Inese's blog

May 7, 2018October 17, 2024

How to use manually created art as a memory boost

How to use manually created art as memory boost

How to use sketching and drawing to improve our brain fitness

Manually created sketches and drawings can really help. I will try to explain how and why we should use this approach to improve the brain fitness and cognitive abilities.

Manual sketching, drawing or painting when done from real scenes and subjects use our brain efficiently, create new neurons and signal pathways since these activities are challenging, interesting, new every time, rewarding and pleasurable. When done in a group, it also gives one chance to communicate, learn new skills and achieve real meditative state of mind which in turn relaxes and calms.

I am somebody who always reminds: use your brain, keep it flexible, well-functioning and young. Therefore, I am always inviting people to join our drawing, sketching and pen and watercolor classes. There is nothing to lose, plenty to gain.

Artificial intelligence and human brain capacity

The artificial intelligence progresses very fast. It feels there is some new gadget, device or app every day. Artificial intelligence is supposed to make our life easier and more comfortable. We are required to memorize less, to decide less, to search our personal brain storage less because everything is on the internet. We do not have any need to remember or write down things that are important, and we are actually losing the specific ability and muscle groups to use our hand for manual writing or drawing. Fine and extremely accurate movements still matter, so does our ability to perform them. However, the performance of our brain is the factor that matters most.

What happens to our own intelligence?

As somebody who works with people and teaches, I can see that the human intelligence suffers actually a lot. Just in the last 5 years while everybody has been actively using mobile devices, I have noticed significant decrease in attention span, focusing ability, memory and ability to make decisions. All these features are significant brain and cognitive function markers. It feels that AI has a huge boost, but the human intelligence cannot keep up with it. People are getting forgetful, losing focus and their decision-making skills.

Manual drawing and sketching as prevention of memory loss

One of things we still can do, do easily and everywhere is drawing and painting manually by using our own visual perception. We should try no to depend on any devices while engaging in this activity. That is recognized as one of the best ways of keeping our brain sharp and flexible and cognitive function well performing.

Potential benefits

One to two times a week drawing outdoors is beneficial in all possible ways. Who knows that better than me? Time flies and I have created something to show for while being outside and enjoying nature. Small backyard birds are also an excellent subject: lovely, friendly and always around. It might be not that easy to always catch the right view of a bird, but still, – nobody is going to judge. If it comes out great, share it, if it requires more practicing, keep it as a learning experience. And enjoy your memory boost!

It is not that everybody is going to get involved in serious and time-consuming research or high difficulty grade studies which certainly are memory boost, brain flexibility and power. Language learning is a fantastic way of making brain younger again, but it is a very lengthy process before one can really see good results. I know that, too, because I speak at a native level 4 languages. Each one requires a lot of additional work and studies. That is a life-long process.

Overcoming fear of getting involved with a new activity

Much faster and simpler, as well as much easier memory boost is drawing and sketching. Some people start keeping an art journal if they prefer small forms, and that is such an adventure on its own. That, too, will be your memory boost.

Some people worry that they need to do a lot of preparation work before they engage in either drawing or sketching. That is not true. One has to start somewhere, and that is an excellent starting point – from zero. It means actually that there is a whole lot to explore, find out and enjoy. The only thing one should be not hoping for is to become a master within a few hours or days. Years might sound just about right, but who says one has to be a master or professional in order to draw, sketch and paint? I know fellow bloggers who do it for their own pleasure or to have good time.

Some of my pen and watercolor paintings that deal with perspective lines and involve man-made structures

Buildings make a superb subject!

We start with drawing, and I intend to publish guiding materials for drawing and sketching.

Here: making the drawing more visible with washes

This pen and watercolor painting is ready!

The pencil helplines are erased, but using them makes creation of black pen drawing easy.

More watercolor washes, here and there, and the painting is ready

My advice is: just do it! Along with creating art, it will serve as memory boost. After a while, you might have a new attitude towards many things, as well as see how well this is working for you. Good luck!

Link to drawing: Engage in drawing and watercolor

Link to art classes: Application for art classes

May 2, 2018October 17, 2024

Start sketching, drawing and painting

How to bring art in your life: start sketching and drawing

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/

March 26, 2018October 18, 2024

The power of line: how to create and use a drawing

The power of line

The power of line is huge. Simple sketches in pencil or pen look impressive and artistically interesting. We are born with the ability to draw, but we just lose it as we grow up and get older. In order to simply look at something and draw it, one must practice. It will not happen right away, it will not happen on its own. One also needs to know what they have to look for and what they need to notice.

Perfection or discovery

Cravings for perfection can be irresistible, therefore, many people take credits for a drawing which they have created by tracing a photo or reproducing it on a larger scale using grid, display on a wall. Some artists edit the photo to obtain parts of printer paper size, so that it is possible to put them together in a line drawing. The question is: is that really a drawing or a copy of photography? To me, the latter is true. I do assume anything a drawing when we look at our subject and then manually draw it on paper.

