Inspiration is Everywhere

 

The Old Rooster, 12" x 9", watercolour study

 

Blog 7

 

Since my fall down the stairs in December, I have only left the house for medical appointments. It has been only about two weeks since I started short walks outside. Being stuck at home, creating art saved me when I was frustrated by my limited mobility and the excruciating pain. Where did I find the inspiration for my art when nature looked like a vast space covered with a white blanket?



Luckily, we have a big yard with many trees and feathered friends. I created some drawings of the colourful birds by looking at the many photos I had taken and picking the postures and birds that I found the most appealing. If you want to capture animals on paper, quick sketches can help you. However, many people use reference photos for additional information.



If you look carefully, nature always offers inspiration for artworks. The rays from the sun create a fascinating play of shadow and light that is ever-changing. At the beginning of spring, areas of awakening nature with rests of snow and ice create appealing patterns. During the summer, you experience lots of brilliant colours. The fall landscape dazzles you with the fall foliage. Heavy snow on trees and brilliant sunsets capture my interest in winter.
 
 

 

Look at the collages I made of the same scene to document the same view during the past week. Are all of them exciting? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the liberties you take. Just because you use a reference photo does not mean you have to stay close to what you see. It is the same way when you are painting on location. The artist has the opportunity to change a scene. Sometimes, the size of your canvas or paper makes it necessary. Other times you want to enhance something to make the composition more interesting.

 

There is inspiration all around us. Last week, during a week at the cottage, I got together with one of my painting friends. I had not painted in person with a friend since last fall. We know that we could not paint in nature because of my limitations. Therefore, we set up a still life on the veranda. We grabbed a couple of glasses and metal objects, a tea towel, a rooster and fake apples that were part of the kitchen decoration.

At the beginning of 2020, I taught a course, Let’s Draw What’s in Our Fridge. It is astounding what you can discover when you pick a couple of vegetables or fruits and really look at them. We were all surprised at how colourful a simple sweet potato was and admired the shiny peel of a red onion.



When you want to create a still life, setting up a composition that looks appealing can be the hardest part of the process. You want to make sure that the objects overlap and that your eye travels around the setting. However, you don’t need extraordinary things. Look at a couple of masterpieces, and you will discover that fruits and vegetables make great painting subjects. These paintings can also offer you some inspiration for your own still life. Explore the use of everyday objects from your house. Place simple items together that you love. Experiment with things that have nothing in common and those which share similar shapes or colours. Staying in a colour family can be as exciting as using complementary colours.

 

What you see and feel can also inspire your art. Some people create stunning artworks from their imagination without any obvious inspiration from their environment.

Expressing yourself through art takes some courage to get started, but the more you create, the more ideas you will get for new projects. Don’t create art thinking about how others will see your art but for your enjoyment. If you want to share it, absolutely do because you might inspire others to create. I always compare creating art to writing a journal. Some people feel the need to share their stories, while other people write them down for themselves to remember or work through experiences. There is no right or wrong. Pick up a medium you enjoy and start somewhere.

If you need some help figuring out where to start, send me a message to info@KerstinPeters.ca. While I am concentrating on needle felting, I know many other fantastic artists who offer courses in various mediums.

Happy New Year

 

Winter Bouquet, watercolour, 9" x 12"

I hope you had a great start to the year 2022 and that you have gotten back to your creative activities. This year is the first time I have not started a Creativity Challenge in January. However, I started a daily drawing journal. I already miss some days, but that is OK. The healing of my fractures and the regaining of mobility is my priority at the moment. Four weeks after my terrible fall, I can finally move with a walker. I still have problems lifting my left leg, but focus on the steady progress. It is a big step to more independence. It was extremely challenging to be bound to the bed or wheelchair. At least I always have a great view of our yard and my wonderful nurses, Ingo and Shadow, around me. Aside from my daily physio exercises, I have discovered many exercise videos for people in wheelchairs which I do at least every other day.



Next week, I will start with blogs about how art has helped me in the previous weeks after the accident. I had hoped to have the blog ready for this week, but the pain medication, exercise and restless nights make me still quite tired. Next week, I will start with a blog about how art has helped me in the previous weeks after the accident.

 

I feel well enough to start my Felting Experience Winter Workshops at the end of January. If you register before today, January 14, 2022, at 10 pm, you can register for the early bird prices. While I want to invite you for the whole series, the Winter Combo, I also offer registration for the workshops separately. I am still working on the abstract piece. It should be finished by the end of the weekend. For more information and to register, please visit https://www.kerstinpeters.ca/product-category/registration/.

