7 Exciting Exercises in Abstract Art
May 16, 2010 Art General
Want to get in touch with your abstract side but not sure how? Here are a few different exercises to get you thinking about form and space, shape, emotion and composition.
1. Paint with Feeling
Many abstract works are expressive, as in they express something, often an emotion. Practice making marks on a page. What would an angry mark look like? Now a happy mark. Experiment with different kinds of lines and marks that express some kind of feeling. Then, pick a feeling and focus on creating an expressive painting. Think about the types of shapes you will use, the types of marks and the colours.
2. Paint a Word
This is similar to the first exercise, but here you’re choosing an abstract word that you can “illustrate.” Challenge yourself to make a drawing or painting that refers to your word without using explicit pictures. A good example for a word is time. How can you represent time without using the image of a clock? What would it look like?
3. Repetition
Another common element of abstraction is repetition. Choose an image or a shape to repeat throughout your piece. Draw the outline of your image and overlap the edges. Some questions to ask yourself are: do my shapes touch the edge? are they all the same size or are they different? Start filling in the resulting shapes in your chosen colour palette, but don’t stop there. Re-work some of the lines and edges, focus on creating a cohesive image.
4. Give Yourself Rules
A random set of arbitrary rules will give you a starting place and provide you with a guideline for your abstract work. For example, you could tell yourself that you must draw 100 dots. They can be any size, they can be any colour, they can be all the same or all different. You can draw whatever else you want, but you must somehow incorporate 100 dots. Give this a try and let your creativity go wild.
5. Collage
Collage is another great way to let loose and experiment. In this situation, you’re using an existing image (either your own work or from a magazine) and abstracting the image beyond recognition. Tear up your image and glue it down to your paper, using the shapes and lines to guide the composition. The great thing about this is that you know the colours already work, now you’re just re-arranging them. Again, don’t stop there! Re-work your collage with some drawn or painted elements.
6. Crop it Down
This exercise also uses a found image. This could be a photograph, an image from a magazine, or your own work. Cut two L-shaped pieces of paper to form a frame and use these to find a composition that you like. The key here is to crop the image so closely that it becomes simply a combination of line, form and colour. Now you have a reference to draw from. You can be as faithful, or unfaithful as you like with the colours. The example above was taken from a photo of many houses, cropped right down so that it’s unrecognizable.
7. Step-by-Step
If you’re still stuck, you can try these step-by-step instructions for abstract art. It’s meant for kids, but don’t let that deter you! This is a cool exercise to loosen you up and make you think outside your box. You can always come up with your own instructions and see what happens.
The important thing in abstract art is that you open yourself up to what is possible. You may need to let go of some of your prejudices about what is and isn’t art, but when you do, you will discover a whole new world of art!
Also check out my article about understanding abstract art.
Tags: abstract, art, art tips, Creativity
Understanding Abstract Art (Through the art of Mondrian)
May 1, 2010 Art General
I’ll be the first to admit that understanding abstract art can be challenging. Even as an abstract artist, I’ve stood in front of paintings and haven’t been able to “get it.”
The thing is, sometimes abstract art takes a little work to understand.
Realism can be more immediate. When we look at a picture and recognize it right away, we can understand it. That’s not to say that realism doesn’t have additional layers of meaning and context beyond what is instantly visible, but that initial understanding can be a door way to a deeper understanding.
Abstracts are less immediate and less accessible.
How, then, can we understand abstract art?
There are two kinds of abstract art. There is the kind that takes an image and pushes it out of the realm of realism. The subject is still recognizable, but doesn’t look the way it would in the real world. Something, the colour, proportions, perspective, has been altered to “abstract” the image.
The other kind of abstract art has been abstracted so much that it’s no longer recognizable. This is called non-representational art because it doesn’t represent anything; it doesn’t look like anything.
This painting by Mondrian is both representation and abstract. We can recognize the form of a tree, but it’s not as it would be in nature.
This piece, also by Mondrian, is a non-representational abstraction because it doesn’t refer to any recognizable subject.
An important part of understanding abstract art is understanding the artist. Different artists use abstraction to achieve different goals. As Lori Mcnee points out, some artists express feelings and emotions through abstraction. Other artists, like myself, use abstraction to explore the formal qualities of art: colour, texture, shape, etc.
