spring painting Archives - INESE'S ART STUDIO

February 8, 2021October 17, 2024

I’d love to take you for a walk in spring forest

Virtual walk in a spring forest

I’d really love to take you outdoors for a walk in a sunny spring forest. Imagine birds chirping, warm air, wild flowers opening buds and trees have gotten their new leaves. Spring forest has green color, and green color is the one which brings hope and calm. Walk in a spring forest would be so great taking into account the double-digit minus degrees in Ontario right now. Painting something which isn’t possible is the best part of creation.

Romantic subjects

A few years ago, we were painting numerous nature scenes in art classes. Students didn’t want to paint abstracts, and I didn’t either. Therefore, we painted numerous birches, flower fields, forest paths and rivers. One might think, it’s kind of too naturalistic way of painting, but it does exactly what I mentioned before: it takes you to places where you cannot be or sometimes – where you’ll never be. Such places might exist only in our imagination, too, but that’s ok.

Mellow-yellow or blue

You will notice how huge the difference is assuming you’re using a color-sensitive device for viewing content of this blog. One picture is blurry to a small extent, but it has practically true colors, cold and warm. It’s taken by the old camera. The other picture is done with iPhone 11 Max Pro and it has wrong warm colors all over it, especially, this mellow-yellow main tone. This phone has so many automated features that one shouldn’t ever hope to get a realistic look.

Spring forest with bluebells,, acrylic painting

Spring forest with blue flowers

Let’s return to the updated spring forest now because that’s where the joy is. I can certainly tell you about colors and you can believe me or not, but the one true thing is these spring paintings look great when looking at them in reality. I have surrounded myself with spring paintings currently to survive winter easier until we get outdoors again. I think I simply need green color. I’m a gardener also, and nothing makes me happier than seeing the first green spouts in the backyard. Spring forest with blue flowers is quite large, too, 20 x 24 in or 51 x 61 cm.

Color discrepancy

The discrepancy of true colors becomes huge issue when publishing pictures of paintings. There is editing, but editing affects the image globally, so the improvement is none or just somewhat acceptable. Realistic, semi-realistic or imagined realism uses both types of color: warm colors and cold colors to make the image work. Now, my iPhone 11 Max Pro doesn’t understand that. I do adjust exposure and switch between lenses, I change the backgrounds and settings, but the outcome is the same. None of my pictures show my paintings as they are.

Visual content

My blog is mainly visual as it should be. After all, I’m a visual artist creating paintings and dealing with images. Painting is ok, but ever since I delegated picture taking to iPhone and the big camera became outdated, I was in trouble. Apart from absurd perspectives, automatic zoom, too strong contrast and deviations from reality, the worst is color deviation. All my painting images have mostly yellow-purple gloom on them, or they look very blue. I later understood that the automated settings can capture only warm colors or only cold colors which is not what art has.

Lost likes and outdated pictures

I am trying to take new pictures and update images on old posts. Pictures from 9 years ago look blurry. I started this website on May 29, 2011. At that time, it was a blog, WordPress dotcom. Moving my extensive blog to a website in 2017 was quite an event. I lost half of images, everything was more or less misplaced. If you go through posts, you will notice how posts before 2017 have many comments, but no likes. Well, you cannot transfer likes. Many followers disappear also. I had to literary rework every single post, and I also deleted many. I’d love to maybe install a new theme, but when I think about images not lining up again and some things looking awkward, I put it off. Too much work.

So, definitely, take a virtual walk and enjoy!

Art prints:

Art collections by Inese Poga

January 25, 2021October 17, 2024

Seasons in art, seasons in life and nature

Living by seasons

I live by seasons, and seasons make me do, want or pursue something specific just like people who lived thousand years ago. I live in expectations of spring during the winter months. I look at trees not that far away, just behind the window glass. Deep down the roots of a tree are alive, and the tree is just collecting and accumulating energy for the big blast of blossoms and buds when the time is right. It’s a very good time to keep refining my skills because we always must go forward. When we believe there is nothing more to learn, we stop moving ahead. The progress ends, and we become old. Who wants that? Nobody!

White forest anemones is a square acrylic painting. This subject has been always very attractive to me.

Lovely green when it’s grey outside

Many artists are genuinely afraid of using green color because it makes painting look abusively green, because nobody likes green on their wall, it is a bad taste and because there are so many colors in the rainbow. Classy art is supposed to have lots of grey, earthy colors, blue shades and different white tones. No green, or at least green with purple neutralizing undertones, red or burnt sienna injections and aqua colors. When I got my first acrylic paints in 2007, I was very fond of them. I come from watercolor and pastel drawing, and I loved the extremely beneficial opportunity to effortlessly create volume with acrylic paints.

