Abstract Painting and post Crit entry

         This painting started as something very natural and earthy. With the canvas I event left the edged unfinished thinking I would leave them raw even without paint. I also wanted the color scheme to be very washed out, with creams, light brown, and greens. I started with a base yellow that was pretty sunny and bright which led the direction of my painting basically. I ended up liking the yellow and the direction. I painted a fairly flat yellow, meaning it had no real texture or stroke to it, but was even all over the canvas, except for fading at the edges. From there I dripped greens on the bottom and yellows in darker hues on the top. I layered the drips for some time until I was happy with them. After that I decided to paint in the raw edges with brown paint. I even used some glaze with the brown to really blend it into the middle of the canvas. I wanted it to seem washed out but not dirty. After this step I decided it needed something bold, working off of the earthy feel I didn’t want to use blues or anything synthetic but a color that could naturally occur in nature. Red. It’s the bold color I wanted to stand out and balance the work. I used my pallet knife to apply the color to random areas making sure to have a balance top to bottom and side to side. This idea of balance in a painting is really important to me to be able to accomplish. After the red dried, I applied more drips on both top and bottom of the work. Then I applied more red paint with the pallet knife. This piece ended up being more layered with paint than I originally planned or even wanted. I think it worked out well in the end though. I am happy with the result even though it is not where I intended it to go. It is somewhat of a struggle to do paintings like this, abstract, and not always knowing when to stop. I feel like I pushed this painting further than its original intent and keeping with the context of being earthy that I accomplished my goal. It shows depth and a change in texture, stroke, and value. The painting also relates to the earthy idea by being organic in shapes, fairly soft (that is how I interpret nature) and maintained natural colors. For my next painting I want to continue this idea of earth but with a more pointed focal point and amount of detail added. This painting evoked a lot of ideas and concepts that I want to further in my work. 

Post Crit- Entry

This critique to me was really productive. Abstract work is fairly new to me, so feedback on my work is really important. I felt as though people got part of what I was trying to portray-especially with terms used such as rustic. The change in textures, some being more washed out than others seemed to work well to create discussion about the piece. I do want more of a focus with my further work. This piece was confusing for me at times, so that is something that the feedback will drive me to stay more direct if that is the intent of the next piece.