Our eyes get it right

Is drawing difficult? In fact, it isn’t, but it takes time and practice, and anything which is somewhat time-consuming isn’t loved much these days. The general opinion is usually that camera gets our subject right and we might not get the right proportions when drawing. That is true to some extent only. If the distance between camera and subject is small, or the distance within the view is huge, camera will produce wrong proportions.

How camera distorts image

Camera draws closer the front part of the view or subject. It widens the middle portion and creates much more distant background part. This is very easy to notice in case of water reflections or shadows. When artist follows a photo closely, not the actual view in nature, the reflections will be stretched out for miles which would never be the case with reflection in nature.

Don’t take a picture

Many instructions start with: take a picture. I would like to say: don’t do that if you ever want to learn drawing. We have to trust our eyes and ability to recreate the same proportion, edge and line relationship and color transitions without additional tools. However, to get to the level when one can do the so-called “blind drawing” (you do not persistently look at paper or canvas but rather at your subject), you have to practice. That means making decisions and allowing the eye-brain signals to be transmitted to our hand with pencil or brush.

We can do it

That also means trusting ourselves more than a camera or grid. It also takes practicing daily or weekly and, at the end, this activity improves the brain functionality, memory and flexibility to an incredibly high level. When we sometimes look at a drawing, it seems it didn’t take time or efforts. It is due to the fact, that good art shouldn’t exhibit artistic struggles and technical difficulties, but mood and atmosphere of the painted subject. When we get past these struggles, the real creation takes place.

The principles and methods of drawing

There is an interesting thing: people, who cannot draw anything yet, believe they have to practice drawing a particular subject: portrait, landscape, still life or flower. That is definitely not true because once you can draw, you can draw absolutely anything. The principles and methods are actually the same regardless of what we draw. You cannot skip understanding values, shadows, highlights, proportions, relationships, contrast, perspective and negative parts. That is what makes drawing a drawing and eventually painting a painting.

Functions of drawing

Drawing has very different functions in the creative process. If it is an independent work of art, it will go through many stages until it contains all the above mentioned elements. If it is a sketch for use later, we will include only the most important lines. If it is a value sketch for painting, we will pay special attention to values, contrast and shadows. If it is an outline drawing for watercolor, we will have only slightly visible lines.

The rural house watercolor is a large and attractive painting in spring colors

Not what you draw, but how you do it

Therefore, it is not that important what you draw, but how you do it. Trust the power of line. It is rewarding. Sketches must help you in the painting process later, there is no need to overwork them and prepare for framing. Technique matters, but doesn’t mean it is the most important part of drawing.

Get rid of eraser

How to get rid of eraser? If your intention is to draw, do it. Erasing everything and starting over for numerous times isn’t helpful. You simply have to forget the eraser at home, so that you do not have it with you. When something does not come out correct, start from scratch, not from adjusted lines. Use focusing ability instead of eraser.

Watercolor painting, spring, countryside

Early spring, rural hills watercolor, size of this painting is 24 x 18 in or 61 x 45 cm.

Go reasonably large

Draw reasonably large subjects. Tiny things cannot show any shadows, values or important details. Drawing large isn’t more difficult, it is just a strange assumption and belief that handling a bigger subject is more complex. If the drawing is for creation of painting, large is much better. Unless you want to use magnifying glass, avoid details which are hardly visible because they don’t get noticed anyway. Keep details under control.

Manual drawing for artistic freedom

Drawing is a wonderful thing. It allows one not to use any additional devices. You won’t even need a camera if you have learned capturing the most important features of the subject. It also gives one a complete artistic freedom: skip whatever part does not improve your scene or subject or add whatever it seems to be missing. There are no restrictions. It is visible right away whether one was drawing from reality or they are modestly describing their perfected copy of a photo as a sketch from nature.

Sketch in actual size

I create pencil sketches in the actual size of painting: this time it was 20 x 24 inches or 61 x 51 cm. This drawing serves as a reference. Colors are all in my head and everything else what I need is in the sketch. I transfer it onto watercolor paper and then apply washes which get defined with every layer.

I take numerous pictures: with iPhone and with camera using different settings. However, I do not ever get the colors which are in the actual painting. Therefore, I’m trying to also take some pictures with background by placing something around the painting.

To learn sketching and drawing, please apply for April classes: Art classes

March 8, 2018October 18, 2024

Watercolor: light, shadow and direction of light

Light and shadow in painting

What is the direction of light in an artwork? Do you pay attention to it when you are drawing and painting? What are shadows in a drawing or painting? Do you know how they relate to the source of light? These are simple things, but pretending they do not exist or forgetting about them makes your drawing and painting flat and unconvincing.

