abstract artwork Archives – Celebrating Color

To Do List for Art Show

January 13, 2017 By Carol McIntyre

It was two weeks before my solo show “Unveiling the Invisible: Abstracts Sparking Your Imagination,” and my head was spinning with things I needed to get done. Feeling overwhelmed, I finally sat done and wrote out my “to do” list — again. I had written one out a few months earlier, but now it was time to know exactly all of the nitty-gritty things that I needed to get done.

Once the list was completed, I felt both relieved and discouraged. I started questioning whether I could actually check everything off the list within 14 days! After I took a deep breath, I felt more in control and confident. Flying by the seat of pants is not how I like to operate. Here is my studio a few days before I started packing 19 paintings.

What did my “To Do List” for the Art Show look like?

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How does a Hawk Inspire an Abstract Painting?

January 4, 2017 By Carol McIntyre

What inspires an abstract painting? As with realistic or impressionistic paintings, inspiration can come from a multitude of places/sources. Up until now, my abstracts evolved as they developed — as I applied layers of paint and texture. Often I would be many layers into a painting before its “voice” or message started to become apparent and I began to have a conversation with it.

This approach changed when I saw a stunning Cooper’s hawk photograph by a Facebook friend. With his permission, I used this image as my inspiration.

My Steps in Creating this Abstract Painting:

After I prepped my 24×36 panel with textured gesso, I then mixed colors for the color scheme I intended to use in the painting. I always determine my color palette before I begin painting. If I do not do this, it turns into a mess and I am not a happy camper. Some painters believe that this is limiting, I find it liberating!

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How Do You Paint Your Canvas Edges? A Step-by-Step Demo

November 19, 2015 By Carol McIntyre

Do you paint your canvas edges? Have you noticed the increased popularity of wrapped canvases during the past couple of years? Though the deeper canvases, commonly called gallery wrapped canvases, are slightly more expensive for the artist, they do save us the expense of a frame. Also, as the styles of painting trend toward more abstract, mixed media and contemporary, the gallery wrapped canvas conveys a more modern design that works well in most home and office interiors.

As I have wandered through galleries inspecting the painted edges of numerous paintings, I have been quite surprised by the wide range of care – from poor to exquisite – artists have taken in painting the edges of their gallery wrapped canvases or deep panel boards.

After unsatisfactory online research for resources about painting canvas edges, I embarked on my own trial and error journey to figure out how to achieve the quality of presentation I wanted. A clean professional look of my canvas edges is important to me. Below I outline my process.

Step-by-Step Demonstration of Painting Canvas Edges

One caveat: because I do not like the manufactured texture of canvas, I gesso all of my canvases/boards irrespective of the edges.

1. After I apply the first layer of gesso with a brush and it has dried, I then paint the edges and overlap the front of the canvas with an acrylic middle-gray paint. See photo below. By the way, this middle gray makes it easier to paint the final color of the edges after the painting is finished, be it darker or lighter.

jknm

2. For this particular canvas, I wanted the edge to literally ‘frame’ the painting, so I wanted the gray to overlap the edge onto the painting surface about 3/8th of an inch. (See example at end of post of a finished painting using this overlapped framed idea.) To give my eye a guide, I drew a pencil line 5/16th of an inch from the edge using a favorite matting tool I have as demonstrated in the photo above.

Why is the space wider than my desired 3/8th? Pencil lines can often show through paint, so I wanted the line to get covered up with the next layer of gesso.

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Simplistic Isn’t Easy: Daily Painting Lesson

October 8, 2015 By Carol McIntyre

During my recent daily painting challenge, I decided to further explore the painting style of abstracting still lifes. I had just started on this new style a few weeks before the 30-day challenge began. I wanted to see what my results would be when I truly simplified my subject.

For most of my painting years – over 25 – I have painted predominantly representational work. A few years ago I began fusing realism with abstraction as evident in “Getting Back Into the Game.” As you can see, the abstract areas are mainly shapes, colors and textures. They are not the abstraction of an object or subject.

“Getting Back Into the Game”

In “Focused Alignment,” you can again see how I painted the hands and the vertebrae rather realistically and the surrounded them with abstraction.

“A Focused Alignment”

With this new painting style I am not only simplifying the subject, as seen below, I am also painting it flat. In my previous representational and abstract work I have always intended to make my subjects appear as three dimensional as possible. I created images that encouraged the viewer to want to enter into the picture plane.

In this next style I am experimenting with my brain is required to look at my subject from a totally different perspective. I am doing four things I am not accustomed to doing: 1.) simplifying the subject; 2.) using colors that are not realistic; 3.) flattening the subject; and 4.) creating a whimsical theme of the subject. [Read more…]

Abstracting Objects is a Brain Twister

August 20, 2015 By Carol McIntyre

Learning about abstracting objects was the objective of the enlightening workshop I took this past weekend from Annie O’Brien Gonzales , courtesy of Kimberly Conrad’s Gallery.

As you may or may not remember, I am in the mists of an artistic transition; this means that I am exploring different painting techniques. One of them is described in my recent blog post “Painted Outside of Your Box Lately?”. I thought it would be interesting to learn about Annie’s approach to abstracting still lifes because it would be my first abstract workshop.

Up to this point in my painting career, all of my learning about painting abstracts has been self-taught. My abstractions come out of my head while I am in dialogue with the painting. You can view them in my series “Abstracts With Depth.” I also love to fuse realism with abstractions in my “Windows Into Your Imagination,” but this workshop was a completely different artistic approach to abstraction.

The process for abstracting objects went approximately as follows:

First, a random under painting was applied to cover up the white surface. By the way, I often start my paintings similar to this. Hence, this process was not unfamiliar to me though it was a tad scruffier than I usually do.
Then we identified a still life or photograph for our inspiration. I chose an advertisement from a magazine.
Next I had to decide on the orientation of my 24″x30″ board. I then painted in a very rough composition using line. You can see it in yellow ochre.

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