I get a lot of questions about intuitive art, both online and in the classroom. Most of the time I have a prompt response that satisfies the question. Other times I give a half-hearted response because I need to think over it some more. Intuitive art is weird like that. Some days I have it figured out and the next day I have no idea what any of it means.
Now that I’ve had some time to think them through I figured I’d come on here and answer a few of these questions that I didn’t quite have the answer for at the time. I also have a few extra questions in there that were easier to respond to, but I felt deserved to be shared with you here.
I get asked a lot of questions, especially at events where I’m creating live (let me just say…it is hard to do intuitive art when you have an audience). Most of the questions are general “break the ice” politeness, and/or are from fellow artists who are intrigued by a certain hue I’m using and wanting to know which one it is so they can go purchase it for themselves.
But there are a few questions that have been popping up since the very beginning of my creative career. So I decided to answer some of those right here on the blog.
One of my most frequently asked questions is about my medium. People ask me what tools I use, on what paper, and my answer is always pretty vague, because as I’ve said before it’s usually in passing at an event.
What I say is: “it depends on the day and on my mood.” Which is true, but I suppose it doesn’t really answer the question. To be honest, I love using a variety of mediums, but that doesn’t mean I like using them all. So I’m going to share with you some of my favorite (current) go-to tools.
Watercolor: it’s flowy, drippy, and delicious. I love watching it bleed into other colors, and don’t get me started on granulation. Drool. Some of my favorite brands are Daniel Smith and the Watercolor Confections palette boxes by Art Philosophy (current favorites are Currents and Woodlands).
Watercolor Ink: again, it’s flowy, drippy, but I can use it in concentrated form or dilute it to get something super light. I like that these have droppers so that I can “draw” with the dropper, making it a lot easier for me to improvise. Favorite brands are Dr. Ph. Martin’s Hydrus watercolor inks, and a discontinued watercolor ink by Brea Reese (I still have a few drops left).
Iridescent Inks: I can use these with my dip pen to add some shimmer to my pieces. I’ve also been known to just pour them on landscapes to add some sort of magical effect. Along with the iridescent inks I also enjoy using regular India Ink. My favorite brand is, once again, Dr. Ph. Martin’s.
Ink pens: These are the best go-to for me and my improvised art. I’ve recently been attached to the Sharpie pens. They don’t bleed, have two different sizes, and they last a lot longer than any other ink pen I’ve used (including Micron). The nibs also hold up a lot better.
Brush pen: I have one brush pen that I love. It was a whopping 20$ but it was a wise purchase, as you simply have to refill it when it runs out. The brush has also kept up well for over a year. It’s still like new. The brand I’m using is the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen.
Hot press paper: To me, there is nothing more delicious than an aging sheet of hot press paper by Canson. This 100% cotton paper is super versatile (I’ve used just about every medium on it) and when I use it for sketchbooks, the pages become like old book pages in a dusty library. Yermy.
Khadi Paper: Khadi! If you’ve been following me like…anywhere…you will know how much I love this paper. This is also a versatile paper and can seriously take a beating if you want to hit it with every medium you’ve got. It’s also hand-made in India, and has beautiful deckled edges and a slightly textured surface.
Another question I hear a lot is “what is intuitive art?” and for good reason! I mean, it’s not like it’s mainstream information to the general public, and even to the artist community. For those of you who have been listening to the podcast, or reading this blog, you’ll know that I’ve covered this topic multiple times. In passing, however, it is very hard to sum it all up into one sentence. So I simply say: “it is basically improvised art. I just pick a color and a tool and I go.” Sometimes people will want me to elaborate, but most are okay with that definition.
As I’ve said before, however, Intuitive art should be defined individually. So start with that very basic definition of improvised art, and then move on from there. What does it mean to you? What is intuition to you? Do you believe you are working from the subconscious? Or do you believe it’s more than that?
