A new year is a good opportunity to consider concepts in painting that seem to be in opposition to each other and discover just how much they have in common. Even though this post is an revised encore from four years ago, it fits the bill for my
intention to focus this year on unity. With that in mind, here are a realistic and an abstract painting. What do these have in common? So often people ask me how abstract painting is done. There's no simple answer, but there is this: the only difference between a masterful abstract painting and a masterful realistic one is
imagery. In realistic painting, the imagery plays the major role, but in abstract painting, the subject is not always about imagery, rather about visual expression of something else. Some abstract painters are exploring rhythm, others might be exploring organization of visual elements, still others
might be expressing a concept or an emotion. In your comparison of the two paintings above, did you discover that there are only two things different about them? One uses imagery, the other does not. One is horizontal and the other is vertical. Otherwise, they are
pretty much the same. Let's flip the abstract and take another look. See what I did there? (Forgive me, Qiang Huang) I threw Qiang's painting into my Artrage painting app, and on my Wacom I abstracted out the images to turn it into an abstract painting. Because it's a well composed realistic painting, it
also holds together well as an abstract, even when turned in a different direction. Now that's something you can have some fun with. Try doing an abstract version of one of your own realistic paintings. Have yourselves a wholesome weekend!
|
Happy Painting,
Dianne
dianne@diannemize.com
|
You can access the archive of all my newsletters at anytime by going HERE. |
