Chelsea

I could have called this piece abstractnine since it's an abstract, or Falling with a View 4 since it clearly comes out of that series of paintings, but I opted instead for full disclosure. The grid system I used for this piece I roughly copied from the streets of the London districts of Chelsea and Brompton. Why? Just for the heck of it, I guess. This piece, is by the way, painted over abstracteight, so all in all I've been playing around with this board for three weeks or four weeks. I think I'm done with it.

24x36" 60x75cm acrylic on hardboard

Young Storms

Look-y here: a straight-up landscape. More amateur than impressionistic, even. It is based on an evening bike ride last week. I didn't have a camera along, so I've had to rely on my memory of the three rather awkward young thunderheads building in the twilit sky to paint this piece. The storms arrives several hours later.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Amongst a Drift

Back to the Archipelago because I still haven't a clue as to what to paint, and these pieces work well for a painting that I start just by starting to put paint on board and then just letting things flow.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

abstracteight

I've been playing around with this for more than a week now. I painted it over abstractfive which I decided was expendable. It's rather cool when viewed close up with all the levels of paint that went into it, but from a distance it is pretty blah. We'll see.

24x36" 60x75cm acrylic on hardboard

abstractseven

It took four or five days to get this far. I think it's as far as I'm going. I painted this piece to fill a frame, a wall and a color scheme I had open. I'll put a couple of coats of gloss varnish over this to bring out the colors and the depth and it should be good to go.

24x30" 60x75cm acrylic on hardboard

In the Shadow

The idea here as that we're within the shadow of one of the three intertwined planets that form the Archipelago of the Three Lovers. This shadow would not include only part of the archipelago and so most of it's hazy atmosphere would still be in the sunlight, hence the white background even as the foreground is in darkness.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

An Archipelago Market

These Archipelago of the Three Lovers paintings have always bordered on the abstract, so they make a convient transition piece between the last half dozen pure abstracts to whatever it is I'm going to paint next. In this painting we have a gathering of Archipelago people about a floating market. Because the Archipelago of floating islands is without gravity the market booths and visiting boats extend in three dimensions, floating about the small islet tethered by a web of vines that act as "walkways" between booths and the anchorage.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

abstractsix

We seem to have slowly drifted into chaos here, so it's probably a good time to wrap abstracts up for a while. I tend to like paintings that are interesting close up and with all the layers peeping out of this painting it has a lot more interest close up than from a distance. Ideally it should be interesting from every distance, but oh well.

24x30" 60x75cm acrylic on hardboard

Abstractfive (revised again)

This is, I hope, the final revision. Basically I painted it over using the same technique as I did the first time, more or less. Something like this might well work out better if I was more precise and careful, but fat chance of that...


24x36" 60x90cm acrylic on hardboard

abstractfive revised

Those dark dividing lines did not sit well with me, too litteral, which is to say they looked like sort of realistic frames and out of character with the work. Everything else pretty much stayed the same, any differences are most likely just differences in photography.

24x36" 60x90cm acrylic on hardboard

abstractfive

When you're producing art commercially, that is to say, to sell, if you find something that actually does sell, it makes sense to produce variations of that piece. I'm not producing art commercially, so I have no incentive to make similar variations of any piece, and so it gets harder and harder to produce these abstracts without repeating myself too much and boring me. This is a 2x3' piece, which I probably will not be doing again, I may settle on 24x30' instead, since I'll also get a 18x24' out of the hardboard sheet as well which I can find more uses for than an 12x24' piece.  I'm also edging back to more chaotic stuff here, with only the lines giving any structure to this piece. Will have to do some thinking before I start something new...

24x36" 60x90cm acrylic on hardboard

abstractfour

At 2x3 feet this is twice as large as I usually paint. I really don't like painting this large simply because I don't have that much to say. Simply blowing up something small to something large means that it is not very interesting close up. We'll have to see if I'm up to doing a big one again... I do think abstracts look best as bigger pieces...

24x36" 60x90cm acrylic on hardboard

abstractthree

The first couple where easy; never having done something like this, I had nothing to compare them to and everything was new. Now it gets a little harder: I have to consider if I've done this before and better... The good thing is that I don't "get" them, so I don't know if they're good or not. I just have to decide how long can I keep on playing with them before I wreck it and have to start over. I only started over once on this one.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

abstracttwo

The thing about these abstracts is that you can just play around with them to your heart's content because there is not real obvious end point that says "done". At least to me. I just guess. This piece is on a canvas panel I had laying around from years ago. I prefer a plain board. I think abstracts should be large and this one is larger than my usual 18x24" board. I can paint up to 24x48" boards, but until I know what I want to do and how, I think I will keep them modest.

