The Challenge for May: Abstract

Our challenge for this month is to do an abstract work of art.

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Donna Vines

I have always enjoyed looking at Abstract art but painting it is not easy.  It has to evoke an emotion, a feeling, something beyond a recognizable thing.  The more I thought about how to approach this the more I realized it is all in the colors to me.  I looked at several artists then looked through my photos to find a mood.  I finally chose a fall mountain scene because it looked so vibrant, alive and hopeful.

Vermont in the Fall
9x12 oil

Donnavinesart.Etsy.com


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Jean Thomas

This is an abstract landscape that I made up from a sketch. My purpose here was to experiment with watercolor and try to get a wide range of value. The original is about 7" x 9".

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Abstract was a totally new idea in the art world when painters attempted to render a piece with no recognizable subject matter. The goal was to provoke a certain feeling and most art enthusiasts just didn't get it. "Radical, my kid could do it, just paint thrown on" were some of the oft heard reactions.  While times have changed I'm one who will tell you that good abstract art is much harder than painting something we can all identify.  Try painting an emotion (and no fair using flowers or a sunshine.)  I can't really get there but it is fun trying.  My piece definitely has discernible objects in it altho my husband and I see totally different things.  Maybe I got closer than I thought!

14 x 11, acrylic
Cindy Michaud
art@cindymichaud.com

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"Love in the Time of Coronavirus"
6x8, acrylic

I am not an abstract artist, so I employed a little Jackson Pollock to this and dropped the paint on the board from about four feet. Then I enhanced the round blobs to resemble COVID-19. It was fun.

Carmen Beecher

carmenbeecher.comcarmensart.etsy.com

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Mary Warnick's Abstract

"Ocean Motion"

I have admired the work of John Salmonen for many years, especially his beautiful cityscapes.  Several years ago he gave a workshop in Melbourne and I signed up.  It turned out to be an abstract workshop.  It was very intensive and complicated.  I think he was trying to incorporate a few techniques into the process, including line drawing and the grid method of transferring an image.  Over time I tried simplifying, but stuck to his advise "if it starts looking like something, get rid of it before you fall in love with it".   This little watercolor is a very simplified version.

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Kathy's response to the challenge:

I love to doodle and when I have nothing in mind to draw, that's what I do. One of my favorite methods is to randomly draw two lines across a page or canvas and then fill them in . Below is my progress from start to finish on canvas. Then I took it into Photoshop to finalize it. Click on any image to expand it.

Moment of Impact
8x10 Acrylic to Photoshop
Kathy Garvey

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Hope is a Thing ...
Mixed Media Collage
by Fay Picardi

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One Percent
Denette Schweikert

This "painting" is the left side of the I am very beginning of a large 36" X 46" picture.  I am not very good at abstracts.  

As the year winds down and I prepare for my sorta-annual bonfire of canvases that don’t make the cut of hanging around, I always feel a need to dream up some new challenges for a new year.  I can’t really articulate those yet but as I was studio cleaning I found a stack of unused canvases and some leftover interior wall paints that were way past their “use by” dates (kidding of course).  So I pulled them all out and tried to leave my comfort zone.

If you know my “work” then you know how far afield this is for me.  Colors, drips, splats and splotches.  Actually both pieces began with a “thing” in mind (that’s just me) but the more I got into it the more I began to have definitive ideas about where the next chunk of color should go, and whether it must be light or dark. I lost all concept of the “thing.”  And I began experimenting with tools: credit cards, sponges, chop sticks and gravity.  I even got out my spray bottle of water.

A friend stopped in and spent some time studying this one at an earlier stage.  She was trying hard not to insult me and yet still ask me where it was going.  “I’m not sure,” I answered honestly.  “Does it go vertical?” she ventured.  Same answer.  “But?” I explained that right now I was playing with color and shape and motion...not very well I might add.  In all likelihood I would end up sketching a large figure on it and then painting out the background.

She looked distressed and said “Do you mean you would then cover up all your hard work?”

 

I paused.  Not once had what I was doing felt like work.  Never mind, “hard work.” More like  child’s play, experimental efforts and exploration. But not work.  Which is not to say that some days painting something (like a nose or a hand or a flower) is and feels like very hard work.  But not this.

Why are we afraid to experiment? Why must everything we do have an expected, acceptable outcome? Folks are horrified that I burn old paintings.  Is everything you do perfect? How boring!  How will you know if you like a new spice if you don’t cook with it? Fabulous or failure, to me it is worth the effort.

