Tag: landscape

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Blue sky over summer meadows

Blue sky over summer meadows painting with art supplies

I’ve been working on many things, including painting, sketching, drawing, teaching art classes, but most of all, I had to deal with planting the garden. That left me not much time for posting anything anywhere. “Blue sky over summer meadows” painting was started in class. Therefore, it’s really not my personal choice of subject.

Blue sky over summer meadows studio view

This post is just simple and short update since I already skipped April. April was quite nice, but then May brought bad and extremely cold weather, and I had no motivation to paint a lot. I have finished sketches and watercolor paintings, but they’ll have to wait for another time. “Blue sky over summer meadows” is a fairly acceptable acrylic painting, except I struggled abnormally to get realistic pictures.

Blue sky over summer meadows on the easel

Every art class also takes preparation; the biggest problem is what to paint. Teaching art classes nowadays is extremely difficult. Most people watch tutorials and speed paintings, and that causes one to believe that any painting is done within an hour or less, even if one is a complete beginner. That also makes one believe that there’s no need to know anything about painting, particular medium or brushstroke.

Blue sky over summer meadows acrylic painting

Anyway, I tried my best getting some images, and I must admit none of them is like the actual painting. I mostly can get very yellow or very blue images and resulting green is also either very blue-green or very yellow-green. The device I have always hated most is the iPhone. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing I can currently use, and it is very upsetting and frustrating to never have a good and decent image.

Blue sky over summer meadows, summer landscape painting

Therefore, I like very much the black and white version which shows only values and none of the wrong colors.

Blue sky over summer meadows black and white version

Regardless of how the “Blue sky over summer meadows” painting looks online, it’s a very uplifting and memorable artwork, and it’s available. The size is 20 x 24” or 51 x 61 cm. I just saw some really bad paintings in size 5 x 5” selling on Etsy at $89. Really? Well, my art is priced very moderately at the moment, but I cannot include free shipping, that’s for the huge companies. So, somebody might like it and keep the memories of summer on their wall.

Blue sky over summer meadows framed landscape painting

I intend to completely conclude the green spring and summer paintings, and do instead close-up garden, flower, early fall, fences, mist images and some abstracted landscapes. I don’t have water in my backyard, but I have attractive old trees, even my own house looks very interesting since it has so much character. Painting and sketching plein-air is more rewarding and interesting which is what I am going to do.

Blue sky over summer meadows painting with art supplies

Art classes, schedule and registration

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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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Not sure how to start painting? I have some tips

How to start drawing, drawing by Inese Poga

When it comes to painting, I wish all potential students had: the ability to create value sketches and drawings of whatever subject they intend to paint. That doesn’t apply very directly to abstract artists, yet, even they would benefit from knowing what value, color temperature, contrast, negative space, etc. is. More or less realistic painting features even more components, including direction of light, shadows, aerial or atmospheric perspective, linear perspective, elements of composition and so forth. When creating art, we cannot forget about the quality of materials, artist’s ability to apply them, and there’s also a spiritual and mental factor to creation of art. Confidence, inspiration, focus, being able to observe and memorize visual information are all important aspects of creation when you start painting.

Start drawing, still life drawing from real items

We were using real items for our still life drawing, its size is 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm

When everything comes together: theoretical and practical skills, experience, perfect mood and great materials, we can speak of excellent artwork. Beginners will normally focus on the technical side of creation, and using brush or pencil with confidence and skill, is a huge part of success. However, if we want to see progress, we have to build a base. Value sketch or drawing are the best possible base building blocks which help you start painting. Controlling graphite pencil is much easier than swiftly flowing paint, therefore, one can learn very gradually. Pencil drawing includes all aspects of painting, plus pressure control, minus colors.

Why is it important to know how the shadows are formed? Why is it important to create negative space and apply different values? Because that’s how our drawing gets dimension, depth and interestingness. If you are very familiar with these aspects, you will paint easier and the result will be more satisfying. Painting uses exactly the same visual components. If you are like me who has excellent visual memory, you will create art without thinking about these aspects. If you are just starting out, you will have to learn how everyone of these aspects contributes to successful painting and brings your idea to life.

Still life drawing by artist Inese Poga
Drawing still life
For this still life, we used real items again, size 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm

To be honest, it’s by far not enough to trace the outline and then apply color to create a painting. Painting works when you know why something is there and why it is like that and no other way. Pencil drawing teaches all of the above and provides with good hand movement memory. It doesn’t matter actually what medium we use: if we master the principles and components, only the physical application of medium is different. As we know: the stronger the base, the better we can build upon it. Not sure where to start? Start with drawing.

Start drawing landscape
Landscape sketching
For this spring creek drawing, we used photo which we modified as necessary, size 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm

Drawing big and huge is even better than simply drawing. The aspects and components of painting I mentioned before need space to make them visible. We use most often large size paper: 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm for classes. I use the same size for my value sketches. We don’t have to finish the drawing as finalized artwork, but we can do that, as well. I bring most of my value sketches to condition when they can serve as a reference for watercolor or acrylic painting. Setting up real items or viewing real trees, grasses and plants and anything else allows creating easier. I teach drawing only in private classes because it requires very individual approach. The attached images are created from real things and photos. The weather is great in spring and summer, so start drawing outdoors and turn your sketches into completed artworks.

Good luck! Thanks for reading!

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Lifting morning fog, birches, classic landscape

Morning fog landscape

The lifting morning fog is the most recent addition to my art collection. Birch trees have always been a favorite for autumn paintings, especially, when I have a few students who want to learn painting fall colors. The classic involves an artwork which we started in 2018, and it got not finished until now. Half-done paintings sort of nag and urge me to not be lazy and just add a few layers of paint.

