Your vlog is phenomenal! I love hearing about the intricacies of your creative process. You also strike a wonderful balance with the tone, music, and visuals. Please keep making this beautiful work for us. 😊
I’ve enjoyed the videos on this series! I’m an art therapist, mixed media painter and sometimes I have an intention, but often I have no clue (usually I have no clue) what I’m going to do. It’s like dreaming on canvas, which can be interesting, but I would like to be more intentional and I think adding a consistent structure to my process and setting some limits would be helpful since I can get overwhelmed by too many creative ideas. Thank you for sharing your process! Beautiful work too! I love your colors and visual language. ❤️
that's really interesting - I love the dreaming analogy, that's exactly it! and still a really important element - for me I think it's maintaining that dream like state, but with a little direction to keep my worrying tendencies at bay ☀️
@@OrlaStevens yes! And I would think it does add a layer of meaning and consistency that leads to a coherent body of work. I actually did develop a process that helped create a particular look and feel to my work-I typically began each large scale mixed media painting with a spontaneous scribble and followed whatever images appeared, and I also used similar materials and format-but without that intention behind the expression, often I would end up with something that felt too personal and private and I wouldn’t want to share it or let it go! That research and intention does inform the unconscious and makes a difference! Just saying a word or phrase even if you have no other thoughts about how to go about expressing it would help guide and focus the expression I think. Very cool!
Watching you work, hearing your thoughts on your creative process and the final collection was very interesting and inspiring. Thank you for the extra work you put into this video!
wow Orla! The algorithm introduced you to me today, and wow! I am such a sucker for both abstract illustrations and series work, and this was a fantastic and inspiring video. Great work, and I can't wait to see more from you!
Congratulations, Orla! The result is a beautiful body of work 👍🏼😁. I love watching your videos, thank you for showing us your process and explaining how you got there. I studied a visual arts degree years ago, but stopped painting to have my children and raise and homeschool them. Watching your videos has inspired me to start painting and drawing again, now that my kids are a bit older and I have the luxury of some ‘me’ time. I had forgotten how much I loved creating art; it’s the only thing I’ve ever done where time seems to stand still, and hours can pass by without my thinking of a single thing other than the task in front of me. So, thank you for your inspirational channel! 💖
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it. That's brilliant, it's such a soul food activity I always think, and I hope you get that time and space to create 💫
It has been really inspirering to follow you doing this Series of work. And the result is lovely, colourful and full of interesting shapes and textures. 😍❤️
I love working on the floor when I do abstract because I have the drop cloth down and can get as messy as I want! It's very freeing. It also allows you more room to move around.
I have really been enjoying the creation of your recent works, was just blown away to see them all displayed on the wall. Absolutely stunning!! I also love being in the outdoors and you have inspired me to convert some of my pencil sketches into some natural colour pieces. Can you tell me what paper you use as all your works seem not to cockle or warp. Thank you!
Ooooh that sounds lovely, will you translate them into colour pencils or paints? Of course! I use all sorts of papers, generally sticking to a 200gsm and up weight. This one in this series is a recycled watercolour paper at 300gsm, and a mixed media paper at 300gsm, and both work great. I've found 300gsm cartridge to work lovely for mixed media too!
Thanks so much :) Well spotted! The 26th painting (Escapism, which I painted in the first video of this series) sold a few weeks back, so it’s in its new home now :)
Orla, this collection is absolutely beautiful. Listening to your process and then seeing it come to life on paper is really lovely. I love how loose you are able to work and how it all comes together in the end to create a perfectly harmonious mix of color, texture and marks to represent exactly what you are feeling and seeing. I have learned so many different ways of holding onto brushes, pens, mark making tools, that help to keep it all so loose just by watching your videos. Often, I find I am just focusing on your hand and arm and how it moves across the paper and don't even really see the whole piece until the end. Learning to work loose is very hard for me but you make it seem much more obtainable. Thank you for the time you put into these videos and for all of the explanation you give.
That's lovely, thank you 😊 And amazing - so much of it must be held in subconscious body language. It's that tricky quieting of the brain to just focus on one thing - the movement of the brush, the colour selection etc I think that really helps with the looseness. Best of luck!
I'm only seven minutes in and I'm already ZINGING with inspiration! I love your methodical approach to structuring the environment and set up of your studio session, and leaving more room for experimentation and play. I especially resonated with what you said about the urge to reinvent every step that goes into a painting. I think this is exactly why I don't paint as often as I'd like: because I think every single element of a painting session has to be brand new. This is going to change how I approach my work, thank you so much!
Woohooooo! That's brilliant! It's hard not to fall into that trap eh? I think learning from past work and bringing forward elements of myself into future paintings is what I'm going to focus on from now on. Hope it helps in your painting session! 🌞
I love your work and video's, also your soothing voice, 😊 i listen to your words while working on my own paintings...thank you for your inspiration every time again.❤
So exciting to see the project completed! I have gained so much inspiration from watching you work and listening to your process. Hearing you talk about working in your sketchbooks while waiting for layers to dry etc was a moment lol...I mean I never waste any paint, but I sort of 'throw' it on sketchbook pages without much thought or intention, just thinking of it as background for some future thing. I'm going to shift that and put a bit more process intention into doing that. And I love the 'squish' moments in your sketchbooks...reminds me of the earlier works where you painted on another paper and stamped the paint. I am going to play with that idea for sure...the textures! Love it. Thanks again, Orla, looking forward to see where this takes you. 😎
Thanks so much! ☀️ Hahaha gotta make the most of the time and materials 😅 I love doing that too, page prepping is one of my favourite quiet switch off the brain exercises :) ooo yeah, the diy mono printing is one of my favourites too! Such good textures 😊
This was super helpful and interesting!!!! If you don’t mind me asking what brand of paper acrylic paper are you using? I really liked how well it held up to the multiple layers!
For sure! I love using papers around 300gsm - for this series I used recycled watercolour paper, and also a mixed media paper at 250gsm. I look more for weight, texture and matte feel in paper over a medium specific paper :) I find most papers that are thick can take a fair amount of working! Prepping the bases with one layer first also really helped I think :)
The system 3 daler rowney florescent pink is my go-to for this colour, but this one is by a local to me art store, boesner as they didn't have the system 3 in stock 😊
Hey! Thanks for your feedback :) I often share transcripts of my videos on my substack blog which are free to read - my personal learning style is to listen, read and note take. I like to share a written version of some of my videos, incase there are folk like me that would like to read too, to help things percolate - I know there’s lots of info covered in these films. Hope it helps! ☀️
