About a year ago I started to paint with real colours. Time to look back on what turned out to be a fast‑paced development or rather unleashing of my painting skills that went hand in hand with further healing my inner little girl and culminated in another quantum leap in my healing just a few days ago.
I started out with paint I was familiar with from when I was a kid: opaque watercolours (the kind of watercolours German kids use at school), crayons and coloured pencils.
My first result in August 2022 looked like this:
It looked as if a child had painted it and in a way that was true. For it had been my inner little girl who had painted. So, I had sort of picked up where I had stopped painting for fun: At the age of 8 – as I know now. This had happened because back then it had not been appreciated when I painted or drew the way I had wanted to, namely in a totally free style not representing the real world at all.
My grown-up me was quite disappointed with this result, because had I used Procreate the results would have been way better. I strongly felt the big difference between painting digitally and the shortcomings of my analogue painting skills.
And yet, something inside of me urged me to keep going and I did, even though I was mainly using Procreate and making good progress there.
On 14th October 2022 I took the first step towards freeing myself from my childhood conditioning by painting this picture that I called “Krickelakrack”:
Since, I wrote about this in detail in my blog entry “My Story” I won’t repeat it here. So, please read “My Story” if you’re interested in knowing more. Thank you 🙏🏻
After that I felt a lot more confident and also eager to try out paint I wasn’t familiar with. I experimented with soft and oil pastels. They were okay, but not really my thing even though I created some pictures I like.
October 2022 was also about me discovering gouache paint. This opened a whole new and yet slightly familiar world for me. I loved and still love the creamy texture and opaqueness.
These are among the first pictures I painted using gouache at the beginning of
November 2022:
For Christmas I painted Christmas cards with gouache:
As much as I loved painting with gouache, I felt the need to try something else by the end of January 2023. My Choice: watercolour coloured pencils and brush pens. I liked the first, the latter not so much. These are pictures I painted with watercolour coloured pencils:
I also bought a set of watercolours a short time later and just started painting with them. Now that was totally frustrating, because they simply didn’t do what I had expected they would do. And yet, what they did was completely fascinating. So, I kept practicing with the help of tutorials on YouTube, books I had bought, artists I follow on Instagram and my willingness to surrender to this medium that went hand in hand with an insatiable curiosity and eagerness to learn.
It took me quite a while to get used to them. I still haven’t figured it all out, but now I like the results I get. These pictures are from March 2023:
A discovery I made in April 2023 were water-soluble oil pastels/crayons. They’re so much fun.
Following artists on Instagram who work with watercolours showed me how many possibilities there are. This way I discovered using pens for details by the end of April 2023:
This lead me to experimenting with mixed media like this oil pastel on gouache painting in May 2023:
I also began to paint flowers but not real-life flowers. I only paint flowers the way my fantasy sees them:
I also developed a strong liking for painting shapes like these and add some details to them:
… or to completely lose myself in a painting by June 2023
During a vacation at the beginning of July I was “forced” to paint with only limited access to paint. That was quite an experience. This is one of the pictures I painted with watercolour coloured pencils sitting on my hotel bed. Of course, this is not what it really looked like...
It was during this vacation that I made a stone stack which turned out to represent a part of me that – despite all the healing I had done in the past – was still buried deep down inside of me. I named this part “Ella” and back at our hotel painted her with watercolour coloured pencils:
For all the details on Ella please have a look at my heart project “Painting as Therapy” and check out the page dedicated to pictures inspired by Ella. Thank you 🙏🏻
Back at home I began to search the www for information on how to best proceed to do collages. I had done some collages at school and remembered the basics, but I hoped for some more insight. Creating collages was something that had come to my mind before my vacation. I was thinking about using not-so-good pictures I had painted and combining them with different kinds of paper like crêpe paper for instance.
Since no search on the www goes unnoticed, reels of artists doing collages started to show up on my Instagram feed. This way I learned about some of the materials I would need. But the time had not yet come to really try this…
Another thing that I was mulling over was to try acrylic paint. So, I put together a wish list and told my husband I would like that for my birthday which is on 21st August.
On 25th July, back at home after a nice shopping spree that included a visit to an art supply store, I felt like doodling faces and believe me I was so surprised because drawing faces and I are so not compatible, but I did it anyway and was even more surprised at the result. Also, I had sooooooo much fun doodling them with a black pen and then colouring them in with watercolour coloured pencils in colours I felt like using:
That same afternoon I tried out the acrylic paint I just HAD to buy at the art store that morning. What an experience! I was hooked! Another new world to discover…
Just a few days later – on 31st July to be precise – I drove to another art supply store and bought some more acrylic paint among other things. Frankly, I just couldn’t wait for my birthday to get more…oops… Back home I painted these:
On 1st August this picture and a quantum leap in my healing happened:
For details on that please have a look at my heart project “Painting as Therapy”. Thank you 🙏🏻
Although I was totally fascinated by the seemingly endless possibilities I have with acrylic paint, I continued experimenting with watercolours and what I could do with them. For I had remembered how much fun using ink and a dip pen had been at school when I saw some watercolour artists using ink for adding details to their pictures. I just had to try this, and these are two of the results:
The next big thing happened over three days – from 13th to 15th August. With creating these two mixed media art collage pieces I left behind a version of me I’ve outgrown.
I deeply love her. I owe her a lot and I will forever be grateful to her.
You will find all details on this in my heart project “Painting as Therapy”.
So, you see these past twelve months have been quite a journey, travelling from there to here via lots of different stations. I am filled with deep gratitude for how far I’ve come in such a short time which is something I would’ve never expected when I painted that ice cream picture last year.
Of course, this wouldn’t have been possible without some help.
The artists I’m grateful to for sharing their work on Instagram/YouTube, because I learned a great deal by following them are (in no particular order): @emjlefebvre, @alyssawhetstoneart, @planetefloria, @essoldodesign, @rebelunicorncrafts, @andrea.nelson.art, @ohn_mar_win, @jocelynbenford, @catrains.artist, @melarmstrongdesign, @evakalien, @terryrunyan, @pamela_k_beer
And last but no means least I’m grateful to the Universe for letting them show up on my Instagram feed in one way or another. I’m sure I was meant to find them…
Love,
Sabine ❤️
19th August 2023
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