Painting at Vårdinge By

Following her YIP year Christina Gerodetti (Switzerland) chose to do an individual study at Vårdinge By Folk High School.

Vårdinge By is the Folk High School to which YIP belongs. It offers other programs and possibilities for individual studies. Christina Gerodetti from Switzerland took part in the 2008–2009 YIP year, and chose to stay on for a while.

This is Christina's report from her individual study:

A perfect beginning

Painting at Vårdinge By Folkhögskola 31 August 2009 to 25 September 2009.

I couldn't have had a better start for my individual studies than I did at Vårdinge By Folkhögskola. Over all I had an inspiring and productive time in the course Arts and crafts that I joined for one month. The theme for this time was painting.

Painting is a big part of my Individual Studies and to start the year off with a course at a school was simply perfect to get into this main theme of my year. I got the chance to repeat all the basic techniques of painting with watercolors, I had the support of a professional artist. I continued on my own individual path and built upon my existing painting skills. – All this didn’t happen alone in my room but together with a bunch of very different people that all have the same interest: to be creative, to learn new things and to fully dive into arts. That was simply amazing.

Until now, I often had the experience that I am the only one doing arts, sitting somewhere outside painting. I had the opposite experience at Vårdinge By.

My "hobby" – or better: passion – suddenly became the main focus in class. We all went outside, sat down somewhere in nature and painted with watercolors. How is it possible that school becomes to be the thing that you like to do most? It actually never felt like going to school.

This course was really something I wanted to do. Nobody told me to do it. What an amazing experience to sit in class and feel like being on vacation!

The experience of going to an art school was something that I’ve been thinking about for quite a long time. But I was always a bit scared. What if the teacher will tell me to paint in this way or in that way? What if I get told what art is and what art cannot be? I was scared that I will have to fit in into a certain understanding of art. I guess that this is the reason why I waited so long with attending an art school.

Vårdinge By was extremely tolerant with everything and everyone. We were only there to develop ourselves on our personal level. I felt free but supported in this free space to get further on my individual way.

Of course, we got tasks and we got to look at different techniques, but it was always in a way that leaves you free to bring yourself into it. Something that I didn’t count on when I thought about my month at Vårdinge was that I was going to meet a lot of new people, Swedish people.

– It was like an intense integration course into Swedish culture! My Swedish improved immensely and it was amazing to get to know a completely new circle of friends. I think I underestimated the social aspects of the course.

I thought that I was only there to learn a lot and to paint. But now I’m so glad that the teacher Åsa Lowden-Kästel put a lot of focus on the social aspects: One day we even went home to her place and told each other about our lifes.

It was great to get to know this mixed group of people and get a feeling for everyones background. The age range reached from 18 to 45, which made everything even more interesting. I realized again that everyone can discover art no matter how old or in which situation he or she is in.

For the younger participants it was more trying out something new, or following a strong interest that they had gained from their time in school. The older ones in the course were looking for new inspiration in their lives. They needed a break: a creative space to discover other sides withing them. This mixture of interests and aims made the whole course very broad, interesting, inspiring and eye-opening.

I realized that my way of learning is bound to a healthy relationship with the teacher. This situation was very fruitful with Åsa, and I also felt very safe and warmly welcomed into the group of other course participants.

The tasks we got

Now, I will try to give a rather detailed report of the different tasks we got and the techniques we worked with. Through this, I hope to give a picture of what I actually did during this month and also become more clear for myself about what I learned on a technical level of painting with pastels and watercolors.

Sketching each other

We started the month with sketching each other.

Each of us stood, sat or lay in front of the class for only 10 minutes and the others drew with pencil. Then, if there was time left, we could add some colors with soft pastels. This was very productive to start off with and also helped to get to know each other. The soft pastels were a rather unknown field for me, but I slowly got into it.

We looked at the technique briefly, specifically how you can manage to simplify shapes of things in the background. In all of these practices I was struggling with getting the right proportions of the bodies and also with time management.

Developing an eye

As a next step, we went down to the garden and picked a spot with flowers etc. that we liked and painted it with soft pastels. My first choice of a motive was not so good and the outcome was rather frustrating.

So much depends on the right motive. One has to develop an eye for a composition that has enough tension and attraction in order to create an interesting painting.

The space between things

The second choice of a motive was better. Pumpkins. Big leaves, interesting shapes, lots of repeti- tion in shapes, great color contrasts and the main thing that drew my attention were the shapes in between the leaves. This is a secret that I’ve been working on for a while now. But during the month at Vårdinge By it became again very clear to me how important the space in between two things is.

