Search This Blog

Friday, June 15, 2012

How to paint Abstract Paintings

This time I'll be more honest. Come with me on my journey. I have no idea if this will become a work of art or not. You'll see each step I take. I'll try to explain what my feelings are that cause me to make certain choices. I'll explain my decisions from the standpoint of critiquing - i.e. the critic/juror will talk about the decisions from a design/composition standpoint, but, ultimately, the feelings will win out. Frankly, I don't give a flying fig what the "critic" thinks. If I'm satisfied/happy/gratified/content/pleased, what have you, that's what counts in the end, and I'll tell you why I'm happy with the work, even if it flies in the face of conventional composition! If it doesn't work, I'll try to figure out why. Help me if you choose. Your comments are valued.

Here we go! I haven't painted much over the past year. Lots of excuses - no real justification. Fear, mainly. I've been quite successful. What if I've "lost it"?!! Time to get my butttttt in the chair - actually, I can't paint in a chair - have to be standing up. Need room to move!

So, back to basics. Play with mark-making and gesture - MY gestures.

Here are two starts. The first was so pretty and safe I couldn't do anything to it, so I needed to do more - push the composition beyond "cruciform"; get down and dirty!
The next one pushes composition beyond "safe", but it's difficult not to do what needs to be done to make it "safe"!
 Since the first one is still "precious", I'll work on the second one, the "throw-away". Need to push some colour around so I'll get comfortable working on it. Pastels are wonderful for this. You can eliminate a lot of the colour if you don't like it, or paint on it and the paint will be influenced by the pastels, picking up and blending colour unpredictably.

Continuing to add colour, intensifying some reds, adding complementary turquoise - not so satisfying - some anthraquinone blue, maybe.....
More to come.......get your buttttt in the chair and push some paint around!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment