Art making ideasi
Ideas. Inspiration. A little creative mischief.
If you’re drawn to abstract and semi-abstract art, sketchbooks, colour and a little creative mischief, this is your corner of the internet.
Here you’ll find stories, videos, inspiration, art making advice and gentle nudges to help you create art that feels exciting to you.
Our art is an expression of who we are…
Thoughts on developing our art style…
Music used in video: Softly to Myself by Kylie Dailey
In this video and blog I share some thoughts on developing an art style which feels personal and particular to you.
Our art is an expression of who we are…
Our art is such a personal expression of who we are, our experiences, our fascinations and our curiosities.
In my tutorials and content I am conscious and careful that I don’t want to teach anyone how to make art that looks like mine; I want to encourage, cheerlead and share advice about how to make art that feels and looks wondrously and uniquely yours...
The art we make is an extension of who we are and what we are interested in, so it needs to feel like it belongs to us, that it came from our hand and our heart.
And I think that is what developing our art style is all about, it’s about ensuring our art feels like we’ve made it, it’s about making art which feels completely ours, an expression of us, a reflection of who we are and what we are fascinated and curious about. .
Make lots of art
I frequently get asked about how I developed my style of art and how others should develop theirs. I believe the way to develop your style is to make a lot of art, average art, beautiful art, any art…we have to try things out, experiment, not know where it is taking us…
Seek signposts
It is only when you have made a significant amount of work, become more comfortable in your skills and tried numerous approaches that you can look back through it and see what it is signalling to you. The art you make contains important signposts to your style.
Get inquisitive
Look at a selection of art you have made and get inquisitive and question yourself:
What aspects do I particularly relish?
What appeal to me?
What speaks to me within my own art?
What do I enjoy making?
How do I enjoy making it?
What kind of marks do I relish using?
How does my art feel?
How would I describe my art?
Ask questions about your own art and listen to your answers they contain powerful clues.
Follow the clues
Think about your art, the subject matter, the technique, the materials, the colours, the marks, the feeling that it stirs, paying attention to what we are drawn to in our own art is the key to creating distinctive, personal art that feels like it is ours.
Evolving and changing
Our art style is an ongoing conversation with ourselves, an expression and voice for who we are and what we are interested in. Our art style is not a fixed thing, which we arrive at and never depart from. The way we make art is us sharing our point of view, our opinion, interpreting the world and our place in it…and as such elements of our style will change and evolve and elements will remain constant. I’ve been making art for twenty years now and my style feels to me as if it is in constant slow motion, it changes and evolves and takes on new iterations and elements and sometimes it circles back to themes and ideas…
In one sentence…
To develop our art style we have to make lots of art, reflect on the art we have made, get curious about the aspects of it that light us up and do more of that. It’s a continual process of taking note of what we love within our own creations and doing more of it…
How a painting progresses
A little insight about how paintings evolve and develop…
I’ve been working on some paintings for the last few weeks. In this blog post I wanted to share these paintings with you and give a little insight into my thought process and painting process.
SETTING AN INTENTION
Before I started painting this series I spent some time thinking about the kind of paintings I wanted to make. I looked back at my sketchbooks and previous painted studies. I made a few notes on how I wanted the paintings to feel and be. Setting the broadest of intentions for the work. I wrote ‘dreamlike, bold, interesting objects.”
I chose to use acrylic paint as I wanted to build up layers of paint and for each painting to have a hidden history which occasionally reveals itself.
I also spent some time thinking about the colour palette.…but this changed in the process of making them. And then I started, My one definite plan was to keep coming back to the paintings day after day until they were finished and to use my sketchbooks as a resource and guide rope.
LAYERS OF PAINT
I built up layer after layer of paint, letting each painting take shape and become what it was going to become. These paintings were painted with Sennelier Abstract Acrylic Paint on 360gsm paper from a UK brand called Seawhite of Brighton.
I find when I work with acrylics in this way, it can be a fascinating journey of both discovery and concealment. The fact you can build up layer after layer is what makes painting with acrylics, for me, a dance between flow and frustration. It’s not until the later layers that the painting comes together and reveals itself.
STAGES OF PAINTING
In creating paintings this way, I seem to cycle through phases of ease and effort. The early layers start with a sense of play and possibility. I freely engage with the colours and paint. As I know that only tiny remnants, if any, of these early layers will show through in the final painting, there is a freedom and boldness that comes at the start.
Then comes the difficult middle bit, where it all looks a bit muddled and messy and I’m not sure what to do next. Each painting seems to oscilate between ugly and good looking so quickly. It’s in this middle phase where I am trying to consider composition and work out the direction of each painting and what it might become.