So I’m not sure where these will end up.  They could be my artistic break through and earn me thousands of dollars. Or they could be numbers 1 and 2 in next years burn.  Right now it does not matter.  Perfection is the enemy of a lot of things.

Let’s all vow for a bit more play and a little less work in 2020.

Cindy Michaud

www.cindymichaud.com

Questions: Art@cindymichaud.com

Abstract Sunset Painting, Textured Sunset Painting,SOLD, Small Oil Painting, Daily Painting, 8x8x1.5" Original Oil

I didn't mean to paint this!  I decided to do an abstract, with nothing in particular in mind, and almost without my help, this sunset appeared.

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 Sunsets are one of my recurring themes and it just kind of happened before I knew it.  Usually it does not happen that way for me.  Usually, I struggle, I scrape, I try and try again.  Sometimes I pull it off to my liking....sometimes I do not.

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So on those few occassions, when I am happy without the anguish, I say a little "thank you" and put away my paints for the day.

Thanks for visiting my blog today.

Carol Schiff
www.CarolSchiffStudio,blogspot.com

December Challenge, Mixed Media

Our challenge this month is to step outside our comfort zone and use various media together, or a medium we don’t normally use, to mix it up and have fun! Following is how each member met the challenge.

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Cindy's Response to the Challenge

No problemo for me...I was housebound due to knee surgery AND a major snowstorm. So I looked around at what was at hand and began working, out of my comfort zone, with some new medium which included q-tips, homemade ink, colored pens and eco-printed rejects. For the full story on this particular effort go to my blog here.

These are misprints from my eco-printing process making note cards.  I wanted to see if I could salvage them or at least have a little fun.  Using my homemade inks and then doodling with some colored pens I got the results below.  Not earthshaking art but I had fun experimenting with line and color and moving the eye around.  No idea what to do with them now....but that was not the challenge!!

Cindy Michaud - art@cindymichaud.com

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Donna's Response to the Challenge

I  really debated about which way to go on this challenge and decided to tackle watercolors again.  I  started out in watercolors, they looked so serene, so simple, so forgiving, so easy to use and carry. I was so wrong. They were none of these things except easy to carry. I was immediately reminded why I switched to oils and collage.

With someone of my temperament -- impatient, changeable, yada yada--watercolor is anxiety producing not calming. There is no going back, going outside the area, changing colors in midstream as you will see from my paintings.

Here are two pieces I did of  the same scene.  I really liked the first one I did, gentle colors, whimsical, spontaneous but then I decided to add a few trees behind the houses and it was just awful and I couldn't fix it! The second painting is more stick to the plan but looks labored and just lacks something.  Despite all of this I am going to try some more watercolors.  I liked doing it once I got lost in it and maybe I can learn to relax and stick to the plan.

 Scene 1: Notice how I tried to add the trees.
I even tried to turn the trees into mountains
but that didn't work.

 Scene 2:  No trees. Already one lesson learned but the
sense of spontaneity is gone.

Both scenes together.


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Kathy's Response to the Challenge



Collage is definitely not my media, so I saw this challenge as the perfect opportunity for me to use up some of the many parts and circuits I like to extricate from my old laptops. I searched for a couple of real beauties, mapped them where I wanted on my watercolor paper and started ruling some lines with Elegant Writer pens that I could wet to get some interesting starting shapes and colors.

9x12 Watercolor sheet with space for the circuits marked off
and Elegant Writer Pen lines sprayed with water.

I still have a data flow template from my programming days so I drew some symbols on the background and filled them and the background in with watercolors. To add some more "mixed media" I thought I would embroider with some really shiny special thread on the paper. Disaster! Slow, hard to keep my lines straight, and way too easy to snag the thread on the little barbs of the circuits. That little square one is sharp!

Definitely need to rethink the embroidery idea!

I actually love it when I think I've ruined something because then it doesn't matter what I do to it. So, I went to town with adding gold foil, white, gold and green-gold acrylic applied with a pin, colored pencils and things through stencils. Then I emptied my sewing machine of thread and by staying away from the circuits, I was able to stitch some straight lines to get perfect holes. Hand sewed them in with my fancy threads.

I used a micron pen to add a little Hello World code in Basic, Cobol and Pascal (that tells you how old I am). Topped it off with more watercolors and colored pencils. Fun, fun, fun! I have to sign it, name it and put it out of sight so I don't keep adding more stuff to it! 

May the Circuit Be Unbroken

Mixed Media, 9x12

by Kathy Garvey

Just for fun I started another watercolor collage using a really old circuit. I was barely in to it when my oldest daughter decided she loved it. I added some things meaningful to her in some of the circles and kept it much simpler than the other.

Crossed Circuit

Mixed Media, 9x12

by Kathy Garvey

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Carmen's Response to the Challenge

 Woman in Gold
Mixed Media, 11x14
by Carmen Beecher

Having just been to Vienna, I had Klimt on the brain, so I used the challenge as my excuse to use gold gesso, gold acrylic paint, stamps, pen and ink, and oil paint in a Klimtish manner. I painted the face in oils, then just went a bit crazy with the rest of it. I had noticed that with Klimt, too much was not too much. None of that "less is more" nonsense, although I didn't completely cover the canvas with designs. I didn't want her face to get lost.

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Carol's Response to the Challenge.

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I packed up in November and left my North Carolina home, heading south to the beaches of Florida.  The plan is to stay in a beachside condo until the mountains become a little more hospitable......meaning warmer!

Even though, we packed two cars to the gills, I could not bring everything I wanted or thought I needed.  As a result, the only art supplies I brought were my oils.

Why am I telling you this?  I am feeling a little guilty, for not doing a new project for the challenge, but showing you one of my past adventures into other medias.

These are two tiles, painted with alcohol inks.  A few months ago, I became quite interested in working with alcohol inks and experimented with them on several supports.  These are two of my early efforts.  Nothing special, but I do like the colors, and this challenge has re-ignited my interest in this process.  I cannot wait to return home, to my studio, to dig out my inks and further my experiments with them.

Carol Schiff

www.CarolASchiff.com

www.CarolSchiffStudio.Etsy.com

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Fay's Belated Response

Ink drawings with water color wash were how I started my limited art career. I drew and colored very simple wild flowers. No depth, no detail, but lovely colors. I haven't attempted those in years, but thought I would take up the medium again for this challenge and try to apply it to a scene from our hotel window on a recent trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Below is the first attempt at a watercolor with ink drawing that tries to capture the San Juan Bautista Cathedral. After this feeble attempt, I decided I should take a photo and try again at home. The third work is a my attempt at an ink drawing with a wash. I have a long way to go to perfect my drawing skills, not to mention to conquer watercolors, but I had a lot of fun doing this challenge.

Jean's Response to trying a different media

What are these images (below), you may ask? 

Well, take some blank, white, quilted pot holders. Hmmm, what to do with them? Gifts? Yes!

Get some acrylic paint, white glue, permanent marker, and a little creativity. 

My goal in choosing a new medium is to use the glue as a resist, then paint the surface with acrylic. Once dry, remove the glue. (see the third image) That proved a challenge. So then I concentrated on drawing on the quilting with a permanent pen. 

Still have more holders and I'm determined to find a better resist. Any suggestions? 

Happy New Year! 

November Challenge, Do an Avant-Garde Work of Art

This month we were challenged to create a work of art inspired by an artist or movement considered avante-garde. The term "avant-garde" covers a plethora of styles and simply means art that is very modern or original in comparison to the styles of the period in which it is made. (Artists who pop to mind are Picasso, Kandinsky, Mondrian, etc.) For some of us it means stepping way out of our comfort zone, which is the whole point of our challenges.

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Donna's response to the challenge

Well this challenge lived up to it's purpose.  I was out of my comfort zone in a few ways. For some reason I thought it would be better to use acrylics, not so and I had no idea Cubism would be so restrictive to me!!  You have to color inside the lines, which is not good for me.
Cubism is breaking down a subject to a basic geometric form and painting it in a flat manner.  I picked two very round subjects thinking that would make an interesting contrast. 
This is what a dish of pears and a teapot looked to me in a Cubist style.

Donnavinesart.Etsy.com
Donnavinesart.blogspot.com

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Carmen's response to the challenge

"The Death of Truth"

I used Picasso as my inspiration, and the sun/lamp is almost a direct steal from his painting, "Guernica." I think the painting is self-explanatory.

Carmen Beecher

carmensart.etsy.com

carmenbeecher.com

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Kathy's response to the challenge

I love Klee, Kandinsky, and Picasso so I had a hard time choosing who to use as my inspiration, but settled on Kandinsky because his art is just fun to me and I thought I could even try it in watercolors. He really worked to make his images with non-representative symbols, just lines, squiggles, dots and geometric shapes so that it inspired a "feeling" rather than a "meaning" for observers.

