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

Basic Black and White Patterns

One thing I've learned while working with homewares is that it can be hard to find simple coordinates. There are plenty of busy, colourful patterned things available, but when someone wants a throw rug or cushion to match, it can be difficult. Monochrome solids are often the best option, but simple patterns in a smaller scale can work too. 

So I thought I'd put together some simple, plainer repeating patterns that might coordinate nicely with some busier ones.

"Simple Crosses", Digital, October 2015

"Simple Weave", Digital, October 2015

"Simple Triangles", Digital, October 2015

"Simple Stripes", Digital, October 2015

"Circuit" - Digital Mandala

Tinkering with computers must have put me in the mood to draw something that looks like a piece of computer hardware. It must have been an unconscious connection, because I don't think I would have even noticed if it wasn't for the green and gold colours that look like part of a motherboard.

"Circuit", Digital Mandala, October 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

"Chrysalis Psychedelia" - Digital Repeating Pattern

Today's piece has a bit of a simpler shape than some of the other art I've been working on recently. It's just an oblong with some marks inside. I'd like to create more like this, because I think it makes a rather striking repeating pattern. It's simple, but the gradient adds a bit of texture to it. The shape makes me think of a butterfly chrysalis, hence the title.

"Chrysalis Psychedelia", Digital, September 2015, 36x24 Inch

"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.

Kurt - Digital Symmetrical Tiling Abstract

Lately I've been trying to upload some of my art on a stock photo website. I've been contemplating getting into digital downloads again, like the cat silhouettes I used to sell on Etsy. Actually I've been contemplating a lot of directions I could take my art, and it has left me at a bit of a standstill. I don't know the best way to tackle it, so I overthink everything and don't get much done. I know that I could spend many hours on a project, only to realize that my time would have been better spent another way.

This morning I spent about an hour uploading files to Society 6. I like the amount of control they give you, but wish the process could be more streamlined. There should be an option to upload the largest size file, have them automatically resized by their system to fit the dimensions of each product, and manually fix whichever products you might want to turn out differently. Maybe it's more complicated than that, I don't know. 

This is my latest addition to my Society 6 store, Kurt. I designed it in a few colourways, but only the teal and purple version at the top is in the store. I don't know that I have the patience for any more today. It's just a shame that things that shouldn't take so long take many hours away from actually being able to create new things. 

Check out my store on Society 6 if you want to see this design (and a few of my others) on mugs, tote bags and other products.

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

Taking the Plunge

Now that I'm not pushing myself to post everyday to my blog, I find that I'm trying to come up with blog posts that contain more substance. If I only post once or twice a week, I feel like I should be able to come up with something relevant or profound to say to accompany my art or my process. Which is all well and good. But the pressure of creating fewer, better quality blog posts is leading me to avoid posting at all. I've still been painting and drawing this past couple of weeks, of course. But the idea of the deadline that spurred me along is gone. I've been second guessing the things that I want to say and the work-in-progress paintings that I could have posted over the last few days.

I find that this happens a lot with my art. I'm getting better at the concept of just creating something, without worrying whether it will be right or good enough. But when it comes to things like taking print quality images of my finished art, connecting with other artists and bloggers, writing tutorials and useful guest posts to share my art around and developing blog traffic, I put it off. I think there's a part of myself that puts these things off because they make it too real. If I haven't done them yet, I can still consider myself to be at the beginning of my journey. I haven't made the attempt yet, so I can't consider that it hasn't worked.

It's not even the fact that I believe it won't work. I'm almost positive that if I do the things on my to-do list, it will increase traffic to my blog, followers on my Facebook page, sales of my prints and original paintings. But the nagging feeling is still there that it won't happen straight away, or at all. As long as these concepts are in the future, I don't have to deal with them just yet.

Now is the time to let go of that mentality, and move forward. It's time to start really trying to advance my artistic career and see where it takes me. One day I'd really like to be able to work as an artist full time, both teaching art and selling my work. The only way I'll ever get there is to do what any other successful artist has done - plunge in and start working towards it. It won't happen all by itself. There won't ever be a better time than now.