Creativity Challenge Day 15 - 28

Blog 4

For the second two weeks of my Creativity Challenge, I was able to create something every day but one very hectic Monday. However, on the rest of the days, I often spent much longer than ten minutes on my project. Especially the felted artworks take a lot of patience. Needle felting is not a fast process.

Still Life with Green Pears, wool, 9” x 12”, custom-matted, $400

I finished the pears of my first felted still life. I like the contrast of the fresh green with the dark blue and white of the tablecloth. 

Breaking the Ice, wool, 9.75” x 11.75”, custom-matted, $400

When I looked through my old photos, I could not resist creating a needle felted painting of this subject. It had already inspired me to paint the 16” x 20” painting of the same title. I enjoyed the process of layering the wool and seeing the image come to life.

Low Tide at the Monadnock, acrylic, 11” x 14”, $375, unframed

I was finally able to finish the painting from the September 2019 trip to Kamouraska. The scene is from the site of our favourite monadnock at Route de la Grève. We have returned to the place on each of our trips to paint and have lunch.

Big Rock, Lake Clear, acrylic, acrylic, 8” x 10”, $250, unframed

When I had finished Low Tide at the Monadnock, I was so energized that I continued painting. This painting is from the Plein Air Ensemble painting trip to Lake Clear in Eganville in October 2019. Many painters in the area have painted the rock that is truly impressive in its size.

I was with my friends Hélène and Janis when I painted Big Rock. It was a very windy day, but in the sunshine, temperatures rose to 15 degrees. We had so much fun that we did not mind that we were late for Happy Hour that day.


The above mentioned artworks are for sale. To purchase them, please send me an email to info@KerstinPeters.ca. All prices are in Canadian dollars. Shipping is not included. I accept credit cards and PayPal.


Here are my smaller artworks that I created during my January Creativity Challenge:

The blooming orchids in my house inspired me to draw and paint many flowers during the last two weeks. Most of the time, I started with watercolour pencils. Then, I added watercolours and ink to bring out the bright colours of the flowers.

For my German instruction, I created this image for a little story that I wrote. In the story, a little boy has a nightmare about a dragon. To fall back asleep, he hugs his plush bunny and sheep tight. It was a lot of fun to create both the story and the image.

During the recent virtual Snowmen Painting Party, I create this lovely snow couple.

 

 

 

I hope my January Creativity Challenge has inspired you to be more creative. If you need some help, I invite you to my upcoming courses and workshops. You can check out my February to April schedule at https://www.kerstinpeters.ca/eventscourses/.

Top 10 Artworks of 2019 - Part 1

Blog 35

This December, my blogs will not contain my Advent Calendar. If you would like to see this year's Art Advent Calendar, I encourage you to visit my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/KerstinPetersPaintings/. Instead, I will post my favourite ten paintings of the year. Let's start the countdown:






10. Le Gros Pèlerin, acrylic, 6" x 12"
Some days, it takes a long time to decide on a painting spot. Whenever we are in Kamouraska, the strong wind can make it tricky to find a spot that offers enough shelter so that we can set up our equipment. On those days, it is impossible to paint close to the river, where the wind is even stronger. On September 9, we had a day with mixed weather. When the sun came out, it was very warm. However, whenever the sun hid behind the clouds and we were facing the wind, it was so cold that I wore my rain pants, scarf and gloves. First, we drove up towards St-Germain but did not find a spot that inspired us. We kept driving around until we finally found an amazing view of the Îles Les Pélerins near St. Alexandre de Kamouraska. As I am usually not a fast painter, I needed the whole day to create this small painting.






9. Yellow Flower Served on a Platter, acrylic, 8" x 10"

During a cold January day, I met with some of my friends for an indoor painting session. We decided to paint a still life, but it took us a long time to set something up, that we all liked, and that looked interesting from three different angles. I painted this 8” x 10” still life of a flower on a napkin with acrylic paints, and I am happy to inform you that the painting found a new home in November.






8. Sunshine Family, acrylic, 11" x 14"

This is another painting from the Kamouraska painting trip. One afternoon, Hélène and I drove to the Jardin des Générations in the Rue Notre-Dame in Saint-Pascal, next to the arena. There, we painted some beautiful sunflowers in the sunshine. It got so warm that I took off my shoes and socks. Two hours later, we fled from the mosquitoes that had eventually caught up with us.



Have you already spotted a painting that resonates with you? I would love to hear from you. Next week, I will post the next three paintings. The four top paintings will be posted on December 20, 2019.

