Tag: techniques for painting

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Now is the time to paint!

I am about to go on a vacation for a week or so.  I thought, ‘what would I write if this might become my final article on abstract painting’?  Knowing that beginners as well as more advanced artists read these, I would say to both, ‘Now is the time to paint!’  If you are an artist then paint.  I have said that often.  Don’t wait for inspiration. You have a canvas or board before you, brushes, thinner, a pallete and pigments….paint a square and then next to it paint another square and then relate them to one another.  There, you have made a start. See where it takes you.  How good are you at painting circles within a circle?  Paint one.  See where that goes.03

What is important here after all?  The arts, your own progression, you expressing yourself, your experiencing inner feelings, the manifestations of those feelings!  Now more than ever as our civilization becomes more and more mechanized, more absorbed in the vast internet we can easily lose our own development and our own inner fruition.  Art is there to serve that great hunger and that great need.   Art is personal expression and personal interpretation.  Much in the way that dreams are to reflect back our feelings and experiences unconsiously,  art serves to do the same only consciously and deliberately.  The curious thing is when the ‘border’ is reached between the un-conscious and the conscious, between form and spiritual or…when we are able to manifest (bring forth) what we are trying to understand internally.  Art is intuitively a form of discovery.  That is its supreme purpose.

Now is the time to paint….now is the time to discover.  Great themes, perfect diagrams, wonderful effects are irrelevant and even stand as blockades.  Don’t foolishly wait for weeks for them to come.  By painting you will inevitably become better with your brushstrokes.  You will learn more about mixing colors, about balance, about transforming shapes but most importantly, you will discover yourself.   Like peeling an onion you will discover what is vital for you and even what is essential for you as a progressing human being.  Abstract painting is the perfect vehicle.

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Passages in oil painting abstracts

It helps me and it may help you to consider your painting in progress, not as a whole but in terms of co-joined areas.  I prefer to call them passages.  These so-called passages in oil painting abstracts are important as individual units and when these units are reasonably intact then they can contribute to the whole more effectively.  I am sure there are parallels in the other arts.   I know music refers to passages of a piece of music which ends and flows into another part or passage of symphony.DSC02543.JPG

Especially in large paintings it is easy to become a little lost.  I have found that going back and working carefully on getting one section properly in balance then it allows progress to another section.  It is better to do this than to have an entire painting which is only partially rendered.  I will often develop these passages somewhat at the same time – that is dabble with one and then dabble with another to bring them along at roughly the same pace.  In this way the painting begins to take shape and the whole begins to be recognized.

It is important to study a painting and determine strong or weak areas (passages).  Inevitably you will find some passages as you go along are quite fine and are standing on their own and they have even successfully integrated with the rest of the painting.  When all the components are integrated then the painting is of course, nearing completion.  By thinking in terms of passages or sections you can visually breakdown a painting and concentrate on getting that one section correct or at least develop it further to bring it up to the level of the rest of the painting.