I enjoy painting these minimalist abstracts. I did not think of them with that term before. But it is a perfect description. Thank you Suzette! I am interested in the minimalist movement. But I am not sure I could ever follow it wholeheartedly. I am a collector of, a few things. LOL. I think most artists are in one way or another.
These start with color. For me. Mood. What feels right. I choose the colors, then think about arrangement and proportion. I tend to go bottom heavy. Weighted. Darker colors below, lighter on top. I think part of that is from my training as a framer. LOL.
For the center bands, I tape off the area to be painted. It ranks even with blending in ease. With blending you have less control. With taping, you are at the mercy of Murphy’s law. And your tape. Haha.
I place two pieces of tape together, so that there is very little actually sticking to the piece. One inch tape, offset slightly lengthwise. On day 7, the green side came out almost perfect. But I had a lot of teeny tiny touching up to do on the buff side. I had to pull out the magnifier. LOL. Day 8 was almost perfect, except for a big blob of buff on the blue.
Whatever the medium, there is the difficulty, challenge, fascination and often productive clumsiness of learning a new method: the wonderful puzzles and problems of translating with new materials. Helen Frankenthaler
A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience. Mark Rothko
Cha-cha-changes. Haha. Many in this piece. The twigs had green leaves, that disappeared against the background. I outlined them, still no good. So I painted them the same dark as the branch. Much better. The green balls have turquoise spots that show up much better in person. The fact that the image is saved for web, low-res, makes it harder to see them. The greens did not want to work. I added crayon marks to the leaves, they highlighted the stripe texture. Maybe if I add another layer of that, get those leaves darker, or brighter. Hmm.
I used orange crayon for the swirls, it wasn’t as dark as I had hoped. I used a peachy-pink paint pen, and that looks great in person as well. Here, not so much. I outlined some of the spots on the vase, then decided to darken some of the spots. While doing that, my Posca burped all over the bottom of tha vase. HUGE black yuck. LOL. I mopped it up with a paper towel, and there was so much paint, I stamped it on the vase as a repair. I desaturated the image in Photoshop, and the details pop, as you can see below.
On day three I worked too far ahead of myself. After laying down the loose lacey shapes, I planned to place some leaves, and secondary flowers. Oops! Haha. I went straight to the main attraction. There is a warm white pattern on the background. I wanted subtle, well. It’s almost invisible.
Day 3 texture close-up
When I thought I was done, something just didn’t feel right. I thought the bouquet was already messy, and adding splatter would junk it up. I looked. Looked some more. Hmm.
Then I showed it to Christine Brooks. Voila! She kindly suggested that maybe I needed a table. DUH! Then she suggested it be green. I wasn’t sure about the green. After my day 2 green flubs. But I went with it. I think I like that green tablecloth best in this piece. Thanks Christine! You saved my bee-hind!
I had planned to stop this series at 3. Well. Maybe one more. After cutting a wonky vase, (the top is angled too), I had petal shaped scrapes. Ah-ha! I have really been flying by the set of my pants with all of these. Just making it up as I go. I really should do some preliminaries.
The stamped flowers were done in yellow. I added a bit of green to the white blooms, an attempt at depth. Oh, and the white was applied with a bunch of Q-tips banded together. That was fun. I added splatter at the end. Yellow. Using up the paint in my palette. Well that was a yucky mistake. DUH, yellow and blue make green. Yeah.
Photoshop to the rescue again. I changed the yellow to a whitish-yellowish pale. Not great. But better. I selected only the background areas, so the yellow splatters remain on the vase and blooms. And yes, I went a bit too heavy. FIrst too light, and then. Bam. Too much.
I used saran wrap to get the texture on the background. So fun. I used my heat gun to quicken the drying. That may be why there is a sandy texture on the piece. Or maybe that happens , or maybe it is the paint. No matter. I think it is great. I’ll see if I can manage to do it again.
Day 4 texture close-up
Wow… even Gauguin!
What still concerns me the most is: am I on the right track, am I making progress, am I making mistakes in art? Paul Gauguin
My July watercolor diary. I placed my favorites in the middle. I am honestly pleased with just about every piece. There are two I’d call do overs. The florals at the bottom. I was trying to paint like someone else. A new method. Lesson learned. Haha.
I painted 8 others. Two of which are complete duds. I thought they could be fixed. But no, they fought me to the end. The rest are abstract landscapes and they might make an appearance in the future. I attempted another coneflower for a grand finale. Haha. Instead, some quiet, spindly little wildflowers. But I am exceedingly happy with the vase. Haha. Silver lining.
Thanks everyone, for following along. It is always a JOY to hear from you. Thank you!
