Tag: Ajax Ontario

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Art studio highlights of 2022

Inese's Art Studio

My art studio experienced numerous changes in 2022. First of all: the move which started with packing already in February. By the middle of March, I started adapting and adjusting the available space for art studio needs. By any means, it wasn’t easy. It’s needless to say that neither painting, nor art classes couldn’t start until May, I believe. If you have ever packed up and then unpacked a large art studio with numerous artworks and countless tools, brushes, paint tubes and paint sets, papers of all kinds and so forth, you probably know that it is a very complex undertaking.

Trillium forest, original art
Art studio, spring painting by artist Inese Poga

I paint spring during winter months, and 2022 was no exception. It is very inspiring and self-explanatory for me to go with the change of seasons, except, I am trying to be always ahead. The adjusted and new spring paintings were published in February. Trillium blooms are fantastic subject, and white color on its own makes painting alive.

Art studio, spring creek
Art studio, spring creek

The first painting I painted in the new studio was a fairly large early spring landscape (above) with lots of trees. I do love trees, I watch them, observe and to me they feel like live beings. I frequently use textures on canvas for more impact and strong statement. The horizontal Apple tree landscape was also finished soon.

Spring painting in acrylic

I moved to garden and abstracted landscape paintings afterwards. That was done because of art classes and since every class needs a demo, I bring to finished stage some of them. That is how Colors of garden and Colors of summer came to life.

Landscape, garden painting, home
Flower fields, acrylic painting, home

Summer flew by swiftly, working in the garden and giving numerous private classes in drawing. Teaching drawing isn’t easy also since regardless of what I explain and how much I show, it is the student who moves their hand with pencil. I haven’t taken photos of all drawings and sketches, but there were numerous, and we do large drawings in order to reveal all important aspects.

Art studio, art classes images

I took new photos of previous paintings, and some have never been published before. I find that only featured image on WordPress is sharp and correct while the images contained within the post look somewhat off. Anyway, numerous pictures were taken and lots of hours spent on making them look like the real painting.

Hay bales, autumn fields

Then came preparations for my 5-week long solo art show at Ajax Community Centre. Any show means work and feeling not good sort of interfered with that. Anyway, some art required touch-up and more layers of protective medium and some art was painted specifically for the fall show. Two times this year, my step-by-step demonstrations ran in the magazine which is devoted to art in the Greater Toronto Area. My art studio is doing fine, but not enough.

Art studio, watercolor paintings
Birch road, huge watercolor painting

This year was complicated in many regards. It’s impossible to say whether good or bad. I still need to do better next year. While I have created many new paintings in acrylic watercolor, ink and graphite, I will try to incorporate myself more into the local community, gain more attention and be more present on the art scene. My art studio is set up now, and everything has found its place. Well, all it takes is more work, more motivation and simply – more luck and opportunity.

Snowman, watercolor painting

Wishing everybody a successful and pleasant New Year! I hope it won’t disappoint.

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Bright and passionate colors of poinsettia

Bright colors of red poinsettia painting

Bright colors for dark days

When days turn grey and light diminishes to almost none, we turn to warmth and strong colors which brighten up not only our walls, but also mood. I’ve always loved strong and clean colors. I want color sometimes to be the main statement. It is infrequently that color is all one will notice, but there’s so much more in a vibrant flower painting.

Red poinsettia colors
Colors of poinsettia

Poinsettia, favorite winter bloom

Poinsettias are not only my favorite for this dreary and dark period which includes end of November and almost all of December. I grow a few of them, and poinsettias survive quite well even the heat of July. My model plants are still alive. Some years they have more blooms, some – less.

Bright colors of red poinsettia
Red colors of poinsettia

Composition and flow of lines

I try to keep my lines flowing and, thus, recreate the flawless perfection of the natural plant. It is easy to draw poinsettias, not always that easy to capture the balance between the shape of leaves and petals and the vibrant color. Color transitions are soft, yet, difficult to photograph. It always surprises me how impossible it is to take photos of red on painting. In my opinion, red is the most difficult color to capture on a photo.

Bright colors of red poinsettia painting
Horizontal fragment of poinsettia

Recurrent theme

Poinsettias are one of flowers I have painted numerous times. Sometimes, that’s due to art classes since almost everybody would love to have such painting. Sometimes, when the poinsettia plant is around, I simply cannot resist painting it. The most recent painting is done with watercolor on Saunders-Waterford archival grade cotton paper. It isn’t my most favorite paper since it’s greyish and rather too absorbing, but I had started this painting a year ago, and so I just added to it and I assume it’s done.

Red poinsettia painting in watercolor, art for sale

Time to restart promotions

Or rather, it is too late already. I don’t take anything too close to my heart. Therefore, I get through bad times and through good times unscathed. Better or worse, but somehow. The main motivation for me is the personal challenge. That means, to envision something in my own way and see how I can put it on a blank sheet of paper or white canvas. I hope you noticed not only color, but also everything else which makes art – art. This poinsettia painting will be soon available as an art print also.

I hope the next post won’t take that long. Meanwhile, all the best to you and enjoy!

Paint your own: Private art lessons

Have a look at my art prints and greeting cards at Fine Art America:

Art collections by Inese Poga

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Pencil drawings and sketches, new and updated

Pencil drawing, still life

Pencil drawings and sketches

It happened so that I gave numerous drawing classes this season. People love pencil drawing and sketches, and they are excited to learn how to create such art or a value drawing for other art, like for a watercolor and acrylic painting. Therefore, I have many drawings now. I always ask my students to also use big size paper for their creations. We most often use 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm paper.

pencil drawing, summer in the country
pencil drawing, perspective
Pencil drawing, creek

Using reference image or setting up still life

I personally prefer real items in front of classroom for my pencil drawings and sketches. During summer and fall, it’s extremely easy to find something suitable. We used real items for still life, but perspective pencil drawings and sketches are simply composed and constructed from imagination. I haven’t got images yet of other drawings with personal items, shoes, jeans jackets and figures. We gradually increased complexity and went from still life and perspective drawing to pencil drawings and sketches of figures. That took about 30 private art classes. Large size paper makes a lot of sense and allows creating the best compositions and value transitions.