The Interpretation of Symbols in Still Life Paintings

Spring Bouquet, acrylic, 16" x 20"

Blog 38

While many still lifes nowadays are painted in order to show simply the beauty of the objects and the interesting composition, many early still lifes contained symbols to express the artist’s opinion with regard to common religious, spiritual, social, cultural, and moral views.

The so called vanitas paintings contained big arrangements of objects that held a lot of symbolic meanings with regard to life's fragility and the inevitability of death, often warning the viewer that all earthly riches are vain.

Some of the most popular natural objects used in still life paintings were food, flowers and plants, animals, shells, skulls, bones, rocks and stones, feathers, and shells. Books, china, vases, jewelry, coins, and tools were man-made objects that were often used as well.

Sometimes, the painting of natural objects was done to symbolize a scientific interest in nature. More often natural objects were used to show abundance or deprivation of material goods, and mortality. In general there is the distinction between fresh and decaying objects. For example, fresh food signifies abundance and wealth, while decaying food serves as a reminder of our own mortality. The same is true for freshness of flowers and plants. They are often also a reminder that life is short and fragile, or symbolize certain seasons. In some cases, flowers of different colours have a different meaning (see for example the rose).

Here are a couple of flowers and their meaning:

Lilies: purity, chastity, and innocence.

Orchids: perfection.

Poppies: sleep and death.

Red roses: love and passion, are also used as a symbol for the Virgin Mary

White roses: virginity and purity

Yellow roses: jealousy and infidelity.

Sunflowers: loyalty, admiration, longevity and faith.

In Western cultures, the Christian Church was a strong influence on artists and one of their most affluent commissioners, therefore many religious symbols were used to tell the constant battle between good and evil. The triangle with its point upwards and the three divided clover leaf are signs of the Trinity of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, while four-leafed clovers represent luck. The butterfly often represents the soul and the resurrection of Christ. Bread symbolizes the body of Christ, while vine leaves and grapes can either be a symbol of Christ’s blood or a symbol of earthly pleasures, but also of the loss of self-control. Feathers can either symbolize the religious virtues of hope, faith, and charity or freedom as they make it possible to fly, and rise up to heaven. Therefore, birds symbolize the resurrection of the soul after death. The apple often represents temptation and sin according to the bible story of Adam and Eve. At the same time it is a symbol of knowledge and death. Skulls or bones also symbolize mortality. Skull also represent inner contemplation, and eternity.

Clocks, hourglasses and burning candles show the passing of time, but when a candle is extinguished it symbolizes the end of life or loss. In a Christian painting a candle can also be a symbol for the light of Christ.

Musical instruments are often added to still lifes. String instruments like the violin often symbolize the vanity of our life, because their strings break easily. The flute on the other hand is often a symbol with sexual meaning. Music is often associated with a lazy and sinful life.

Luxury items like jewelry symbolize wealth and power in still life paintings. However,

when they are toppled, it is a sign that earthly riches are fleeting. Meat and fish also symbolize wealth, as well as greed and temptation. They also warn of the transience of wealth.

When looking at the meaning of objects used in a still life painting you have to use caution as some objects have a different meaning in different cultures and settings. If you are more interested in the subject, you can find a lot of fascinating information online and in books.

This was my short introduction to still lifes and my attempt to show you that especially the older artworks contain a lot of information and meaning behind the beautiful facade.

When this blog is published, I am on our yearly painting trip in the Kamouraska Region at the St. Lawrence River. Starting next week, I will share my travelogue with you. In remembrance of my wonderful Kamouraska trips, this week’s painting on sale is the 16” x 20” acrylic painting “Roch-des-Aulnaies, QC”. The painting is in a gold frame. The original price is $420. You can purchase it for $375 until Monday, September 18, 2017 at noon. Shipping and handling fees are added, except if you pick up the artwork or live in the Orleans area. To buy the painting, please send me an email to kpeters@domingoinformatics.ca. Payment can be made in cash, by check or e-transfer. Photos of each new painting are posted every Monday on my website www.KerstinPeters.ca as well as on my Facebook page www.facebook.com/KerstinPetersPaintings.

I hope you enjoyed my blog and will return next week. If you enjoy my blogs, I encourage you to subscribe to an automatic delivery of my blogs to your email inbox.

Have Some Fruit!
acrylic, 9" x 12"

Blog 37

For the next couple of weeks, I give you some more information about still lifes, a genre of art that has a long history. While still lifes were already found in the interior of Egyptian tombs of the pharaohs and Ancient Greek vase paintings, for the longest time pure still life paintings were one of the less valued painting genres due to the lack of people in the composition.

