the bottom nicely and secure with tape. Fold in the upper edges. If needed, secure with tape from the inside. Wrap ribbon or gift string around the object. Add a bow or leave loose ends. Fill the upper part with tissue paper or some other light paper in any suitable color. Add some branches, pine cones and some small ornaments at the top.

It looks like winter vase with Christmas flowers! This takes practically 5 minutes when we have some materials and greens.

How to wrap up flat or large gifts

Flat and square objects are easy to wrap.

Sets of gifts look nice and they also speak to recipient with enhanced beauty.

Traditional and very attractive colors warm up our hearts.

We start with the base and place the gift facedown. Tape with transparent tape or tape in a matching color. Use some ribbon or colorful strings; once again we start with placing the face side of the gift downwards. Add some bow or roll up the ends with the blade of scissors. They become curly and look very artistic. I like splitting up large surfaces, just as with painting, so I’d use everything what’s around. Gifts are wrapped for a short time, so we don’t need to worry about the durability of our construction. Its main purpose is to say “Merry Christmas, I love you!”

Santa was helping me, as well. I also listened to beautiful music, and gift wrapping is a huge pleasure for me, in fact, always has been!

Nostalgia for old times and ability to create gifts is a gift, too

Snow paintings, village and countryside

I’m probably getting old or older, but I am definitely having recently some nostalgia for these times which won’t ever return.

I believe, I am not taking too well the huge overload of commercials screaming at me from everywhere. Wherever I look, it’s just buy this and get this for free and hurry up because these discounts won’t last. Endlessly. It might be also because we never had a large family, and when I was young we were not that much about gifts.

My most memories are about preparations to celebrate Christmas or the New Year. This brings back some fantastic smells of pies and pastries in the oven, the fresh scent of fir-tree and aroma of candles. And real lights of real candles, so warm and so alive. We used to sing a lot, as well. These are sounds of old songs, partially forgotten, but I can still sing them in quite a few languages: my first foreign language was Russian, the next was German, I picked it up early and was able to use fluently by the time I was 12, the third was English quite a few years later. I am a native Latvian, and we have millions of folk songs, so many that every Latvian can call one his or her own. So, yes, we were following the very ancient Latvian traditions which are actually more ancient than English or German traditions since Latvian along with Lithuanian belong to the most ancient still alive languages and can be traced back to the ages of Sanskrit.

I can also remember how we were walking through the deep snow to the nearby forest to get the most beautiful tree. I was told I was only 4 years old. That’s amazing, but I can recall the walk, the snow and the forest. That’s how I’m painting my fir trees, they look exactly as those ones which I saw 52 years ago.

However, my intention was to share the idea about how kids and teens should rather create and make their gifts than try to buy something for money which they probably haven’t even earned yet. We were a lot about creativity, and that was all we were doing when not reading or working: sewing, drawing, painting, making toys, household items, and jewelry, things for our house and for our living space. There were so many ways to bring beauty into our home, and nobody was really worried about expenses because these self-made things did not cost anything or just a little in materials.

I maintained this ability to create everything from practically nothing all my life. I find it exciting, way more exciting than going to the store and buying stuff made in China. I find some of the decorations they sell absolutely tasteless. How much of attraction can actually plastic things have? Fake trees are still somehow OK, even artificial berries and fir and pine cones, but if you ask me, I’d say nothing compares to self-made decorations. However, I love glass balls and ornaments. We used to have some from 1912 and 1938. I asked my mom how that was possible to keep these ornaments not broken through all wars and troubles, and she said they were so small and so lovely, and they were associated with so many memories that everybody was taking an extremely good care about them.

So, finalizing the previously said, I was asking quite a few people:

Instead of buying your gift this holiday season, you could paint one, couldn’t you?

It takes only 3 hours which is such a tiny moment compared to the huge amount of positive energy residing in such a gift. It stays with one forever.

The other day we were painting some birds.

This is one more of small paintings I did for demonstration, it’s 12 x 16 in

The spectacular show of the fall: plenty to capture, plenty to paint

Art gallery and art studio of Inese Poga

Fall colors

Yellow, orange, rusty color and red: leaves say good-bye to their shelter tree and throw themselves into the swirling wind. It is the ancient show of the fall: the last waltz of leaves with the wind as they fall down, down, down …

While the fall is writing a summary about everything that was done during this year, the nature decorates outdoors with all its treasures: colorful leaves, acorns, rowan berries, chestnuts, wild mushrooms, rose hips, late fall blooms, vegetables in the garden and fruits on trees. This is the season of abundance, and this is the most genuine pleasure for our eyes and soul.

Soothing, relaxing and pleasurable

Well, the wind could slow down a bit, and showers could be not that freezing. However, they’re just doing their job whether we like it or not. What can be more soothing and relaxing than creating some paintings in the warm and welcoming fall colors? A cup of herbal tea perhaps, or flavor of chicken soup on the stove? These are useful things for nasty and chilly fall days, too, but they don’t replace the simple pleasure of creation.

Rewarding brushes

If there weren’t these fantastic colors out there, the pain of the summer disappearing behind a dark cloud would be unbearable! I hope everybody can enjoy some hot chicken broth or a cup of tea with homemade pastries at this chilly night in countries where it is getting cold. Other than that: we always have our brushes, pencils and paints. Let us keep painting and drawing, and creating as the fall makes us seek for a shelter indoors! Let us lighten up our inspiration so that we don’t have to blame the darkness and bad weather for our upset moods!

I have attached for illustration some of the autumn nature series paintings.