Painting blooming grasses and trees

Spring landscape painting with blooming grasses and trees

This post about painting blooming grasses and trees has been waiting to be published for more than a month. I love painting, taking it slowly, going over layers. I definitely love it when I see something emerging from the blocked in color spots and fairly abstract shapes. It’s interesting to see where the painting takes me. I have little motivation for posting my art and showing it off on the internet.

The painting process is beautiful, it’s so rewarding, calming and uplifting. It’s also therapeutic and soothing, very beneficial to our brain flexibility and memory. Why do I believe that painting attractive landscapes, floral and still life paintings can cure us from daily troubles and upset moods? I have seen that happening thousands of times. AI painting can get you many likes, but the only type of art which benefits our brain is the one we create from scratch.

This particular painting was started in March 2024. I took it to some stage of completeness, but it wasn’t finished for the most part. The previous year was a bad one, therefore, I hardly did anything apart from reading in bed. I picked it up this February from where I had left it. There is actually nothing wrong with letting a painting or drawing rest. The only risk is we might not ne interested in it after a year.

Since I believed it had potential, I kept working. A beautiful landscape emerged, and it was sparkling with light. I doubt I’ve gotten this all on photos. I can get the picture yellow, blue or green, but not what the actual painting is. It still looks great. The size of this painting is 24 x 18” or 61 x 46 cm. The composition works well for this size and trees shadow the juicy front grasses.

Enjoy the mood of this painting while it’s still grey outside!

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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.

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.

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

Show time

Show time Hay bales, large acrylic painting, nature painting

It’s been a while, and summer just flew by. My art show was delayed for 2 years by pandemic, and now the show is finally coming up, and it will open on September 14. I have submitted the paperwork and still need to add wire on the back of quite a few paintings. I will mostly present large size art at this particular show and I hope it will look as impressive and memorable as the original art which has been created in the span of 5 years. It’s not that all art was created some years ago, but a few paintings are from 2018 and 2020 and so forth. I’m showing in total 25 artworks. I hope the wall space allows for that.

I decided to add a few green paintings, as well. Farewell to summer.

Country barn in summer meadow, 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm

Garden fence, 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm

Summer flower fields, abstract acrylic painting, 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm

Ajax Community Centre, East wing offers better light than the previous exhibition space at Ajax Town Hall. This show is happening in cooperation with PineRidge Arts Council. I am a member of this artist association, it’s one of the few which do a lot for an artist and charge a very moderate membership fee. They have friendly staff, and especially I would like to mention Mary Cook who takes care of the web presentation.

I have taken numerous new pictures. I won’t repeat myself, but iPhone just really destroys my painting images with extreme contrast, with absolutely wrong colors and it’s unable to distinct between shades of white and grey. Grey tends to look black and all white is just white without any shades of it. To be honest, everybody who’s seen my art only on the internet, hasn’t seen it all. That’s the disadvantage of presenting images as opposed to actual artworks. Anyway, it’s the only chance for me to go global and so be it.

As you know, on this website all horizontal artworks look smaller and all vertical ones much larger. Well, I’m adding sizes, but, unfortunately, they don’t mean much if you’re viewing this blog post on your phone. I hope you will check the studio sales pages later in the week because there will be new special offers. All art I’m displaying on my blog is original art, meaning, I am selling just the only true artwork as it’s created.

Birch valley, 32 x 26 in or 81 x 66 cm

…. and Hay bales, autumn fields, 28 x 22 in or 71 x 56 cm

Many of my paintings are created on textured backgrounds. People often ask me about palette knife, and, no, I’m not using it, but I’m creating textures on canvas before I start painting the actual shapes of trees and other elements.

Well, maybe some of you will stop at Ajax, Ontario in the future when traveling to Toronto and, thus, see how my art looks in reality. Meanwhile, buy art from my art studio also because numerous paintings won’t get into the show display. Certainly, attend the live show if you are in the Greater Toronto Area. It is the show time finally!

My summer was somewhat painful and I was off for about 6 weeks. I’m not one of people who snap pictures at emergency rooms and treatment clinics, so I had nothing much I was willing to share until I recently started feeling a bit better. Just in time, I’d say because I have only 1 week to finalize all art which goes into the art show.

All the best and have a good, colorful September!

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Works and artworks

Artworks, lifting fog

It’s time to feature a few summer-related artworks, something which widens our space and takes us to places which might or might not exist. The power of imagination! I use imagination to a great extent since life has become somewhat subdued in the post-COVID era. Back to summer artworks.

I have to take new pictures of paintings which were created years ago, as well as quite recently. I mentioned in previous posts: an artwork for a show and an artwork for demonstration at art class simply cannot be the same. As art teacher, I try to adjust the subject to the skill level of students. Therefore, such paintings are more abstract. One example from the recent classes: bright summer landscape which is quite abstract, but uses strong colors.

While I was using iPhone 6, all my pictures were dark. With iPhone 8, then iPhone 10 Pro Max, all my pictures had yellow and purple overcast, the colors in paintings were as if yellowed out. With iPhone 13 Pro Max, I have sometimes extreme contrast, but there’s more ability to adjust the distorted perspective and color. However, paintings have extra bright blue-green, too strong blue, or all-over yellow-green and too much purple. Basically, any edits are global. I’ve never gotten my painting images right, practically never.

So, I have to take new pictures replacing all images between 2010 and 2018. They simply have no saturation, no contrast and make no sense either. One might ask: why to bother? Well, although few people ever read entire posts or look at all images, online images are often the only way they will see what I have painted. Since I have spent numerous hours cataloging my artworks, I decided to feature quite a few artworks from different years.

In Ontario where I live, summer is not that long. I rush to do gardening, painting, teaching while I have to catch up on regular chores also. Lots of things are still in boxes and many tasks await their completion. However, summer is for taking a break, too. Therefore, I won’t apologize for not posting very frequently, but I hope you love and purchase some art and love my artworks added to this post.

Have a great, green and blue, enjoyable summer!

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A little bit of nostalgic beauty: snow and winter paintings

Snow and winter paintings

Snow and winter paintings are a great way to start painting since we can interpret the landscape or view in many ways. We can apply warm or cool glow to the snow and winter paintings, we can use shadows, different colors for sky and use distance or abstract background. We can stick to a photo or do what I’m doing: implement some visual ideas from memory or just look through the window and paint what is there. Out of my studio window, there’s plenty: all kinds of trees, buildings and so forth, including spruce, firs, pine and there’s a big sky, too. Quite enough for my snow and winter paintings.

Ontario weather takes care of the rest. Here and there, snow will be deep and bright white, capping every single branch and putting a warming snow scarf on every surface. It will have shadows in clear weather and it will show the branch shapes which puncture the clouds and sky. Altogether: it’s almost a finished landscape view, choose whatever angle suits better. Therefore, and because many of snow and winter paintings take origin as demos, I didn’t need or use any photos. The interpretation of these views is somewhat abstract. I will let the art speak more this time. It only has so many chances.

The collection of snow and winter paintings has grown quite big over years. It’s also a good selling feature before holidays. To be honest, winter and snow paintings usually sell only around this time and very rarely during other seasons. It’s a brief moment, and I believe I don’t really need more of snow and winter paintings at the moment. Until Christmas, we love snow and white wonderland landscapes. When it gets to February and March, oh my! We are totally tired of grey and white with spots of green which is also not the lively spring green. That certainly depends on the area where one lives. Ontario winter can be long.

I hope you’d love to make my Christmas and maybe purchase some art. There’s way more than I can publish just in one post. Enjoy!

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Thanks for visiting and reading!