Joachim Beuckelaer: Kitchen Piece, with Jesus in the House of Martha and Mary in the background, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

At first, still life objects were included in religious and allegorical pieces as well as portraits to support the focus of the painting. The rise in popularity came with the discovery of new continents in the 16th century that lead to an immense interest in the study of new species of plants and animals.

Claude Monet: Still Life with Apples and Grapes (1880), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

With the rise of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists who were interested in the effects of light on nature’s color schemes, experimenting with brush strokes, tonal values, and colour placement, still lifes became less realistic but expressed mood and energy instead.

Juan Gris: Still Life with a Guitar, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Over time, artists explored for fresh ways to create still lifes. They lost the interest in creating realistic still lifes and were looking for ways of abstraction. The illusion of perspective was replaced by objects constructed of flat shapes in bright colours, followed by breaking down the painting into geometrical shapes that found its peak in the works of the cubists who arranged the simple shapes of the deconstructed objects to show the object from different perspectives in one painting.

The Surrealists on the other hand explored the subconscious mind and painted their often distorted objects in fantasy scenes, making it seem that the objects were weightless and floating.

During the pop art of the 1960s and 1970s the sterile still lifes of mass production objects put the commercialisation of the products into the focus showing the attitudes of society rather than the characteristics of the objects. The objects lost their uniqueness and became interchangeable.

Nowadays, still lifes are created mainly for the depiction of the artist’s interest in the object, either to capture the beauty of the object, an interesting composition or the play of colours and shapes. In the past, many artists added symbols to express their view of mortality, religious and moral opinions as well as to use them to tell a story in allegories.

Next week, I will I will discuss the symbolism in still lifes. I hope you enjoyed my blog and return next week for the continuation.

_________________________________________

If you are interested in bringing a little bit of history into your house, this week's painting on sale is "The Duford House", a 16" x 20" acrylic painting of one of the buildings at the Cumberland Heritage Village Museum. The painting shows the house before a veranda was added to the front of the building a couple of years ago. The original price is $400. You have until Monday, September 11, 2017 at noon to purchase it for $340. To buy the painting, please send me an email to kpeters@domingoinformatics.ca. Payment can be made in cash, by check or e-transfer. Shipping and handling fees may be added depending on the destination.

Do Compare Apples and Oranges

Spring Bouquet With Gerbera and Lilac,
Oil, 14” x 11"

Blog 36

With the start of the new school year, the subject of lunch and snacks comes to my mind once the school supplies are bought and the school bag packed. With the increasing consciousness about healthier eating, fruits and vegetables are a big staple in our house.

Fruits and vegetables are, however, not only great for eating, they also make beautiful objects for still life painting. Still lifes are artworks that depict objects that are not alive, often vegetables, fruits, flowers, shells, and even dead animals, or man-made everyday objects to name just a few.

I love painting still lifes in class or as an impromptu project on a rainy day. While I have no problem with artists using photos as reference materials, I feel it is essential that one also practices drawing and painting from nature. When I teach a class at night, it is not possible to go outside to paint. Setting up a still life gives students and myself the challenge to create an illusion of a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional surface while actually looking at a three-dimensional object not an image of the object that is already two-dimensional.

I usually take photos of the things I paint. Sometimes, when I look back at the photos, I am surprised that the scene does not look the way I remember it. Often the colour is not the way I saw it in real life, especially considering blue and violet objects. In the photograph, the depth is compromised, the highlights and shadows are usually too sharp and would look not convincing in a painting.

Fruits especially also help to demonstrate that you should start the composition with simple shapes. This is one reason why I like to paint apples. They are nicely round. You can also demonstrate while looking at an apple that they consist not only of one colour but mixtures of colours with different values. These different values create the illusion of perspective. Observing different fruits also makes you realize how an apple differs from an orange, peach or apricot, even though they look similar in shape. When you look at a still life you learn how to observe characteristics you might overlook otherwise or see what some characteristics that you have taken for granted are in reality. We have all been programmed to assume that things look a certain way, while they actually change appearance according to the light source and the surroundings.

Here is just an easy exercise: Just look at a tree trunk at different times of the day. It is not simply brown as the first response might be, if you were asked about the colour. The trunk has different colours according to the type of tree, which change when it is in the sun, shade or wet from rain. This will show you how light influences the appearance of objects.

