Green Wanderings Paintings: How the Series Began and the Creative Process Behind It
For a long time, I wanted to create a whole collection of paintings connected by the same mood, colours, and made entirely with traditional materials. But getting there turned out to be more complicated than I expected. There was so much to figure out, from the idea itself to the materials I wanted to use. Today, I'd love to share with you how my series of sheep and summer landscapes began, and why I'm still happily working on it.
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Getting Comfortable with Bright Colours
I've actually been thinking about this project for a couple of years now. And looking back, I think it all started when I threw myself into experimenting with bright colours. I was making a lot of personal sketches and intentionally choosing colours that felt unusual to me. I simply wanted to get over my fear of bright colours. Because I really was afraid of them.
As I spent more and more time sketching, I started to feel uncomfortably limited without bright colours. Then I finally admitted to myself that I just hadn’t had much practice working with really bright colours or making them feel harmonious. I’ve always loved muted and limited colour palettes, and I still do. But I didn't like the idea that my artistic choices were shaped not only by my taste and my current vision, but also by fear. So I decided to do something about it and started making sketches for myself and trying bolder colour combinations, like these below.
During those sketching sessions, I was also sure that my "wild" colour experiments would ruin even the simplest sketch. So I mostly drew them on separate sheets of paper rather than in my sketchbook, just in case I needed to crumple them up and burn the evidence :)
The last sketch already felt visually closer to what I eventually developed in my current series of paintings. At some point, I just thought, “Hmm… what if I try making summer scenes specifically in green?”
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Finding the Right Mood and Ideas
As time went on, I found myself thinking more and more about what I wanted my future collection of summer paintings to express. I asked myself what I actually love about summer, and which memories have stayed with me over the years. Little by little, a few interesting answers began to appear.
The first thing that came to mind was all those Studio Ghibli films I've watched countless times and never seem to get tired of. Somehow, it's always summer in those worlds. But it never feels like exhausting heat. Instead, it's the kind of summer that feels warm and gentle, filled with vivid greens, bright blue skies, and the sea. The colour palette of Ghibli films became one of the inspirations for this series.
Then I realised I kept coming back to one particular trip to a small village near Wroclaw, in Poland. It was a sunny weekday in summer, and as we wandered through the quiet streets lined with beautiful little houses, we hardly met anyone. Everything was so still that it almost felt as if nobody lived there at all.
The village was surrounded by wide open fields and a small lake. After walking for a couple of hours, we came across an old industrial building. It wasn't the kind of red-brick factory you might imagine. It looked more like a grain elevator or something, with storage buildings and other industrial structures around it. There wasn't a single person there either.
For some reason, that whole place has stayed with me ever since. Both the village and that abandoned-looking factory carried this beautiful contradiction: they felt peaceful and forgotten at the same time, joyful yet slightly melancholic. I've always treasured moments where different emotions exist together like that. I think they make the world feel richer and more layered. And somehow, they're the moments that stay with me the longest.
The idea of wandering animals in streets and fields wasn’t new to me. Besides cats and dogs, I’ve always loved drawing chickens (like in this art print) and sheep (like my Advent Challenge series). In many of my works, I tend to imagine animals and insects simply following their curiosity, so I decided to continue that idea in this new series of paintings.
And that's how the idea slowly came together. I wanted to paint two sheep travelling through the countryside on warm summer days, wandering through places where you're never quite sure whether anyone still lives in those little houses...
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From Sketch to Painting
Once I had the ideas, I would start each piece with a tiny thumbnail sketch, just to figure out where everything might sit in the composition and how to make the story feel more interesting. Then, after choosing good heavy paper, I made a more polished and detailed sketch, and moved on to the long process of painting.
The piece above is my first attempt in this series. It turned out a bit rougher than the later works, but I still think it looks quite well.
This one, however, felt only partly successful to me. I really like how the abandoned tram and the building (which looks like a grain elevator) turned out, but the sheep and the ground still don’t quite feel right. The grass, in particular, makes the whole piece feel a bit too heavy, almost like there’s too much green happening at once. I think I might repaint it one day.
The last two scenes from this series, shown below, feel to me more confident and visually engaging.
It’s nice to see that the whole series is gradually taking shape as a set of narrative visual stories. In these stories, we follow two sheep, two friends travelling through a quiet countryside, coming across little discoveries, unexpected moments, and different characters along the way.
Across all four pieces, there’s a lot I’m happy with, not only in terms of storytelling but also style and technique. First of all, I've finally found a balanced way to make bright colours work for me, not only in quick sketches, but in this collection of paintings I’ve been slowly developing. For me, that feels like a small win. I also really love the darker areas in these pieces. I’ve always been drawn to shadows, and here they turned out especially rich with the mix of black ink and acrylic paint. To me, it ended up quite authentic and expressive.
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The Feeling Behind It All
Even with all the different things I discovered while making these artworks, what matters to me most (the real reason I love this series) is the feeling. What do I feel when I look at these landscapes and stories? There’s this sense of calm that slowly settles over my usually restless mind, and a soft kind of nostalgia for summer days.
I also feel a sense of joy when I realise how beautiful nature can be, and at the same time a quiet sadness, because the beauty of summer always passes so quickly. And I also wonder what these sheep might be talking about, and where they’re heading next… I hope something similar comes up for you too when you look at these works — something more personal, something only yours.
I’m still working on this series. The scenes with the kite and the watermelon will definitely be included in the collection for future giclée prints. For now, I’m planning at least two more paintings with different little story moments.
🍊 Questions For You: It would mean a lot to hear your thoughts on this series. Do they resonate with you? What feels interesting or maybe unexpected? Do you think anyone actually lives in these little houses? Or is this some imaginary world where everything belongs to the animals? How do you feel about this blue-green colour palette?
And if you have any questions of your own, feel free to ask! I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
Thank you so much for being here and for taking the time to read this! 🐑❤️
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Daria Danilova
artist, illustrator, graphic designer