My personalized realism

Ever since that first time I got to use acrylic paints, I’ve been extremely happy that I can create anything which looks exactly as I like. People sometimes want to squeeze me in all kinds of categories, and none of them actually fits. I don’t paint realism if we think realism as art genre. The reason for that is I rarely use photographic reference as the base for my painting. I check out parts of my nature views, but I usually have a certain color palette in my mind and I can picture it on the blank canvas. That takes me somewhere, to an imagined landscape or still life components which I visualize. Tackling memorized and imagined views is more difficult than tracing and copying a photo. However, I frequently receive comments in art groups how people can place themselves in my paintings, how they can recall some particular site or place, or feel they are surrounded by my painting.

Spring, forest anemones. This picture was taken with my old Canon camera, and it displays great colors.

Adjusting process

My painting process is simply longer. I go over some areas many times, and I try to achieve exactly what I feel should be there. The difference is, when repainting a photo, you know where what is. I don’t know that because I improvise. I’m usually happy with the result. Then there is picture taking. You have painted a great acrylic or watercolor, you take pictures in different settings with all kinds of backgrounds. Then, you download these hundreds of pictures and it can happen so that not even one is exactly as painting. We can edit pictures, sure, but the changes are global. If the device has added more strong contrast in dark areas and lightened more the light areas, there are just more abnormalities after such editing. Somebody said on their blog (I don’t think they were artist; they just teach artists) that pictures always look better than paintings and that is just not true. I have the opposite experience: paintings look better.

Playing on emotions

So, here you have it: I don’t paint reality except for watercolor still life and some watercolor floral paintings. It isn’t abstract art also because I like my subject to be recognizable, yet, I introduce abstract areas in any painting a lot. I love color and art to impress, but it isn’t impressionism. I love precision of a few details and let go undefined other parts. I stop painting when there is nothing more to say because my art isn’t a demo of technicalities. I always want it to work on the emotional level. Therefore, I cannot say what color I have used on any part, but I can name a few colors which started the painting. I mix these few colors in all possible ways and that unites the painting in one organic bundle. Harmony and balance matter to me a lot, and I do everything in order the view had flowing lines and smooth color transitions.

Artistic spring starts in January

Continuing my long-time tradition, I always paint spring and flowers in winter. These images were supposed to be presented in two posts, but I run out of time, and it’s one post now. I decided to show steps and reveal small painting secrets in PDFs for download. They will come, I’m just a bit too busy at the moment.

I always paint around edges of canvas, thus, extending the image. This allows using painting without a frame.

Healing art

Creativity and necessity to create something new never stop, never go away or cease. 3 things stronger than pain for my own conditions have been drawing and painting, taking care of garden, plants and room plants, as well as reading. It’s been a year we have been struggling with COVID-19, and we have the second complete lockdown here in Ontario. I don’t feel like painting masks on faces or injection needles. There’s already too much of that. The main healer for me is creating something at my own pace. Stay safe! Thanks for reading!

Art prints are available here: Many choices of my paintings

March 26, 2013October 17, 2024

Orchards blossoming in the art studio

Waiting for something can be as exciting as the upcoming event itself.

Spring is late this year, and that makes us more impatient. Everyone is tired of storms, cold, snow and icy winds. However, why to wait when you can create sensation of spring and speed up its arrival on your own?

We’ve been busy with blossoming apple trees painting during the last 4 classes.

Unlikely many North American art schools, we are focusing not only on technical abilities, but also on the emotional impact of our creations. We pay attention to emotional aspect and the energetic potential of painting.. Great art creates fantastic energy.

When painting a certain subject, we are trying to capture not that much its photographic likeness, but rather to implement the idea and emotions, the emotional charge within and behind the painted image.

We are trying to paint our vision in the way others could experience it, too. That requires freedom in our approach, experimenting with colors and brush stroke, immediate decision-making, and high confidence level, as well.

The painting subject was very attractive this time, and we got really great results on our canvas.

It is important that we use the same basic image and the same medium (acrylic, watercolor or pastel) in a class since every medium requires different handling and specific techniques for bringing the painting subject to life.

Acrylic is actually very forgiving, and everything can be adjusted, changed and improved when necessary.

All artists were not present at the time of taking pictures, but all paintings looked fantastic. They are beginners! This is a great achievement.

We will just have to learn how to paint sky and water yet, and these students could surprise us with fantastic paintings which they have created without a guidance.