The actual objects, for example two trees, are defined through everything that is between them. This requires a whole new way of percieving your surroundings and give focus to something you usually just overlook.

Åsa talked about the spaces in between almost every day. It has become a key word to me when I think of painting with watercolors. One stops thinking of trees, flowers, water and fields. Everything becomes shapes with certain colors, with a certain light, depending on the time in the day. This new way of perceiving my surroundings developed a lot during this month through daily practice of sitting outside and painting.

Watercolors

At the end of the first week we finally started painting with watercolors. Åsa gave an introduction in the general use of watercolors, something already familiar to me. A few new things came, like the appropriate use of the paintbrush and also the preparation of the paper.

The next three weeks were committed to watercolors. We went outside almost every day, and painted different themes that occur in landscapes. Flowers, water, trees, fields, the ocean and rocks.

Sometimes we were free to choose the motive, but in those cases we would have a defined theme to work with, like composition or contrast.

Paint and paint and paint

 

It was a very good basic course in painting with watercolors. As I already have quite a lot of experience with watercolors, I sometimes had to make the challenge bigger for me personally in order to feel that I am getting somewhere.

Åsa told me to practice, to go on, to paint and paint and paint. She encouraged me to use different scales of colors than I usually do. I tried to work more with warm colors, brown, red and orange color scales. It was amazing to experience how easy it was for her to see what I needed. I, on my own, could never so easily have found out what new direction I could need and what was missing.

Practice and theory

Next to just letting us practice a lot, Åsa gave theoretical input about the following themes/problems:

• Simplifying shapes: How much of my motive do I have to actually paint and formulate in order to show what I want to show? It astonishes how little lines you have to draw in order to show that some- thing is a tree. Åsa encouraged me to simplify the shapes and not care so much about details.
• Usually it is advisable to paint from warm colors to cold ones, and from light to dark.
• There were some things that I’ve been already doing naturally, but that were very good to hear from a teacher as theoretical input. The so-called movement of colors was one of those things. In order to reach a feeling of the painting as a whole, it helps to use the same colors in different places in the painting. A repetition of colors helps the eye to connect the different parts and puts everything together to one bigger whole. The same happens if one repeats the same shapes.
• A main focus was also put on contrast. Especially the contrast that colors can create, if one knows how to arrange them in a painting. On the basis of the “circle of colors” the contrasts between complementary colors became good visible: Red and green, blue and orange, yellow and violet etc. Those colors are the farthest apart from each other but if you put them right next to each other in a painting, they have the ability to make each other stronger and shinier. But layered over one another they almost “eat” each other and create grey as a new color. Åsa told us to look out for those complementary contrasts when we sit outside and paint. To exaggerate them makes a painting more interesting.
• Another contrast that we look at is the one between cold and warm colors. Generally the cold colors are in the background of a landscape and the warm ones automatically jump into the foreground and create an illusion of perspective.
• Åsa encouraged us to try out different techniques of how to put the color on the paper: blow the color, let it run over the paper, let it drop etc. It was good to be reminded that it can be so helpful to play around with the material and just try out things.
• Composition was a big theme. In order to work with this we looked at what other artists had done and got inspiration for compositions from other paintings. I worked with Munch and Gaugin. It was inspiring to get a feeling of someone else's art and learn from their way of putting together an interesting composition.

Indian ink and Lars Lerin

At the end of the four weeks, we got to work a bit with Indian ink which was great but I would have needed more time to get into it.

In the mornings, Åsa usually took out a few art history books and gave us a short summary of some of the artists lives and what their art stands for. Through that, I discovered an inspiring Swedish artist called Lars Lerin that I definitely want to know more about! We looked at Cézanne, Renoir, Monet, Japanese painters, Rembrandt and others.

Other inspirations came from excursions to Grippsholmslott and the nature reserve “Stendörren”. The exhibition of Mamma Andersons art in the Grafikenshus close to Gripsholmslott was great. It was an tiny insight in the vast field of different techniques of prints. We also learned how to make a “passe partout”, a simple way of framing a painting with cart board as a material for the frame. Good to know!

Exhibition in Stockholm

On the last day, we all went to Stockholm and put up an exhibition with about two pieces of each one of us in a small window at the subway station Hornstull. It was a very nice ending of this great month and I honestly felt sorry that it was already over.

This month has been the perfect beginning for my individual year and a good preparation for the following week in Switzerland when I painted with my former art teacher.