Direction of light

For me personally, light must come from the left or from the left and from behind. That is when values and shadows in my paintings work well, and I intentionally and sometimes subconsciously would choose only such views and subjects. Why? When you know where the shadow falls and how to create it, you can use memory and imagination for that. If you struggle with shadows, most likely they are not cast from the correct side.

Creating art from photo

If you are creating your drawings or paintings from photos, you should know that there is no clear source of light or it comes from the right side very frequently. The direction of light can be also hard to detect on a photo. If your brain does not feel the same way about the source of light as it is on the photo, you will be struggling with every shadow and every detail you include in your composition.

Watercolor, perspective, painting by Inese Poga

Adjust the subject, not your perception

Generally, light and shadow is an important feature of any drawing and painting. Experienced artists use it automatically and they create set-ups or paint views where the light direction matches their visual perception. If you are just starting out, pay attention to the point where light comes from, its source. Outdoors, it is often the sunlight, but we do not normally paint the sun, we just indicate this area with color.

Sketch and quick watercolor for shadow testing

I usually create a rough drawing to use as a reference.

Watercolor painting,, perspective and buildings

Watercolor and sketch are the easiest ways to test your perception of light and its representation in an artwork. It is much faster than doing the same in pastel, acrylic or oil, especially if you are a beginner and you have to learn everything: composition, values, contrast, perspective and color mixing, as well as brush stroke. Adding visible areas of different values helps. Most people, who draw and paint frequently, assume it an organically critical and absolutely necessary aspect of painting.

Spring walks in the village, is a large painting, 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm, and so was its sketch, the other is Spring barn, also 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm

Black ink pen for sketching out your subject.

Spring colors, cheerful and lovely, yet simple

In order to check your values, you can turn paing image into black and white.

All of these paintings make use of perspective: linear and atmospheric. Therefore, direction of light becomes very important.

Art classes: Art classes

Enjoy!

January 31, 2018October 17, 2024

How to choose what to paint and barn painting

Choosing painting subject

Art instruction and art classes will definitely help because the painting subject is everything or almost everything. Why it is so difficult to choose what to paint? That sometimes takes, hours, days and weeks, even months. I know how some potential artists would procrastinate for long time just because they cannot stop at a particular painting subject, make a decision and start painting. Choosing your painting subject is crucial to get started at all. I am saying: use whatever you have around and take the first photo which makes sense.

Suitable features

When we go through images or sort our memory and imagination, we find the potential painting subject too difficult, too complex or too simple. There is nothing to paint. Nice colors, but bad view, no foreground or no background, boring or too detailed. These and similar thoughts might rush through your head. One of the worst ways to help you choosing what to draw or paint today is just to check out what others do or have done today.

Scrolling through online images

Scrolling through online or your own images can consume one completely. There goes your day and there go the best hours for painting. Internet images will suck you in; you will end up watching lots of YouTube videos which you neither wanted to watch, nor needed. You will look at endless Google images. That is a big distraction which we call inspiration. I will just get some inspiration on this painting subject, you say and nothing gets done.

Just do it

Whether that is a photo or real item, just get started. Just do it: the first line, the first brush stroke. Who cares? You can change colors. You can add or remove the background. You can disregard details or add them to your pleasing. Anything which is related to your computer or phone is here to distract you. Therefore, the only way to paint is to start painting.

Discipline

No wonder we wake up 4 hours later and we have not done one single line of a sketch, drawing or underpainting. I sometimes think people are way better off going to a class because that will remove all troubles. There will be a prepared image, subject or concept and you just go with it. That image will suit your intentions well.

If class is not an option

Assuming, you are alone and you do not have intention attending classes at the moment. Get a picture, good, perfect or not that great: it does not really matter. The only thing that matters is to get started. Once we are over the starting point, we will keep working. Just take the pencil or pen and start drawing. Take the brush and start brushing. The first step is what matters. After that point you will be fine because the inner “you” will not allow taking a break until you are done.

For inspiration, see the progress of recent barn and spring watercolor

Watercolor techniques barn painting — Barns and buildings: great painting subject

Watercolor painting, painting steps — Barns and buildings: great painting subject

We start with sketch, then do very light line drawing, apply first washes, add more or less color, define more and that’s pretty much it. Total time: about 5 hours. I did not like how the first version looked pale (not in photo, but in reality) the next morning, so i added stronger background and more layers to buildings and front.

That’s how it looks, watercolor on Saunders-Waterford paper, 22 x 16 inches, or 56 x 41 cm.

Art classes

Good luck!

Inese’s blog

How to use manually created art as a memory boost

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Start sketching, drawing and painting

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The power of line: how to create and use a drawing

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Watercolor: light, shadow and direction of light

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How to choose what to paint and barn painting

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