Above was my "dry run" just using a mix of his favorite symbols and his way of color blocking them and filling in the background. When I discovered, that despite his attempts to avoid representation, he had put a tiny bird in one of his paintings I really felt he was a kindred spirit. So I included one, too. (Click on the image to zoom in and find it.)



Then I did a larger piece mimicking elements in some of his more geometric paintings.

While this is representative of his painting style, it has meaning (at least to me) as each Kandinsky inspired circle contains the first initial of one of my ten grandchildren.

Kathy Garvey

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Mary's response to the challenge

Channeling Chagall

While still in college I saw Chagall’s “I and My Village” and was enchanted by the color, the design and the sense of joy he captured on a huge canvas. I’ve always loved his work, but found it hard to copy when the Pieces of 8 project of copying the masters took place almost a decade ago. Trying to capture some of his joy and playfulness in a composition of my own was more fun.

Mimicking Miro 
Then, for fun, I tried a design in bright colors, encouraged by Kathy, who is a master of design.  Fay thought it reminded her of Joan Miro’s work.

Mary Warnick





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Jean Thomas Looks at Winslow Homer

“Fox Hunt” by Winslow Homer was a painting I chose to explore. I'm not sure it is avant gard, but it was inspired by a book on Homer I picked up at an estate sale. It’s a large (38” x 68”) oil. Painted in 1893, late in his career, after he moved to Prout’s Neck, ME. It was reproduced in black and white and was only 3” wide. Still it intrigued me.

Homer’s watercolors were more numerous than his oils and he often used the watercolors as preliminary studies. Also, he chose watercolor when he traveled to the Caribbean. This painting was of the coast of Maine, a frequent subject for him at that time.

Once I researched the painting in hopes of getting a better reproduction of it, the story got interesting.  I discovered what seemed to be black blobs in the upper right corner, were crows. And what is going on is that the crows (usually the prey) are out to get the fox! It’s cold, it’s bleak and the fox is running for his life. He is stretched across the canvas, slowed by snow and hunger.  Ahead of him is only water. No escape from fate.

I wondered if Homer ever did do a watercolor of this subject, and if he had, how would it have looked?  I wish I could see the original to see the details and the colors he chose. It is hanging at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts. So here’s my version of “Fox Hunt” in watercolor.

Thank you Mr. Homer.

Abstract Painting, Small Oil Painting, Daily Painting, Triptych Painting

Every now and then, I just have to do an abstract.  Usually painting knives are involved.  This one is no exception.   I wanted to take a square composition and turn it into a rectangle. This us what I came up with.

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and here is the original square composition.  Which do you prefer?

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I have been in North Carolina, in the mountains for the past few weeks.  We are enjoying our time here.

The other day we went to the park and had a picnic lunch, something we never do at home.  There were ducks and geese everywhere.

We had a relaxing and fun time and our sandwiches tasted twice as good as usual.  The crisp fall weather comes and goes.  It is so much fun to be in the mountains this time of the year and I cannot wait for the fall color.   I will share with you when it comes.

When I work on the computer,  I can see chipmonks running back and forth, across the patio.  They are so fast, it is hard to get a photo, but I did manage to catch one stuffing his cheeks with goodies.

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Have a great fall day, wherever you are.

www.CarolSchiffStudio.blogspot.com

ABSTRACTIONS!!, Abstract Paintings, Daily Paintings. daily painter

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 Although I have been painting, I find myself at the awkward place where I have let myself run out of photographed pieces.  The weather has been rather gray which makes it hard to photograph the colors accurately.  So today, I am posting some abtract paintings.  Most of these are sold, but they may be available as prints on canvas, if desired.

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 I have had the urge to try some more abstracts, but have really been trying to focus on impressionism, in the hopes of sharpening my skills.  My abstract desires, are like a "guilty pleasure" that I have been resisting.

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 If I had doubts about my leanings toward cool colors....it is pretty obvious to me now.

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 A favorite local landmark that has since been replaced with a high rise medical building.

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 This one was all about texture.  I mixed sand into the paint which gave it a stucco type finish.

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Another local landmark.

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This painting had more views by far, than any other I ever posted.......but didn't sell for years!

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My ode to the Keys.

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Thanks for viewing my blog today.

Carol Schiff   

www.CarolSchiffStudio.blogspot.com