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
I worked on days 4, 5, and 6 at the same sitting. It was late, and when I ran out of some of the paint colors on my palette, I made some marks with the knife and left it to dry overnight. The first layers are below.
Coming back to it, I added more cream and more of the soft earth tone. Again with the knife. I was not successful in creating an interesting texture, so I played, and played, just filling the paper with paint.
I scanned it. and thought about cutting it down. Finding an interesting section, and cropping it into a new piece of art. Or maybe cutting into long strips, and creating a triptych.
Played some more, made moons. There was a round shape on the right that inspired me. The moons are on their own transparent layer. Clipped top and bottom to fit the canvas.
Moons, Digital.
Decided they needed separation from the jumbled background layer. Added shadow shapes. I had to erase part of this shape, the moons are semi-transparent. I left them that way to show some of the texture from underneath.
Moon Shadows, Digital.
I copied a section from the background layer and pasted it strategically. The moons needed separation from the areas of the same moon color in the painting. I erased as needed so the edges could not be seen, then I blurred the edges, so they were even less noticeable. This is quick and easy, for this piece of “play”. I would do it differently for a more intentional piece of art.
Taupe Warmth, Digital.
On the first day of painting, I taped down the papers. The second day on this one, I had already taken the tape off. It left a messy edge, that I kinda like. This all was just for color play after all. Haha.
Finally, I thought why not add some birds to the mix. Another PNG, transparent layer. I added a color overlay to the black birds, it was just too harsh. A deeper shade of the moon shadows was just right.
If you have four minutes to kill, there is a video here that talks about working with layers in Photoshop. There are several short videos that break it down. Sort of a digital collage. LOL. Yes, I am thinking of you Nelvia McGrath! And Sea Dean! Haha.
See what you can do with your daring with color and your ignorance mixed with it. Charles Webster Hawthorne, American Painter, 1872-1930
My continuing fascination with color. Above is the untouched original. Below I increased the vibrancy in Photoshop and flipped the image. I like the stronger colors, but it feels slightly top-heavy to me.
I never would have guessed, how much I enjoy this color. Yellow ochre. I live with it daily. The huge canvas hanging, that is still waiting to become a painting. The small side table that needs more layers to become a pretty “wood” finish. The duvet. It’s warm. Soothing.