The interesting thing about many abstract artists is that they began as representational artists, then turned to abstraction. This is true of Mondrian, Picasso and Matisse.
Take Mondrian, for example.
Take a few minutes to watch this amazing video of Mondrian’s art. This video, tweeted by @DenverArtsyGal, shows Mondrian’s work in chronological order, each piece morphing into the next. The video very clearly demonstrates how Mondrian made the transition from representational artist to non-representational artist.
When we look at his early work and compare it to the paintings he’s most famous for, it’s hard to see any commonalities. Mondrian was obsessed with purity: the purity of form, the purity of line, the purity of colour. For him, the purest colours were red, yellow and blue. The pures line was the straight line. His entire art practice was based on a search for the purest painting possible.
The video shows how Mondrian slowly eliminated elements from his art that didn’t fit with his idea of purity. We can almost see his decision making process, and the way his goal informed the direction of his art.
These kinds of insights into the artist’s intentions can help us understand abstract art. Reading an artist statement can give us many clues, but what if there is no statement? This is where the work comes in! Don’t let laziness prevent you from appreciating abstraction!
Here are some questions to ask yourself when viewing abstract art:
- What is my immediate response? Do I like it or not? Why?
- What emotions does the work evoke?
- What do I feel (in a physical sense)?
- What types of colours are used? What does this communicate?
- What materials are used? Why might the artist choose these materials?
- Are brush strokes visible? What kind? How does that affect the art?
- How did the artist create this? Can you tell?
- Does the composition draw you in, or block you out?
- Is the work inviting or off-putting?
By examining these elements, we can attempt to figure out what the artist is communicating. You might not be exactly right, but you will definitely gain a better understanding of what the painting means to you, and therefore a better apppreciation of the artist’s efforts.
How do you feel about abstract art? Do you get it? Is there anything to get?
Juxtaposition: Abstract Acrylic and Realistic Oil
Apr 27, 2010 On my Easel
Sometimes, working on two very different projects can be interesting.
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted about what’s on my easel, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been busy!
The other day I was working in the studio. When I stepped back, I saw these two paintings side by side and realized what a cool juxtaposition they made! They are completely different, opposites in more than one respect, and yet they relate to each other.
I like to pick out parallels between works that don’t seem to have anything in common. Here we have a blue, abstract, geometric painting in acrylic on the left, and an orange, realistic, oil painting on the right. Looking at them together makes it easy to see the similarities: bright, saturated colour, crisp lines, flat shapes. All the things that interest me!
It’s interesting because the dominant colours are not only opposites on the colour wheel, they are my two favorite colours. When trying a new technique or working with a new medium, I will always reach for either orange or blue. I am drawn to blue because it’s such a versatile colour, and to orange because of its intensity.
This piece is a continuation, almost a distillation, of the work I was doing earlier this year. Before, I was deconstructing paintings that I had completed as finished works.
Here, I have started with a sheet of gessoed canvas and painted flat, geometric shapes. Then I cut the canvas into 25 squares, as I did before, re-arranged them and painted more squares. The squares were glued to a piece of board, which was then torn apart.
This process combines the shapes and colours of my constructed paintings with the form and process of my reincarnated paintings.
The African sunset is actually a commission. My friend is getting married this summer and has asked me to do this painting, which will hang behind the bride and groom at the reception. The entire wedding will be African themed, hence the African sunset.
For this painting, I did everything right! I did a colour study and a value study to make sure I worked out any problems before digging into the real thing. This really helped me to achieve the illumination of the sun and to understand how to paint the shadows properly. If you go to my portrait website, you can see the painting studies as well as work-in-progress shots of the painting.
People seem to think it’s strange that I do both tight, realistic work and geometric abstractions. I stand by my theory that each is necessary to me, rewarding and challenging different parts of my brain. Especially when you see the two styles together, it’s evident that each informs the other.
Do you work in more than one style? How does that affect your art?
Tags: abstract, acrylic painting, oil painting, paintings
Experimenting with Deconstruction and Another Portrait
Dec 11, 2009 On my Easel
As usual, I’m working on a couple of projects. A major theme lately has been portraits. I’ve been super busy because of Christmas. I thought I was working on my last commission of the year when I was approached about one more.
