30 in 30 - "The Plan"

I felt like playing with my Wacom tablet again today, so I made a digital abstract painting. I like the colours in this one. The blue/indigo shades layer nicely together. Maybe I should create digital mockups of my abstract paintings more often. I feel like it comes out more naturally when I'm not worried about 'wasting paint'.

Day 11

"The Plan", Digital, January 2016

30 in 30 - "Time Capsule", "Olives" and "Hieroglyphs" Abstract Art

First post of 2016. Happy New Year, everyone! Looking back on the past year, I've accomplished a couple of things that I wanted to get done. I've been blogging for about two years now, on and off, and I've started to get more serious with it late last year. I wanted to average at least one blog post per week, which I've done. This year, I'd like to do more in the way of tutorials and posts that people might learn something from. 

But first, I'd like to try the 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge again. It's been a while since the last time I tried, but it would be good to get back into the habit of seriously trying to create something new every day. I know I can do it, I've done it before, I just have to make sure I do it now.

I've been a bit undecided about what I want to create for this month's challenge, so I might mix it up a bit as I go, and experiment with different abstracts, portraits, whatever strikes my fancy. We'll see what happens.

Day 1

"Time Capsule", January 2016, Acrylic Paint

Day 2

"Olives", January 2016, Oil Pastel

Day 3

"Hieroglyphs", January 2016, Oil Pastel

I'll probably put a couple of artworks on each blog post if I don't have much to say about them. That makes it easier than making a blog post every single day."

"Hibiscus and Pansies" - Floral Repeating Pattern

I keep coming back to pansies as one of my go-to flowers to draw. They have a nice shape to them, and they come in some pretty colours. I'd rather like this pattern on a summer dress.

"Hibiscus and Pansies", Digital, September 2015

I made this red hibiscus pattern first, before I drew the pansies. it looks very Hawaiian in red.

"Red Hibiscus", Digital, September 2015

"Mermaid" - Digital Mandala

I loved this one so much I made it my new Facebook cover image. In hindsight, I wasn't that happy with the 'temporary' art I'd put there but forgotten to replace. So glad I finally realised that I had nice new art to replace it with. The brighter colours really freshen the page up.

"Mermaid", Digital Mandala, October 2015

"Dream Catcher" - Digital Mandala

This is the other artwork I'm considering for my first printed handbags. I love the aqua and blue tones in this one, but I still think I'm edging just slightly towards the first. This one makes me think of feathered Native American headdresses or some kind of Mardi Gras decoration. 

"Dream Catcher", Digital Mandala, September 2015

I would have liked to create something new today, but I just spent the morning trying to fix some problems with my wacom tablet. It seems I need to spend an hour fixing things every time I try to create something. But I'm pretty sure I'm close to having all the kinks in my workflow ironed out.

New Abstracts - "Cacophony" Painterly Abstract on Paper

Well February is behind us and it looks like I've averaged an hour per day on making art, though not necessarily on what I had expected. This last month I worked a lot on a new kind of abstract art for me. Most of my abstracts in the past have been along the lines of Austin - symmetrical, repeating shapes with bold outlines. This month I've wanted to try my hand at the more conventional style of abstract - paint splattered on a page, with varying textures, colours blending into pleasing combinations, and other mediums creating different types of line and shape. In future, I''d like to be able to blend this type of abstract with my own pattern making style in order to create something new and hopefully interesting.

One thing I've learned about this is that creating a simple looking abstract is, in fact, super hard. There are particular types of marks that I want to make but I'm not really sure how. Sometimes things don't go according to plan and you cover up part of a layer that you intended to keep. It's harder to create a balanced composition when it isn't symmetrical. And for me, it's really very difficult to keep spaces blank as well as busy, complicated areas. Blank spaces look like they need to be filled before they're finished. I need to cut that out, because leaving blanks can lead to a more sophisticated looking image.

I started thinking about this style of loose, painterly abstract because of something I posted during Leslie Saeta's 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge back in January. One of the artworks I posted, Bethany, seemed to garner quite a bit of attention. That image received more pageviews than any other artwork that I posted to the 30 in 30 blog. I thought this was interesting, for something which had been intended mostly as a place holder, some filler art. I had worked on something else that day which had not succeeded, so plonked my remaining paint on a piece of paper in the hopes of creating a nice background for some future art and called it a day. I hadn't thought it would appear to be interesting to anyone as a standalone piece of art.

I think it's important for this reason not to write off anything you create just because it isn't particularly to your own taste. We all enjoy different things, and your favourite piece of your own art and someone else's might be very different. Since looking into the subject, I've found quite a few abstract artworks that I'm quite enamored with. It's all about finding the examples that appeal to you and figuring out why they appeal more than others.

Unfortunately, I seem to create the best abstracts by accident. Anything I try to do deliberately doesn't seem to come out as visually interesting to me as a random splodge on a piece of scrap paper. My paint palette is fascinating to me, even if the canvas I've spent a couple of hours on isn't. I need to find a way now to trick myself into creating some beautiful art.

"Cacophony", Painterly Abstract in Acrylic Paint on Paper

"Milo the Red Heeler" - Acrylic Painted Pet Portrait

I follow a Buy Swap and Sell page for pets on Facebook, because I like the cute animals that pop up in my news feed. Mostly it's things like rabbits and birds, but occasionally cute puppies come up and I have to draw them. This one was a red heeler, a different colour variation of a blue heeler. It was actually a pretty difficult colour and texture to emulate in paint, but I like it the way it is anyway.

I love the way the colourful hills and bright blue sky came out. I'll have to do backgrounds like this more often. If you want to buy prints of this image, including items such as throw cushions, greeting cards and phone cases, you can check out my account on Fine Art America.