Heroes take journeys, confront dragons, and discover the treasure of their true selves. Carol Pearson
For some time now I’ve been dipping my toe into the realm of abstracts with various digital tools from Adobe photoshop to the Zenbrush3 app and displaying them in PhotoArt Friday posts. But I’ve hesitated to venture with paint and brush having only had mediocre accomplishments with art from school days. And besides, abstract art with mixed media is a steep learning curve, just from the technicalities alone.
Last October I bit the bullet and bought some basic art supplies, signed up to a couple of Udemy courses and searched YouTube for artists to follow. Three months later I’ve started to hang some of my art on the wall if only to study what works in terms of colour, tones, shapes, line etc. It’s not been practical to take them down so what follows are only from my practice scrapbooks etc, scanned rather than photographed.
Sometimes I do acrylic paint lifts to clean the palette and then seek shape and form within the smears or I might focus more on lines and mark making exercises over a simple wash.
Grid journaling is one exercise I really like – doing 6 small pieces together, that relate but retain some individuality – it avoids the blank page phobia too! The idea is to do them without much thought, briskly, especially when adding collage
Rapid-collage prevents any elevating movement toward a fixed goal. To ‘be nowhere’ is to let oneself be. ~ Joshua L. Goldberg
I find collage the most challenging so some days I put aside the paints and just cut, tear and stick papers in some sort of assemblage of colour and shape. And with so much practice art that did not quite work out, it can be reused as here in this collage with acrylic ink shapes and line for added definition, direction and dimension.
Just recently I’ve purchased a Gellplate for monoprints – it takes a bit of initial maintenance with additional oil (baby or mineral) to give a smooth surface but I rather like the lace patching. The prints works best on thinner, cheaper mediums like printer paper or tissue.
This my first attempt with 4 print layers and masking with abstract shapes I roughly cut out and an ivy botanical from the garden.
What does not work as a complete artwork in itself can be recycled for collage, or be given additional mark making and paint embellishments. Sometimes only a small piece within an abstract work will be selected to frame.
One on my favourite artists on YouTube is Chris Loud and I recently purchased his 50 abstract warm-up painting prompts. These 2 exercises were done, one after the other, following the instruction of using just 3 colours (plus B&W) entitled ‘X marks the spot’ and ‘Directions’ to be completed in 15 minutes. I only managed the broad basics in that time and needed more to complete the details but its a start.
On Wednesday it was the Chinese Year of the snake. And early on in my abstract art adventure this snake-like creature emerged perhaps because it’s predicted to be a good year for dragons like myself (and the featured image ‘dragon’ also recently emerged).
Dragons’ bold nature may clash with the Snake’s focus on introspection and strategy, embracing this energy can turn challenges into opportunities for growth and success. Unleash your inner innovation through creativity. This is a great year to explore new ideas and approaches.
Protoart Friday: Having some pre-weekend fun with abstract art ventures
[Renamed from PhotoArt because no photos, photoshop or digital effects are used in the making of these originals!]
PoetryPix 