I know I should draw daily, just like I brush my teeth or stretch my body, but I don't. I still do art daily. It's just more likely to be splashing paint on paper or stitching bits of fabric together with no end goal in mind, no sense of direction, no finished image in my mind. I love to dwell in sponteneity and improvisation. It feels less like an artists' chore (sketching is like eating my veggies every day) and more like just having fun (i.e. eating that second square of chocolate).
Lately, lacking any new direction or inspiration I have merely been doing small abstracts just to play with colour and design. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, and sometimes I work them to death and toss them, but not before flipping them over and painting the other side. I have been known to save the torn pieces of one painting and stitch them on to another one. And when all else fails I cut them into 2" x 6" strips and make bookmarks out of them. Waste not, want now. Good paper and paint are expensive.
Some small abstracts:
If I want to use some computer skills I go into Corel and crop an even smaller section, then play with colour variations, as with the two pieces above. That way, if I want to recreate them on a canvas on a bigger scale I can see which colour choices work best:
I definitely could see this one below on a large canvas, and the colour has much more originality than the original blue version above.
Meh.......
Not a fan of pink but it plays nicely against the aqua and rust, with the blue softening those odd mixtures down a bit.
Sometimes I add onto something I have already done, like stitching a scrap of old cyanotyped paper onto another painting:
Then cropping it and using my Corel program to desaturate the colour:
Dull, but I could make it pop on a giant scale by using bright red on that stripe.
Or I take another section of the same work and using a Watercolour program with a bit of clone tooling
it takes on an Impressionist quality.:
These are all just exercises but they help me train my eye. The beauty of abstract work is that it keeps me from being distracted by subject matter and lets me focus strictly on the elements of design. They could turn into large paintings, or even large art quilts, if I was so inspired. You never know. Unless I get distracted ......
And occasionally I put a bird on it:
