Abstract Pastel: This Was Cool!

I’ve been in an experimental mood lately.  I had a stretched piece of watercolor paper, ready for some silly little something or another I had no ideas for.  It sat in the garage with the rest of my stuff, patiently waiting for me to attempt to mess it all up.  Lately, my son has been begging me to go into the garage to bang on the drums or sit on my motorcycle (the “see-sum” and “no-nose” respectively), and I’ve just been tooling around with my mess of art junk while he’s playing.  I’d toyed around with oil pastels and turpentine, and found a really cool technique from that.  I figured I’d try it with chalk pastels, and this is the result.  No plans, as with most everything else I do, but it all fell together into this… uhm…thing?  Hell, I don’t know, but I’ve seen things in galleries worse than this selling for thousands.  What the heck… I’ve got no job now, maybe I should pimp it out.  Anybody want it for say $5,000?  I’ll even frame it for ya!

Abstract Pastel

Another Impressionistic St. Augustine

A while ago, I did a pastel piece on the Castillo de San Marcos (see here).  I’d had the same picture penciled in on a canvas board for a while, and finally got the urge to do something with it.  Following my recent impressionistic stint, this one followed suit.  I really like painting this way.  It’s incredibly freeing… no rules – I like that!

Castillo de San Marcos

The Pool

We were in the back yard watching our boy play, and I had brought the sketchbook along ’cause I had the itch.  Nothing much of interest is in our back yard; no trees, no water features, no flowers, just kind of bland.  But there’s our blue pool.  What the heck.  Here it is.

The Pool

Impressionistic Still Life

I found a really good release in a certain style of painting that I stumbled on out of frustration.  The best way I can describe it is “impressionistic”, but it involves a lot of paint, and fast, globbing action.  The result is something that slightly resembles what I’m painting, but the feeling I get from it is very rewarding.  If you’re looking for photo-realism, I’m not that guy!  You really should look at this guy (http://www.stevemillsart.com/) for that… he’s beyond amazing!  I’m more in it for the feeling, but I have to admit a great deal of jealousy when I look at Steve’s stuff.

So what you see here is a very impressionistic version of a vase with flowers, and a salt shaker on a table.  Enjoy.

Vase with Flowers & Salt Shaker: Acrylic on Canvas Board

 

Detail

Another Abstract Painting

This is another example of what happens when I think too much.  It started out as something totally different, then about and hour into it I changed everything and went nutso!  Maybe I’ll change it some more… no, probably not because I’ll want to paint something else.

Creation

Abstract – Really Abstract – Acrylic Tribal Facey Thing

My daughter and I were painting one afternoon a few weeks ago.  Our intention was to create paintings going off our feelings and instinct.  She did really well, placing brush strokes arbitrarily on her work, using all sorts of color and shapes.  I started out with a two-colored canvas; yellow and blue.  I kept adding stuff, trying to make it look like I was a professional abstract artist, and I made a complete mess of the thing.  Aggravated and hacked off, I globbed the paints on the palette, and mixed paints on the canvas and just went plum crazy.  It all coalesced into this thing that slightly resembled a face, so I went with it.  Man, it felt really good just to flow and glob paint and mix crazy colors on the canvas.  It’s very textured.  I like it because it felt good to do.  Maybe it’s not so much to look at, but boy was it fun.

Acrylic on panel (camera flash was on).