Every day is only worth what its accomplishments are. I believe every day is good when I can show something for it. Therefore, time I devote to each artwork feels as a well-spent day. While everything else is rather slow and inconclusive in our life at the moment, one aspect of it is always unchanging: the creative aspect and pleasure of creation.

Acrylic paints dry darker, that’s why we need to learn what color combination is suitable for background, middle and foreground. I’ve talked a lot before that applying color is not the same as building it up. Building up color creates volume and color shifts, as well as allows implementing color temperature.

Fog and white birch forest
Autumn colors and texture

Textured birch trees on bright forest ground takes its origin probably in 2015 if I am recalling this correctly. I apply textures on canvas which is painted in the base color, grey or brown usually. I cannot judge yet whether it will become a good painting or not, therefore, many layers of paint are required to make it work.

Distant fog, birch forest

Textured paintings are more problematic to photograph because the textures are raised and reflect more light. Color play is important part of textured paintings, but it comes to full expression seeing the art in person.

Golden birch

Here is the Rusty gold of autumn birch: it’s the same painting, compare with the image below; but pictures show completely different background colors.  Unfortunately, neither one is absolutely true. The actual painting isn’t yellow, and the background isn’t bright blue, but the options are either to publish or not, and I would most often choose to publish. Rusty gold of autumn birch painting is 24 x 20 in or 61 x 51 cm.

Fog and golden birch

I started to paint the lifting morning fog at the beginning of August. I had a very diligent student who attended private classes, and she was interested in fine detail of acrylic painting, layering colors and achieving a certain grade of realism. Nobody without experience can just jump in such art right away with the first brushstrokes. We managed, but such art takes much longer than a few hours. In my case, it’s rather a few weeks.

Morning fog landscape
Lifting morning fog

The lifting morning fog painting is created on my favorite size canvas: 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm. I love this size for both, watercolor and acrylic.

Lifting morning fog landscape

Pictures were taken with iPhone, and that sometimes adds way too much contrast and changes the color temperature. Colors usually on pictures are either stronger or weaker, but not my actual colors. My experience is that grey becomes strong blue and that disturbs color balance of my artwork. I’m using a grey-bluish shade which is carefully crafted, unfortunately, it looks very blue on the images.

I hope you like the new additions to my art collection, and some will also be put up for sale soon. Currently, there are quite a lot of acrylic paintings, and I update the sale pages quite frequently. Stay in touch and all the best enjoying the October colors!

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Art collections by Inese Poga

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The blooming time, transition time

Blooming wildflower fields, summer landscape

Blooming meadows series

Flower fields, acrylic painting

It feels like summer

Like every year, we get from winter into summer heat in Ontario. I’ve noticed there’s nothing in the middle quite often. It was cold even until the first weeks of May, and then suddenly, we got high heat. That means plants and flowers bloom over in a few days, and everything at once. It is difficult not to take part in all breathtaking blooming and return to life of nature, therefore, I am feeling as if in summer in my art already. The old story: creation must be done in advance of any seasons, celebrations and festivities.

Summer landscape painting, daisy painting

Not only for shows

It’s not so that I am creating only complex art for competing in shows and simple art for teaching art classes. One of the other categories would be plainly decorative art, and we are seeing lots of it recently. Just some splash of color, some shapes or basic subject on white or abstract background. Nothing extreme, nothing mysterious or hiding deep meanings, just art for covering wall space and keeping the creative hand sensitive. This is the routine art which doesn’t reach ceiling of mastery and doesn’t strongly affect our mind or soul. Art that is often described as “lovely, nice, cute”. These are, besides, the worst compliments when it comes to creativity and creation. They say practically nothing, they are empty words. They leave one unaffected like water drop rolling down a leaf leaving no trace as it evaporates.

Summer house, acrylic painting
Part of painting
Summer house, acrylic painting

Summer cottage

Technical side versus emotional aspect in painting

t’s understandable that with overload of images the internet viewer is attacked with in a split second, nothing gets more than a quick glance. Rarely, somebody will notice elegance of lines, flowing or strong brushstrokes, shifts of warm color into cool shades, perspective, mood, the way the subject reveals itself, I mean, all things which exceed just purely technical approach of painting. Technical approach dominates because lots of art on the internet is done by beginners and emotional level is left out when the main focus goes to the technical side of using art supplies and creating the subject.

Wildflower meadow, acrylic painting
Wildflower meadow, acrylic painting

Mastery in art

The most adorable category is art as discovery, art as secret, art as mystery and soul touching art. Not every artwork becomes a masterwork, far from that. Even well-known artists have uneven level of mastery in their works, and that is just a very human feature. Nobody can be at the top of their creative juices and riding the wave of inspiration 24/7. Any human has ups and downs, divine moments and dark alleys where they get lost. It is a good personal goal to have more of good art which has lasting effect on the viewer. Every artist tries to achieve that, and in the best artworks, mastery comes to expression.

Show continues

Blooming wildflower fields, summer landscape

The virtual art show continues, and since the lead post was helping a little, but I need to add new art, I am including in this post variety of available images, the brand-new blooming meadows paintings and some other art. I know how nobody wants to see more sales and so on, but I simply need to turn visitors’ attention to the fact that these are show artworks and they are currently sold at their best prices. I will probably change the content after a while, but for now, please enjoy, and you might possibly like to purchase some art.

Wildflower painting

Original acrylic paintings:  See what’s added

Original watercolor paintings: Amazing watercolor art

I am looking forward to summer, which could be possibly better than the previous one. Thanks for reading!

Just like always, here’s link to my art collections and available art prints:

Art collections by Inese Poga