I had a conversation on my Twitter with a poet who wondered if intuitive art took away from the idea of the creative genius, as it shifts away from the individual? Or if it actually reinforces it by saying one is channeling their own creative genius through mere intuition. It was quite a philosophical conversation, and one I’d love to maybe have an entire episode about later. But for now I’ll just say this: I personally believe the subconscious is just another halve to your whole. You have your conscious self, the light side, the awakened side, and then you have your subconscious, the shadow self, the automated side.
There is a theory out there that your subconscious remembers everything that has ever happened to you, as it has the storage capacity to do so, so would that not mean our subconscious would be unique from person to person? Which would then make intuitive art unique from person to person? It’s possible! But then there are those who simply look at it from a scientific perspective and say the subconscious has no identity, no creativity, and no awareness. It is merely the automated part of yourself that keeps you alive so you don’t have to sit there and think about things like breathing. I’m not sure those who look at it from that perspective would even believe it was possible to draw from your subconscious mind.
But then again, intuitive art isn’t always about the subconscious mind. Because, as I’ve said before, it is going to have a different definition for everyone. Some don’t even think about that shadow self. Instead, to them, intuitive art is all about the fun of creating. It’s about the process, and nothing more. To others it’s a form of meditation. As for me? Well I think all of that…and I also believe we’re getting into some deep personality theory and my last personality theory class was in college ten years ago, so I may have to do a bit more research before we can discuss this one further.
Perhaps one of my most popular questions, especially lately, is, (and I’m paraphrasing here because this question is asked in a variety of different ways) “How do you work so fearlessly? Aren’t you afraid you’re going to mess up? What do you do IF you mess up?” This question is usually followed up by the statement: “I’m too much of a perfectionist.
I have a fun fact that may help you feel a little better about yourself:
I’m a perfectionist too.
When I first started out I would draw my bunnies out with pencil, then carefully with an ink pen. If any line was even a little shaky, I threw out the entire thing and started over. I wasted a LOT of paper. Then, when it came time to paint with watercolor, I would paint it in such a way that there wasn’t even a tiny little blemish–you know, the character of watercolor–and I even had someone ask if my work was a print. Because that’s what it looked like. It didn’t even look like a painting. And still, I would look at my bunny portraits and shudder, because I would see that one line out of place, or that one little pencil mark that I couldn’t erase all the way.
My problem then was simple, I hadn’t failed enough. It sounds counterintuitive, but the only way I could learn to accept failure was to fail.
When I was introduced to the term “intuitive Art” in late 2018, I still had that perfectionist mentality. But I had found a way to have so much fun that I didn’t care. I bought cheap sketchbooks so that I could screw up as much as I wanted and never show anyone. I played and experimented every day and I messed up every day. Once I got used to that, I had to start branching out and painting on my expensive Canson paper. That usually stops me in my tracks, and it did for a while–it still does–but the more I got used to screwing up, the braver I got.
What I liked about my Road Maps collection was I allowed myself to have that perfectionist side of myself come out a bit, because they were meant to look like maps, which are usually uniform, but I was also allowed to relax and just draw shapes. Sort of like a Zendoodle. They were meditative, from the staining process with coffee to the tiniest details with tiny nibs.
Now that I’ve been attempting to work with acrylic I’m messing up more than ever, mostly because I don’t figure out a color scheme beforehand–which is bad. Bad Lina. Don’t do that. Do as I say and not as I do. When you don’t come up with a color scheme beforehand it can create a huge mess. And it does. That was bothering me, even a few days ago. Because while I may appear brave, I’m not always a fearless artist. In fact, most of the time, I’m scared to death.
Because, and here’s the cold hard truth here, if I can’t create anything, I don’t make money, and if I don’t make money I can’t help pay bills, and if I can’t help pay bills we can’t live our lives outside of work because we’re pinching pennies. It’s a lot of pressure! Not to mention, as I said before, my supplies can get expensive, so I’m spending money and if I don’t make that back and I can’t help pay the bills, well then what the hell am I doing prancing around with a paintbrush instead of getting a real job? Trust me, after dozens of fails and no success, the impostor syndrome is real.
