"To succeed as an artist, knowledge and skill are important, but exuberance is more important" ... Eleanor Blair
Abstracting a Realistic Composition
I have been experimenting recently with modifying realistic subjects to stylized and near abstracts. It is all about shapes … but I’ve found that the composition should be chosen thoughtfully. For instance, I’ve had more success with shapes that interlock and overlap. Good directional lines and variation in shape sizes is helpful also.
Here are my rough value sketches. You can see how I went from a representational image … to a more stylized composition … and finally almost total abstract.
First the representational landscape was done “wet-on-wet” with big brushes. Pigments used were cobalt blue, raw sienna, burnt sienna and a bit of prussian blue. The whole sheet was wet and worked background to foreground “wet-on-wet” with large brushes … quickly but decisively.
I used split-complementary triad combinations of pigments for each of these abstract representational paintings. Colours of choice in this 1st one are: winsor red, sap green, and prussian blue. The major colour chord … dominant colour is winsor red. I began the underpainting “wet-in-wet” but them painted “dry-on-dry” and softening only a few edges. I believe this gives more power to the lovely abstracted shapes. Here also, I used bigger flat brushes and bold strokes.
For my 2nd attempt, I chose a split complementary triad of azo yellow, permanent magenta and French ultramarine blue … azo yellow being the dominant colour.
The 3rd painting was done with another split complementary triad. This time I used orange lake, violet bluish, and blue cyan … with the mother colour being orange lake.
For the 4th version I chose a warm yellow … gamboge as the dominant colour chord with cobalt blue and dioxazine (winsor) violet. In all instances I was careful to chose split complementary triads with which I could create strong, dark values … as well as bright, alive colours.
These were lots of fun … a real blast … to do. I thoroughly enjoyed the experiment and intend to do more soon. I hope it inspires you to try some too.
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