14-Day Beginner Series - Abstract painting

Hi, I'm Mackenzie Swenson, and welcome to today's installment of the 14-day beginner series here with the Artist's Academy. Today, we're gonna be talking about abstract painting. And abstraction as a subject actually has a lot of variety within it, so it's definitely not just, you know, Jackson Pollock style splatter painting. So what I wanna look at is, first, I've got a couple examples here, and one of the kind of primary ranges that I see within abstract painting and that to me is the spectrum of more geometric and symbolic to something that's more chaotic. So just to give you kind of a visual reference for those two ends of the spectrum, we've got yet again this painting "Untitled No.

1" by Hilma af Klint, a Swedish goddess from the early 1900s. Just kidding, she was just an amazing painter. And then this other image, which is a painting by a woman named Hannelore Baron and this is also an untitled painting. So they have that in common. But these kind of embody those two ends of the spectrum within abstraction.

So here, you know, you can see like, there's a lot of kind of texture and different emotional qualities and things coming through with this. I think this is actually a multimedia piece using some fabric, but there's a lot going on here. Whereas here, there's clearly a lot of symbolism, a lot of clear geometric shapes. There's something being communicated here and it's not literal, but it is certainly organized. So then we can kind of look at these images which all fall kind of in between those two.

Oh, that's upside down. I'm actually gonna put this one here, here. These two are kind of on par, I guess, with each other, to me. So, you know, this Mondrian image, which, you know, it's definitely using clear geometric patterns. It's using very clear blocks of color.

This one here, we're starting to play with those edges a little bit. It's a little fuzzier, there's more kind of organic texture, more permeability between the borders of these shapes. And then here, this is very, like, technically these are little buildings and signs and towers and windows and things like that, but they're all thrown together in a way that's very, it's definitely got a lot of kind of chaos to it even though little moments of it are representational. So you can just kind of think about that with, you know, if you wanna start exploring abstract painting, that's a great thing to keep in mind is this spectrum of, you know, things that are more geometric and that often lends itself to being more symbolic. So, you know, shapes and patterns that are recognizable as meaning things versus the more kind of chaotic and random approach to putting color and shapes and things down.

So I also just wanna say, one of the reasons I decided to focus on abstract painting as a subject rather than painting and drawing is just that I do find that within exploring abstract ways of using different mediums, painting tends to give you a lot more options and ways of kind of exploring those different components that go into an abstract painting. So keep in mind, you can use some of these concepts to explore different methods of drawing as well, but, you know, just for simplicity's sake, I'm gonna keep the subject more focused on how it applies to painting. So three of the things that I find abstract painting is a really great place to explore is with color combinations and pallettes. So let's say you're walking around and you just keep finding yourself drawn to a certain combination of like a particular type of blue and a particular type of maybe like a fiery orange. And you keep noticing that same color combination.

And then you just decide, huh, maybe I wanna see what that looks like in an image, in a painting. It's a great place to just experiment with, you know, different color combinations and how to get a certain color that you want. You know, maybe you try then adding in like a dark green and you see, oh, I really love that, or, wow, that looks horrible. So another thing that's really fun to explore when you're working with abstract paintings is composition. So if you remember in the discussion about design, balance, and then compositional tools, abstract painting is a really great place to just focus on those components without really needing to worry about, am I making a tree that looks like a tree?

Like, am I, you know, making a person that looks like a person, you know? Like, all of that is really fun, but abstract work can be a really great place to just strip everything else away and just say, I wanna make some interesting shapes and I'm going to, you know, lay out my Fibonacci spiral and, you know, kind of have key points in my shapes land along that Fibonacci spiral. And then, you know, I wanna play with my big form, small form. So I'm gonna maybe pick a few little points to add some really interesting texture and like a stucco-y kind of a material. Maybe I've decided to play with acrylic paints and I'm working with some interesting mediums or I'm working with watercolor paints and I use a little bit of like a textured salt sprinkle in a few places to add that little bit of, you know, small form interest.

So it's, you know, it's a great space to be able to play with all of those elements and just not even, you know, not even worry about what the actual, you know, like, subject in the painting is and if it's correct, if the proportions are right, all of that stuff. So, especially if you're new to a drawing and painting practice and you just haven't had time to really build up your skillset, this is such a fun place to like keep painting fun. And I actually wanna like focus on that. I see a lot of people get into a really technical focus with learning art and learning how to draw, learning how to, you know, render things really perfectly and beautifully. And all of that is amazing, but I think it's so, so important to have exercises and spaces in your artistic practice where you can really stay connected to just loving the experience, where you can just keep it fun, where you can have, you know, have like a sacred space that you can just explore what you love, what color combinations, what textures, what materials, any of that stuff.

So even if you have no interest in being an abstract painter, this can be a great way to, you know, loosen up and try some different things that you otherwise maybe wouldn't. And that actually brings me to the prompts that I have for you guys today. So what I want you to do with this particular subject, the subject of abstraction in paintings, this might take more than a day, so just take this prompt and, you know, keep it in your back pocket for when you're ready, but pick a medium that you maybe have wanted to explore a little bit but you just haven't mustered up the courage to really dive in. And I want it to be a new medium even if you're a more experienced artist, so that you're really breaking out of your comfort zone and you avoid that tendency to fall back into old habits, right? And so once you do that, just bear that in mind, get the couple materials that you're gonna need to start in with that, put it to the side, and then find a painting that you really love.

It could be an abstract painting. It could be a representational painting. And I want you to take one of those, like, compositional tool mixing sheets, where we're looking at drawing, value, and color. And take this painting that you love and I want you to figure out where it lands on every part of the spectrum, right? So you've got that.

And then I also want you to look at that painting and simplify it into its color palette. So is it something where it uses a lot of neutrals? You know, go into the color theory that we kind of discussed. And I want you to, you know, explore the dominant colors in that painting: hue, value, chroma, and make just like a little, with the materials that you have, like almost a little cheat sheet of what those colors are. And then when you're ready, take that new medium that you've decided to start exploring, and it doesn't have to look anything like that painting that you were just studying, that you love, but try to use that color palette.

So be inspired by the colors that were in that image and bring those into this painting. And then just, you know, it doesn't have to be a perfect one to one, but look at how each of those categories within the compositional mix looks or what that was, and try to use that to guide your application in your abstract painting. So if it was really, really simple drawing, you know, like a very far to the left on that simplicity complexity spectrum, maybe you just break it into two or three shapes, you know, and you let your intuition guide you on how you break it up. And then let's say it's like really far on the high-contrast spectrum. So now you know, okay, within those color palette pieces that you've got, you're gonna be using a very extreme range of lights and darks.

And so whatever you put into this painting, there's gonna be a lot of contrast there. And then when it comes to color, you know, let's say maybe it's mid-range. So, you know, you've already probably done some of the work of this when you have looked at the color palette, it's a part of that painting, but take that and use that to kind of play with how you apply the colors in that painting. And, you know, maybe it'll be really cool and maybe it'll look terrible and you'll hate it, but it will at least give you a reason to start exploring a new medium, looking at color palettes in a little bit of a different way and seeing how you can use this very, you know, this kind of pure compositional approach to maybe dipping your toes into the world of abstract painting. Thank you so much for joining me today, and I hope that this segment inspired you to see how you can bring abstract painting into your own painting practice.