Baby's First Abstracts
Some painting experiments from my ☁Dream Week☁
At the end of last month, I took a ☁Dream Week☁. Which is essentially a week completely off of social media, where I focus on filling my mind up with inspiration and experimenting as much as possible.
One thing I have always wanted to experiment with is creating large abstract paintings… but to say I was intimidated would be quite an understatement!😅
There are 2 big reasons why abstracts have always scared me:
1. I pretty much have ALWAYS worked with fairly small scale artwork. I love creating mini paintings, the tinier the details, the better! The biggest I have painted in recent memory would be 9x12, but the majority of my work is around 5x7 to 8x10 in size. I love the coziness of small art. But I feel that abstract art does not thrive at a small size. With abstract it’s really the bigger, the better!
2. I consider myself an illustrator, and abstract painting is essentially the OPPOSITE of illustration! Thinking like an illustrator is engrained in my soul at this point. I have a Bachelor of Illustration, and I go into every painting thinking about how I am going to get a certain narrative across visually. I love for my work to tell a story, and I always try to pack my work with intricate details, to make the story as rich as possible!
But, my goal with these abstract experiments was to make something truly abstract. With no intention of representing something from the real world… I really just wanted to pick up a paintbrush and see what would happen!
I didn’t want to waste my precious gouache on this experiment, so instead, I used a bunch of house paint samples we had laying around! They give you SO much paint when you ask for a sample. I thought this was a great way to put them to use, and a way to ensure these paintings would automatically match my home perfectly - since I was using colours found throughout my house!
My strong sense of colour was really all I had to lean on for this experiment. I couldn’t rely on the comfort of a tiny canvas, my illustrative ability, or any techniques I’d honed in the past, and honestly… I was feeling extremely unconfident! It was jarring sitting there, staring at a blank canvas, ready to to start on a painting and feeling so out of my element. I am a creature of habit who LOVES my comfort zone, and this was very far outside of it. I was not feeling excited or exhilarated... I was feeling scared.💀
But then I remembered a beautiful thing…. COLOUR! Coming up with a colour palette is my favourite part of every piece. They feel like a puzzle to me. In my mind, there is absolutely a wrong and a right way to design a colour palette. And if there is one thing I am confident in, it is my ability to work with colour!👏 So I really leaned into that. I told myself to forget about the big scary idea of creating an “abstract painting”, and instead think of it as playing with a colour palette!🎨✨
So.. I present to you, my first abstract painting:
My initial thoughts upon completion of my first ever abstract painting:
1. “Wow! That was so…. fast!?”😂
I am a pretty quick artist to begin with (I blame this on the INSANE turnaround times we had in college. It turned me into a hustling beast who can never relax and take her time with a painting. A blessing and a curse, really), but dang! I finished this in maybe 20 mins?? Maybe less??? It was kind of annoying actually, because right when I felt I was getting the hang of it, it was over! Ain’t that just the way.
2. “I now understand why people don’t use house paint create paintings.”😅
I do still think this was a great idea for an experimental painting that I am just keeping for myself! But house paint is super weird to paint with, go figure! It’s extremely thin compared to gouache, acrylic or oil, so that made it challenging. Another thing I didn’t consider when going in is that, it’s literally house paint’s JOB to dry with no texture, lol🤦♀️. When I was painting, I had actually managed to build it up in some spots and get a bit of cool 3D texture going, but that all disappeared after it dried. C’est la vie… I still like how it turned out, but weirdly, it almost looks like a print in person, because it leveled out sooo much, there is no raised texture at all!
My second thought was… I wanna do that again... right now! So, I immediately zoomed off to the dollar store, got the biggest canvas I could find, came home, and got to work on abstract painting no. 2.
Later, I joked with Ron about how hilarious it would be if these were shown in a modern art gallery, because the display card would read something like this:
”Abstract Painting”
By Olivia Faust
House Paint Samples on Dollar Store Canvas
$20,000.00
😹… but I digress.
Without further ado… I present to you, my second abstract painting:
I went with a moodier palette for this one, black, muted pinks, dusty blue, and a pop of gold. It is about twice the size of the first one! But the process was still pretty quick.
When I stepped back and had a good look at it after I was done, it put me in mind of a whirlwind of cake frosting, feathers, masquerade masks and chandeliers flickering in the night. It has a dreamy quality to it and it goes perfectly in our bedroom.
Overall, I think this was quite a successful experiment in abstract painting! I think it was good for me to loosen up for once in my art and do something that does not ALLOW for overthinking! I definitely want to do more, and I may even implement an abstract painting into each ☁Dream Week☁ going forward. I think they are good for me.
I’ve never spent this much time with an abstract before. They are quite introspective. I’ve found myself spending a lot of time gazing at them and getting lost in all the shapes I find there. It’s amazing to me how much I see in these paintings, when my only intention going in was to lay down some pretty colour combos. But my illustrative mind cannot be stopped… in these paintings it sees birds, landscapes, clouds, wind, flowing water, feathers, a masquerade ball, a regal profile, the curls of a powdered wig, and so much more. I could stare at them all day. It’s like watching the clouds. It’s like I’ve created my own Rorschach. And I am sure they will continue to inspire visions for years to come.🖤
Thanks so much for being here, and for reading.
Wishing you magic & peace! x
Beautiful! It’s hard for me to paint abstracts but I have discovered that I really like painting abstracts on paper, then cutting them up into little 2x2” cards and drawing animals over them with pencil crayons 😊
I imagined a grey pegasus stoming through the clouds of paint in the first one.
I like the colors, i am itching to get some sample paints *g (i won t)