22x30" 56x75cm acrylic on canvas panel

abstractone

People like order, and years ago I notice when I was paying attention to art sales on ebay that even people looking for abstracts preferred them ordered, geometrical rather than chaotic or organic. While I have done several abstract paintings before, this may be the first where there is no underlaying concrete thing that's being presented abstractly. What you see is what there is, and that's all there is. This is just playing around with putting paint, and clear acrylic medium on in layers and scrapping it off to get texture and a multilayered look.  I will have to work on perfecting just what I want to do and the best way to do it. I do think I'll have to add the final glossy layer after I take my picture, since I got so much reflection with the glossy overcoat.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Along the Loch Road (Once more)

As promised, I've played around with the trees in the middle distance. I see I'm going to have to touch up the blotchy patch in the middle of the near slope a little, but I'll not post that change, as it should, hopefully be minor, otherwise, this should be it.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Along the Loch Road Yet Again

You'd think I really must like this painting for as much time as I've spent tinkering with it. But you'd be wrong. I'm just trying to get it right, more or less hoping that I might stumble upon something that will make me like it a whole lot more than I do. I also could have just swapped photos in the last entry, but since this is turning into a saga, I decided to give this morning's alterations a entry of it's own. I should probably make those trees in the foreground look like trees....

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Along the Loch Road Revised Again

Well, instead of painting over it, I revised it a bit: making the trees and the water a bit more defined (I hope).

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Along the Loch Road Revised

I meant to paint over this picture, but I couldn't think of anything I wanted to paint, so instead I painted it yet again. We'll see if I like this one enough to keep this version.

18x24" 45x60 cm acrylic on hardboard

Falling With a View 3

I've been playing around with this piece for the last two days. It's been cloudy and cool, so I've had lots of time to try this and that, and this is pretty much what remains after most of this and that have been scraped off. It has a bit of urban flavor to it, but I did not have anything actual in mind. It is as pure or an abstraction as I can do. We'll see what I feel about this tomorrow.

18x24" 45x60 cm acrylic on hardboard

A Sunrise

Finger painting today. Not a pretty picture, but a picture, which is a bit of an accomplishment these days.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Falling With a View 2

Sometimes one's opinion about a painting changes over time. In the case of the original Falling With a View I rather quickly came to dislike it. It was neither realistic, or abstract enough. I wanted it abstract, and with this version painted over the original, I have made it more abstract. We'll see how this effort ages...

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Along the Loch Road

This piece started out as an outlined landscape, but it was too stiff and boring, so I just painted over the outline, changing a few things as I went along. More color than I usually use, and I'm not all that sure I like it all that much.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Falling, With a View

Making a map can be fun, a place all your own. Making a map by painting is rather awkward, but my approach was to make it a map-like abstract rather than a painting of the land from a height. Mostly I was just goofing around again.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Twilight and Sunset

A rainy Saturday's painting. (And about time, since it's the only one this week....) More a proof of concept than a really thought out painting. I have vague visions of something similar, but more refined... We'll see. My vague visions oft gang 'agley.

18x24" acrylic on hardbard

The High Road

After painting two small works last week, this week I've been playing around with this larger piece. The problem with this piece is that I'm not good at painting realistically so that this piece looks like the work of a beginning painter -a rather clumsily realistic effort. I'm not a beginning painter, and I don't like looking like one. Of course, my main purpose was to experiment with soft, moist sunny day effects, and I think on that basis, it works pretty good, but as a painting it lacks a lot of polish.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Down in the Vale

Another exploration of atmosphere, sunlight and distance. The nice thing about painting from imagination is that one can avoid painting things one can't paint. Painting looking up a hill is something I generally avoid as it is something that my technique is not well adopted for: I will need to become familiar with the changes in the angle of things as they recede up a hill, if I'm to master the view. I haven't really paid too much attention to that aspect in this piece and I'm not sure I care to bother since it is so easily avoidable in my case.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

High in the Wold

This piece was all about a study of atmosphere and light. I wanted a little more milky atmosphere, the hills closer and still faint in the moist air. Maybe next time. I'm also trying to figure out how to paint light and color, which is to say, how to paint a grassy field in sunlight and get both the greeness of the grass and the warmth and light of the sun shining on it. With water colors you can count on some of the light being reflected off the white paper below the transparent paint to give you this light, but with these thick paints, you seem to have to put more of that light on the suface, while keeping it green and warm. I suppose I could put white below and use only a thin film of green... I'll keep working on that.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

White Flowers Study

Tried a landscape, but went back to a floral. Not a very productive week, painting wise. Not a lot of ideas. Well, none at all. Which can sometimes be a problem, even for me.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic

Wild Cherry Blossoms

Loosely based on a bush along the bike trail. The question was how to present the blossoms and how realistically to do so. I opted not to do it very realistically, and emphasis the pattern of the blossoms by making the background a fairly uniform dark green.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard