Sunday, July 17, 2016

At the Blueberry Time: About the background of the painting Art Nouveau Cat



It´s  the time of blueberries, so good to tell a little about the backgound of my picture "Art Nouveau Cat". I have already shared it in Google+ quite many times. The cat there is called Mathilda (sister of Mindo). It is quite a typical painting of mine at the time: I like for the first to combine realism - sometimes even photorealism - with fantasy and for the second make some objects with finel details and others approximate. In this painting the cat is painted in a very realistic way. In fact Mathilda looks quite exactly like that. The blueberries are simplified/stylished and make a good contrast with the yellowish background. The leaves of the lilies of the valley are quite redused, not much more than outlines  and two colors. It wasn´t my meaning to leave them so plain, but I think nothing more is needed in this painting. And the beautiful red - but poisoneus ! - berries have here an important  visual role. For the third: typical for me is that what the painting becomes in the end might often be quite much different from the one I sketched and planned. New ideas come when you paint. By the way often the best way to get ideas is to just start drawing something and the ideas just come;  rather than sit and try to seek the right mental creative artistic state of mind. For the fourth I have added here ornaments on the bottom. I like ornaments and decorations. I have left on purpose the lines not-straight. just because I have always preferred free línes. I never use ruler. But I admit that when I scetched the layout of the enlargement of my cottage for the architect, it looked better drawn with the help of the ruler...

But blueberries. They taste excellent as berries or in the form of blueberry-pie! And it is plenty of them arround my cottage. I should pick 1 litre per day. Already have 4 litres.

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Sunday, July 3, 2016

Wood Folk "Dragonfly Man" and recent news


It´s been long time since I wrote here. Well the spring went partly in "studying" entrepreneurship. I have launched  a Company of my own, named Siklee.  Comes from the french word giclée pronounced in finnish.

And I had not less than 4 exhibitions in June. One of them in the library of Sello is still continuing till 8.7.1016.

Been also planning to convert my cottage to my home  within a year, or at  least  make my cottage more comfortable to live also in wintertime. Some enlargement and comforts are needed. I´m waiting for the architectural drawings.  We´ll see see how it will go.
I have  also continued my series of "Wood Folk". I put here "The Dragonfly man". "Flower Girl" is the next but needs some finishing. The point in these drawings is to cover the surfaces with structure - without so many outlines - in stead of coloring. Have to confess that got the idea from an ink-drawing course. As an example of this style was mentioned Tove Jansson´s ink drawings.

New chinese brush paintings / Uusia kiinalaisia sivellinmaalauksia

Time for intuitive art. Chinese brush painting, floral theme. Always something unexpected, unplanned. You almost throw it away, but then not...