After writing this blog post and psyching myself up, I finally got a decent quality photograph and uploaded my artwork Austin to Fine Art America. Judging by my previous blog posts, I've been meaning to do this since about August last year. Better late than never. You can now buy prints of this image as well as throw cushions, phone cases etc. The original is also still available for sale for $1800.

"Austin", 29x39, Acrylic on Canvas, $1800

"Jasper" - Color Throwdown Challenge CTD308 - Digital Seamless Tiling Abstract Design in Yellow, Orange and Pink

Yellow, pink and orange is one of my favourite colour palettes, so I was very excited when I saw this week's Color Throwdown Challenge. This week I decided to go back to seamless tiling abstract artworks. I haven't been making enough abstracts lately, and I need a few to get some greeting cards or post cards printed up. Also a few Spoonflower fabric designs. Maybe some throw cushions. I'll see where it takes me.

I went a smidge brighter on the yellow to get it a bit closer to the banana yellow shade of the bottles. That shade of orange is similar to the one I used on "Austin", which reminds me of orange sherbet. The shapes I've used came out looking like lanterns and hourglasses. That's one of the things I love about making symmetrical tiling abstract art - you can get an idea of how something is going to turn out, but the end result is almost always surprising in some way.

"Jasper", Digital Seamless Tiling Abstract Art, 6x6

Remember to follow Renee Dillon Art on Facebook if you'd like to stay up to date with my new work. Thanks for looking. :)

Art Nouveau Style Acrylic Painting - Work In Progress

Admittedly, it's been a little while since I've updated my blog. Mostly that's because I've been thinking of taking my art in a new direction lately. I enjoy making tiling patterns. I enjoy fabric design and scrapbook paper design. But the design part of that equation was where I stopped enjoying what I was doing. There were things to contend with like deciding how many papers to go in a pack (while still fitting the upload limit on Etsy) and working out what size repeats should be to fit people's craft projects. I wasn't feeling satisfied about the end result because the colourways I really loved got lost among the colourways I figured someone else might like.

So ultimately, I decided to work bigger. Rather than making art that exists only in the digital world, I'd like to get back to creating art that exists in real space. A real, tangible thing that I can look at and say "Yes, I made a thing." Put it on a wall, maybe, I don't know.

I like the idea of creating something that is infinitely reproducible, that can be used and enjoyed by many people. But I also like the idea of something of which there is only one - something collectible and coveted and rare. I like the thought of somebody seeing my art and loving it so much that they want to put it in their house and look at it every day. And I like the idea of people seeing my art on this blog or social media and just enjoying what I do for free, as I've enjoyed the work of so many artists who share their work with the world.

All of this soul searching has resulted in me deciding to try a big canvas artwork for a change. Not something I'm typically comfortable with. My usual working size is less than A4 (usually even less than A5). I wanted something with large visual impact, though, and I knew for an abstract that the scale would be an important factor. What I've ended up with, so far, is this.

I'll go through the process in a future post, but basically it's a geometric Art Nouveau style abstract. It will be painted with yellow, orange, sky blue and hot pink acrylic (Jo Sonya and Monte Mart Silver Series paints). The thick black lineart was painted with a Posca paint pen. I'm sticking with my love of tiling, seamless, repeating patterns. I actually really liked it at the lineart stage, so in future I might work on some purely black and white pieces too.

Once it's complete I'll have to think of a name. Once again, I'm thinking of giving my abstracts people names rather than vague artsy nonsense. There's just something I like about a painting called Margaret or Georgia or Sam. It makes the painting seem friendly and relatable. After that I'll probably set up an account on Saatchi Art. Maybe I'll put it in my (currently empty) Etsy shop.

Come back soon to see the colours start to go on. I'm already really pleased with how it's turning out and can't wait until it's finished.