Still life drawing
Pencil drawing, still life
Drawing pansies and lunch items
pencil drawing, pansies and vegetables

Tutorial won’t do that

Tutorials usually teach something one: style or technique of a particular artist, one subject or one feature of it, and that doesn’t always mean your tutorial will include explanation or clear understanding why to choose exactly this one style, feature or part of subject. Demonstrations are frequently done on small sheets of paper. I’ve mentioned this numerous times before: if you can draw, you can draw anything without any limitations. You won’t need photos, printouts, grids and similar things. If you can draw, you just observe, pay attention and allow pencil to do its job. Which I always do! I hope you love seeing these drawings and sketches! I have to post many at a time because there are way too many.

Private art lessons

Art collections by Inese Poga

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The many functions of art

Functions of art, flower painting, spring flowers

Most often, when somebody visits artist’s website or blog, they are simply curious what the artist has come up with. People look for something which would potentially suit their space, and the art students seek for inspiration and advice. Art has many more functions, though, and they depend also on who you are. If you are a creator and love to try painting or drawing, art is a full-scale adventure for you. And me. In my mind, time is not spent usefully when I haven’t painted anything for a while. The creativity-satisfying and mind-moving functions of art shouldn’t be underestimated.

Functions of art
Functions of art

The moment when a painting is signed and done, comes with feeling of achievement. This is a moment of complete satisfaction. We all set our own goals with any task, so this moment shows that I can whatever I wanted to achieve. I don’t stop working until every smallest brushstroke is where it must be, that’s according to me. Therefore, my works take quite a while from the idea to its implementation.

Spring flowers and autumn leaves
Functions of art

The ties with reality are interesting nowadays. On one side, we have this immense internet surfing space and it transitions more and more into unreality. Digital and virtual world is just that – the things which exist only where there’s internet. On the other hand, our life happens based on real terms, read conditions and in an actual environment. The difference between unreal and real can cause somebody true depression and dissatisfaction with life. I personally prefer the tangible reality which won’t go away if I accidentally click on a wrong keyboard key.

Functions of art
Functions of art

That explains why I paint what I paint. The subject doesn’t exclude fantasy and impossible landscapes, still life settings or colors. That is one more function of handmade art: to take you anywhere you’d like to be. I would love to skip winter altogether. Since I cannot sleep it away, I still need to do something. Anything. It would be so pleasant to have plus 13 Celsius tomorrow instead of minus. The best functions of art are the ability to transfer one with all senses into a pleasurable space and provide with the feeling of being there.

Spring flowers
Functions of art

As always, I’m not very happy with the internet display of art on different devices and phone. Every single painting deserves to serve as the cover image, every one of them. Unfortunately, that’s not possible. The full-size image, although, distant out in the internet space, still gives one that feeling of closeness to the source. So, I’ve spent couple of weeks taking horizontal pictures. For example, when my painting is vertical, I cannot use it as a cover image. If my painting is horizontal, it looks small or even tiny when viewing images on the phone. Some photos are very good, some just satisfactory, but I wish for internet space where they’d be all visible in large format, full-width, full size and have colors that match the original.

Functions of art

That remains to be seen and tried again and again. I have my hopes up for the new Twenty twenty-two WordPress theme. Hopefully, it will be what it promises, both, regarding size and flexibility. Until switch, I will just edit what I have. Other than that, we are in extremely deep snow in Ontario. We were completely cut off of everything yesterday, but it’s sunny today. Thanks for reading if you did and wishing you, too, more sunny days!

Shop original acrylic paintings

Art classes, schedule and registration

Art collections by Inese Poga

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Fall landscape, dazzling colors

Fall landscape, fall trees, acrylic painting

Fall landscape is especially attractive painting subject when days shrink and it gets pitch dark already around 5 pm. The added bonus is bright color palette and the options of mixing colors are endless.

I’ve been painting away, but since the daylight is sparse and ends soon, the hours I can work on a painting are short, too. If you have ever done acrylic or oil painting, you probably know how wet paint is reflected in artificial light. To the extent that it becomes impossible to paint.

If you favor walks in the nature and you are just like I am – always enjoying the play of colors in the sunlight or cloud shapes when it’s rainy and overcast, – you will probably like this painting with its vivid colors and the nature-related subject. The fall landscape is something I paint always around this time, but I am going to focus more on fragments of landscape in the future, unless it is a huge canvas.

Fall landscape
fall landscape
Left side and right side detail of fall colors and forest road

It took very many layers of paint and going over and over some areas because it’s no secret acrylic paint is more and more lacking quality and saturation with pigment.

Fall landscape is a great subject for reflecting our love to color. To facilitate brightness and strong tones, I let the painting dry every night and return to it when the daylight is acceptable. Therefore, the process extends over a few weeks, but I am fine with it now. It already received lots of great feedback. The size is again 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm. I started this painted for the class, but certainly, getting it done took many more hours.

Fall landscape
Fall landscape

My paintings are very color-sensitive. While the picture will show only what camera with automated settings can capture, the actual painting always has more of everything, but definitely great balance between dark and light, as well as cold and warm. These particular pictures are more on the warmer side. Just like always, I took many of them and chose to publish the ones which are the closest to the original.

Other acrylic paintings, page will be updated: Shop original acrylic paintings

Learn everything the best way: Private art lessons

Currently available art prints and other art products: Art collections by Inese Poga