Here are some of my favourite apple painting:

paintings of my "An Apple a Day" series

Thank you for reading my blog. I wish you a wonderful long Labour Day weekend. If you are going back to school or work after the holiday, I wish you a good start. After the long summer break here in Canada, not only school starts again, but also all the fall courses at recreation centres. This fall, I will teach one adult landscape course at Bob MacQuarrie Recreation Complex in Orleans from Mon, Oct 16-Nov 6 from 6pm-7:30pm ($67.00, code 1114789). You can register online at http://join.ottawa.ca/fac/26/fall/all/act/110/ or at any of the City of Ottawa recreation centre. I am also available for private or semi-private classes. Please contact me at kpeters@domingoinformatics.ca, if you would like more information. I also offer kids cartooning and comics classes at both MacQuarrie Recreation Complex (http://join.ottawa.ca/fac/26/fall/all/act/49/) and François Dupuis Recreation Centre (http://join.ottawa.ca/fac/247/fall/all/act/49/).

Painting Trip to Val-David

Post 15 

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Janis and I are on our way to Val-David in Quebec where we will stay at the Auberge du Vieux Foyer. We want to be ready for the arrival of the other artists tomorrow. Unfortunately, our friend and co-organizer Helene will not be able to join us due to illness. As we are driving through the countryside, I really hope for sunshine and good weather because on this grey and grey day everything just looks really muddy and uninspiring.

Friday, April 10, 2015

When we woke up this morning, it was raining cats and dogs. This meant we could take our time enjoying a delicious breakfast. I had pancakes, grilled potatoes, and bacon, yogurt with berry compote and fresh fruit, as well as a mini chocolate muffin.

To get our chores out of the way, we went shopping for the happy hour first, then continued to the tourist bureau which was unfortunately closed. As is was still raining heavily, we drove Ste. Agathe-des-Monts where the tourist information was open. Despite the rain, we drove around the Lac des Sables to see whether the area is worth coming back to on a brighter day. Along the huge lake are some of the biggest mansions I have ever seen. There were also some nice spots to paint although the high snow banks still make it hard to have a great view. We might come back if the temperatures rise and the snow continues melting.

We were back at the hotel shortly after 11am to move into the cottage Familial. There was a mix-up yesterday as the reservation for Janis and I was not written down. The cottage was not cleaned, so we each got a room in the main house as well as a four course dinner. I had smoked salmon on a bed of cucumbers, salmon steaks with grilled potatoes, and a cheesecake with mixed berry compote. I am glad I skipped the soup. It would have been much too much.

This morning, we moved into our new quarters. As we are the hosts of the daily Happy Hour where we also serve wine, we needed a bigger space than just a regular room. My friend Linda is also sharing the cottage with us. As the cottage is really cosy, especially while it was raining out of buckets, we set up a little still life with the oranges from our lunch box, yellow gerberas and a metal watering can and spent the afternoon painting indoors.

Shortly before 5:30pm the first artists came for the Happy Hour. We have a nice group of seventeen people participating in this trip. We all got to know each other and got tips from some of the group who already went to Val David a couple of years ago.

After a delicious dinner, Janis, Linda, our friend Bob, and I spent the evening talking about how each of us found our way into an arts career, and our experiences along the way.

Even though the rain has stopped, no one wanted to go into the hot tub that Janis and I really enjoyed last night. While I am typing this trip report, I can hear the wind howling. Hopefully, it pushes the bad weather system out and we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Who knows, maybe someone might even use the outdoor pool on a sunny day. It will definitely not be me. At 2 degrees Celsius it is absolutely outside of my tolerance zone even though it looks really beautiful.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

When I woke up today, I could not believe my eyes: It was snowing heavily. When I opened the door of my room, my friends told me that I had just slept until December. That was my first thought too.

Luckily, the snow stopped after breakfast and we made our way outside. However, the wind was so strong that we just took some photos of the lake across from our hotel and Park des Amoureux before we turned back to the hotel.

There, Janis and I set up our gear at the lake behind the hotel. Even though I wore a winter coat, winter boots, woolen socks, and snow pants I was frozen within one and a half hours. We warmed ourselves up in the cottage before I returned to the lake while Janis went inside the painting room to work on a still life of tulips. I followed later and also painted the tulips.

Shortly after 5pm the others came to our cottage for the daily happy hour. At that point the sun was shining brightly and the wind had died down. Hopefully, we will have a great time tomorrow. The forecast says 13 degrees Celsius and sunny. That would be wonderful.

After another delicious dinner, Charlie Spratt put our knowledge of Canadian art to the test by showing us slides of some of his favourite works from the National Gallery of Canada. Most of us had a hard time guessing the artist and even more of the title of the paintings. I guess we all should visit the general exhibitions of the National Gallery more often.

The rest of the evening we spent with some friends talking about our youth and the different gender specific responsibilities we had, and how the views have changed over the time of our lives. Another fascinating discussion.

If you would like to hear what happened during the rest of our trip, please return to this blog next Friday for Part 2.