But a few days ago, when I was wondering how all of these awesome abstract intuitive artists on Instagram do each painting so well, and wondering what they do when they mess up–and wondering if they ever have the same doubts about their work as I do–I saw a video by Josh Jensen, showing his process on a certain piece and he mentioned below that he’d had to cover up certain sections, and so I re-watched the video and lo and behold, about halfway through he covered up half of his canvas with white and started fresh. What he said beneath the video has stuck with me, and I even wrote it down so I could re-read it when I was feeling icky, he said
“Sometimes to move a piece forward it has to move backward, but this is all part of the process. Don’t be afraid to try new things, cover them over, and enjoy the layers.”
Like O.M.G. did he just give me permission to screw up? Hell yeah! So I’m going to be taking his advice. I’m going to be brave and experiment and make those marks even though I’m afraid they won’t work, or that they’ll mess it all up, and if they mess it all up I will simply cover them with white paint and start again. And I’m going to remind myself that those failed layers are there, beneath the success, sort of like my identity. Right? Aren’t we all just a jumbled mess of wins and losses?
Finally I will make the same comment that I hear everyone make: you learn from your failures. If it was simple and everything went smoothly, then how exactly did you evolve?
I’m going to answer one last question on here, and that question is “how did you get started in intuitive art?” First of all, that’s an interesting question, because I don’t think I’ve ever not done intuitive art. Even when I was working on my bunnies I never had a plan in mind. I just drew shapes until they became something more and then I went from there.
I can remember doing a newspaper interview at a gallery reception and the reporter asked me what set my art apart. By then I had moved from my bunnies and was fully immersed in the world of improvised landscapes. I told the reporter that my unique quality was the fact that I never had a plan in mind. I would just go with the flow. I probably even used those words: go with the flow. But at that time I was still defining my artistic identity as what I painted and what tools I used. I was a watercolor artist who painted landscapes. I hadn’t yet determined my style should have been more about who I was as an individual and how I liked to portray that.
In my case, it was intuitive art, but, as I said before, I didn’t hear that term until the end of 2018, when I took Marie-Noëlle Wurm’s Skillshare class on improvised abstracts. I remember seeing her work in the intro of the class and I was like “ermergerd I want to be this kind of artist.” Her work was–and still is–so organic, and emotional and you could tell it comes from a place deep within the webs of her creative soul.
I wanted to know more about this type of art, so I researched and researched and I learned it’s actually a modern form of art–even though I later learned it was started by the Surrealists–and I perused the art of so many amazing artists out there who work without a plan. They just grab their tools and go. I took more classes by Marie-Noëlle and I took classes by Laura Hornand I became a patron of Marie-Noëlle so I could join her live painting sessions and I learned so much.
Those of you who listened to episode 5 of my podcast will know I continued to struggle with existential crises for quite a while until probably the end of last year and the beginning of this year, when I learned our style is linked to our identity and not our tools. That was when I jumped whole-heartedly into an intuitive art practice. Now every single thing I work on is improvised. I started Wordless Wednesday and I even began to teach. One of my students said that my classes were like finger painting for adults. Because we just play. We don’t learn any rules. We aren’t tied down with “this is the only way it can be done” we simply learn a new technique and then we play. Play with our childhood brains and our adult hands.
I’m waiting for the day that someone says under their breath “my kid can do this.” And I can say to them “duh. That’s the point.” Because we adults can’t paint or draw like kids can. We’ve been wired to make it perfect, to follow the rules, to make it sellable.
Kids don’t have that problem. They just play.
Have another question? Ask below or email me at lina@linaforrester.com and I will answer it on the next Q&A episode on the podcast.
Until next time, may your mediums be plentiful and your art be play.
Scribble Chai 