This middle phase always seems like a little bit of a tussle, a rewarding wrangle, I have to paint over sections I love to find a composition that works. Each painting frequently looks bad in this phase and I find it hard to believe it could ever become beautiful. But I persevere and keep going. Some days I leave the studio feeling like the paintings are worse than when I started the day. But then the next day everything just comes together and I can see what they might be.
The final phase of my painting process is where I refine, clarify and resolve each painting. Here I make smaller, less dramatic changes until I am happy that all the paintings are how they should be.
As these paintings progressed I kept thinking about making space, the importance of spaciousness, the sentimental importance of the objects we travel through life with….giving myself space to dream and unfurl. And somehow the final paintings do appear a little dream-like to me.
SPACE TO REFLECT
Once I believe they are all complete and finished, I leave them for a few days or more and keep coming back to them to see if I spot anything that jars, or distracts or doesn’t feel exactly right to me.
This time and space to reflect gives me a new perspective and more objectivity, Looking at them long and hard when I’m not in the process of actually painting them is a helpful thing.
And then believing they could be finished turns into knowing they are finished…. and they are.
Need a little sketchbook inspiration?
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Looking back to go forward…
This blog is about reviewing our work, looking back at our art with an inquisitive and curious eye…
In this video I show you some recent studies, sketches and sketchbooks and chat about how I often review my artwork as a way to take stock and inform my next art making move….
Spending a little time looking back over previous creations is a lovely way to recall, retain and be reminded of things that may have been forgotten and can bring clarity about what to make next.
REMEMBERING AND REMINISCING
Looking back over work we have previously created is like catching up with old friends, remembering and reminiscing.
CONNECTIONS AND COMBINING
When we look at our work collected together we are better able to see connections and themes and ways in which we may like to combine elements and ideas together to create something new.
I find it useful to review my work with an inquisitive eye, asking questions such as:
What do I find interesting here?
What is calling to me?
What do I find visually pleasing? A colour, a mark, a line quality, a combination or juxtaposition?
Why does this appeal to me?
How does it feel?
How do I want my current art to feel?
How could I evolve this?
How could I develop it?
I find that what I have already created holds important signs or signals and reviewing it can ignite something new or prompt me to explore and expand on a theme or technique, spending time ‘mining’ our own creations can be a useful way to better understand our own artistic sensibilities and style.
THE PAST INFORMS THE FUTURE
There is a lovely continuum in art making, everything that we’ve made before, we bring to our new creations, nothing is ever wasted, it’s like everything we’ve already made informs everything to come….and I relish that continuity and evolution…
Need a little sketchbook inspiration?
Take the Sketchbook Love Class.
It is FREE today
Sketchbooks and art books
I share three art books which take you inside renowned artist’s sketchbooks and share a little about my new still life class…
In this video I share a few art books which show you inside the sketchbooks of three renowned artists, I take you inside my latest sketchbook and I chat a little about my new still life class; The Still Life Lab.
Barbara Rae Arctic Sketchbooks, published by the Royal Academy of Art 2023
David Hockney, A Yorkshire Sketchbook, published by The Royal Academy 2011 (Link to examples of Hockney’s sketchbooks on his website)
Picasso Sketchbooks the book showed is called Sketchbooks of Picasso Je Suis Le Cahier by Arnold Glimcher and Marc Glimcher published by Thames and Hudson. 1996 (Link to an article about Picasso’s Sketchbooks)
Need a little sketchbook inspiration?
Take the Sketchbook Love Class
It is FREE today
How to make a simple sketchbook
Learn how to make a simple concertina book which can be turned into a more regular sketchbook with a little glue…
In this video I show you how to make a simple sketchbook from one large piece of paper. The bigger sketchbook in the video is made from an A1 sheet and the smaller one is made from an A3 sheet.
I make these simple one page sketchbooks very frequently and have for many years. There is something extremely tactile and pleasing about making a simple art book. I like the fact that it’s just one piece of paper, no pressure, no expectations, it feels expansive and freeing.
The great thing is that you can make them from any paper you have that you can fold and you can make them from abandoned art experiments or drawings if you’d like to…. in the video I am using paper which is approximately 150gsm in weight.
Art and life: sketchbooks, paintings and art books
Tracing how my sketchbooks influence my paintings and sharing some favourite art books…
In this video I show you some new completed paintings and trace their origin back to some old sketchbook pages. I share a couple of my favourite art books, talk a little about art and life and share some of my latest sketchbook meanderings…
The artists and books I mention:
Angie Lewin: Plants and Places by Angie Lewin, published by Merrell 2010
Barbara Rae: Barbara Rae, words by Bill Hare, Andrew Lambirth & Gareth Wardell, published by Lund Humphries in 2008
Available paintings
Online art classes