It’s a last minute request, and a big one. I am doing a large portrait of an entire family, twelve people in total. I’m still not sure how big the drawing will be, it all depends on the size of the faces. I meet with the client tomorrow to discuss details. It’s kind of a special request that I might not have taken otherwise. Assuming I can get started tomorrow, I’m going to have to draw at least one face a day to finish it before Christmas. Not impossible, but it means I’m going to have to manage my time very well!
In the meantime, this is the drawing that I need to finish before I start my big project. This drawing is for my boss, Dana. She previously commissioned a portrait of her partner running a marathon. These are her kids and this will be a Christmas gift for her mother!
I’ve had a little bit of time to work on some abstract pieces lately too. One idea I’m really excited about is the idea of deconstructing wooden furniture and turning it into an art object. What interests me about this is the idea that the arrangement of pieces is what makes an object what it is. By taking it apart and rearranging it, it stops being an object, even though all the pieces are still present.
My other venture has been the deconstruction of my paintings on canvas (as in the first picture). These works had kind of stalled and had started feeling un-interesting to me. The act and process of painting them was a very valuable experience for me, but as art the paintings weren’t doing much. I started by cutting a canvas into twenty-five squares and re-arranging them. The act of gluing down and ripping up stretched the canvas, creating an interesting texture. I’m still not sure where I’m going with this, but it’s always liberating to destroy your own work!
Three Abstractions
Sep 28, 2009 On my Easel
I thought I’d give you all a little update on what I’ve been working on recently. My time has been split between three very different abstract paintings. I love working on more than one piece at a time. Each piece informs the others and your ideas can bounce around. The painting process becomes more fluid. Not to mention, you have something to work on while one painting is drying!
You may remember the canvas I cut up. Well, here it is in its current form. I rearranged the pieces, layering them on top of each other, then painted the light blue rectangular shapes. Then I rearranged the canvas again to form this composition. I thinned the oil paint down with poppy oil, which was a mistake! At one point, my paintings were drying too fast and was I advised to add poppy oil to make them wet for longer. Well, for some reason it had the opposite effect and the painting dried within hours. That was what I was expecting this time, but it’s been days and the paint is still wet! I’m waiting for it to dry so I can work out the next step.
I’m at a bit of a loss at what to do with this one next. My instinct would be to collage these pieces somehow: glue them together or glue them to a backing. The problem is that the glue wouldn’t stick to the oil paint. Until I figure out a way to put the pieces back together I can’t really do anything else! I considered sewing, but that has so many historical connotations I’m not sure I want to go there!
This piece is entirely different. I was in the middle of reading my book about Rothko when this idea hit. Here I’m using thinned out oil paints to produce flat, transparent shapes. The plan is to keep applying these washes, alternating between the colours to create a sense of layers and depth. The drawing line was something I added after the fact using an oil stick.
To get the composition, I worked from a paper maquette. I painted shapes on the paper, cut it into smaller squares and rearranged them, then painted more shapes on top. The idea is that these squares could be endlessly rearranged to provide a random, geometric composition.
I really like this process of producing a composition and I think it could be used in future pieces, but I’m not sure this painting is going in the right direction. It’s really just an experiment at this point. The colours were inspired by one of Rothko’s works, but I have to admit that I am more drawn to the colours in the maquette.
And finally, here is the insanity that is my living room floor!
My other half went away for a few days and this is what happened! I tried combining the ideas from the other pieces (transparent layers and collaging), using the same process I did for my other abstract paintings. The difference being that the other paintings were made of wood veneer while this is made from cardboard.
I’m really enjoying how the cardboard works. It has all the characteristics that I liked about the wood (it’s lightweight and it tears easily) but it’s not as awkward or painful to work with. I like the way it curls a bit when it’s wet and I will be able to achieve much more depth without the heaviness of the wood.
This is done in acrylic paintings, which makes it much easier in a practical sense. It dries faster, less worry about getting paint everywhere, and I know I’ll be able to glue it eventually.
I’m sort of at a crossroads as you can see, trying to figure out where to go next. Each of these paintings is exploring a different idea, or a different form of the same ideas. Of the three, I think I’m most excited about the third one, but we’ll see where I go from here!
Tags: abstract, acrylic painting, oil painting
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