painting trees Archives - INESE'S ART STUDIO

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.

Black and white art print of spring creek painting

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.

Black and white art print of spring creek

Art classes, schedule and registration

Shop original acrylic paintings

Art collections by Inese Poga

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

Before the horrible heat became an issue, we were creating watercolor nature art outdoors. I do always go for the simplest solution whenever there is one, therefore we did not use any masking fluid or any other extra watercolor enhancing supplies. The simplest technique with watercolor is painting around the parts which you want to leave light. It was very tricky in some parts regardless of the large paper size. Let’s just say, I added an element every time when somebody asked how to paint one or another part.

Nowadays, classes are not like art classes we used to have even 10 years ago when I would start with color properties and selection, features of brushes, techniques of using that particular brush, techniques of adding washes, glazes and details. I mean, I would make sure that my student knows at least a little bit about the medium, its application and the important aspects of painting. The shift has been towards very quick paintings, – the quicker, the better. Although, I’m not trying to squeeze in impossible steps, everything still takes time.

Watercolor landscape — Creek trees on rocky background

Students jump now from knowing nothing to trying to paint something great. It is what I told a girl who was attending a few nature art classes: to learn using brush and paint properly and automatically takes years, not hours. Our brain is wired in such a way that it will not allow doing automatically things which haven’t been rehearsed for numerous times. You have to add to this the novelty of particular technique, and mental attitude towards learning fast. Altogether, learning art has become an activity when one learns and applies the new skill immediately. I mean, they didn’t know it existed before the class. Most often, it won’t result in something great taking into account what I said before.

Since we all have started with something, for beginner, any scene is probably good enough. It’s just so that the potential participant judges the worthiness of a class by an image which I have painted. That is an absurd way of accessing the task ahead because I know what I’m doing and I can paint anything no problem, especially when the sketch is drawn by me. I know how to make parts of painting work or how to improve them if they don’t. Students take every brush application as final which by any means it isn’t. We certainly worked a lot, and due to the outdoor settings, I don’t have all steps on photos. I have finally started creating the downloadable materials, and steps will be available.

Before we start painting, we must explore our tools: watercolor paper, set of paints, brushes, everything. We cannot create a good painting when we don’t know what colors we have and how they act on paper. The same about color combinations, like burnt sienna plus any dark blue, but French Ultramarine and Prussian blue in particular, like in these paintings. We need to know what our paper does when it’s wet. One paper I used for demo, absolutely didn’t accept paint. I later found out; it was Fabriano. I avoid using any Fabriano papers, since my experience has been horrible with them. It’s not Arches either, but Strathmore 400 series.

Rocky creek, 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm watercolor

I hope we can have more confidence and trust ourselves to a higher extent. That is absolutely necessary with drawing and painting. Nobody really cares if you get it right or not for as long as you’re happy with the outcome. It sure would look better and cleaner if I had masked out all tiny areas, but I am ok without having too much detail. If that were Arches paper, the washes on bigger parts certainly would have looked nicer. However, art class is not my own painting session. There are many interruptions and many times when I have to go over and over some part.

Trees on the hill, 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm watercolor

As you might know, watercolor requires perfect timing. That can be an issue outdoors with higher temperatures when paper dries too swiftly. I’m not that meticulous that I wouldn’t paint just because something around isn’t right. I also use only 1 number 14 brush for practically entire painting. It has an extremely great tip, but due to frequent use it starts wearing down. Well, time to start looking for replacement brushes.

Second version on different paper, 24 x 18 in or 61 x 46 cm watercolor

I use St. Petersburg watercolor paints because they’ve been my favorite ever since I remember. When I was about 10 or so, that’s a bit more than half a century ago, I stopped by at my neighbor’s place. They rented a room to an artist. She was great with watercolors. I noticed the large paint box on the table and colors in it looked so fantastic, nothing like my small student grade paints which I had. So, I asked: what paints are these? Her painting was extremely vibrant, literally alive. She said: Leningrad watercolors. Those times, it was still Leningrad, it only later reversed to St. Petersburg. I got my first St Petersburg watercolor paints about 20 years ago and have used them since.