The objective of this painting project is to create a painting abstracted or derived from something in nature, rather than a pure abstract. Take a subject in nature that you enjoy, whether it's a mountainous landscape, a seashore, a bunch of flowers, or an animal, and reduce it down to its essence. This could be the main colors, the dominant shapes, the movement (such as waves or a river flowing by), the reflections of the sun, the shadows, or the patterns in the sand on the beach or leaves in a tree.
Squinting your eyes at your subject helps brings out the lights and darks, and to simplify detail. Look at the outlines of objects and where they intersect others. For example, rather than looking at a tree and thinking "tree", think rectangle (trunk), squiggly line out to the side (branch), triangles (exposed roots going into the ground), lots of dots (leaves).
Take look at the abstraction Keri Ippolito did to a tree grove in her painting Autumn Gold (in the Tree Painting Project). There are shapes you recognize as tree trunks because of the title and artist's statement, but the autumn leaves have become the whole sky, not leaves on individual trees.
Submission: Please note that new submissions for this project gallery are currently not being accepted. Check the list of monthly painting projects to see what this month's project is. This doesn't mean you shouldn't tackle this particular project, just that if you want feedback on your project painting you need to post a photo of it in the Painting Forum (in the Painting Projects Folder).
See Also:
Squinting your eyes at your subject helps brings out the lights and darks, and to simplify detail. Look at the outlines of objects and where they intersect others. For example, rather than looking at a tree and thinking "tree", think rectangle (trunk), squiggly line out to the side (branch), triangles (exposed roots going into the ground), lots of dots (leaves).
Take look at the abstraction Keri Ippolito did to a tree grove in her painting Autumn Gold (in the Tree Painting Project). There are shapes you recognize as tree trunks because of the title and artist's statement, but the autumn leaves have become the whole sky, not leaves on individual trees.
Submission: Please note that new submissions for this project gallery are currently not being accepted. Check the list of monthly painting projects to see what this month's project is. This doesn't mean you shouldn't tackle this particular project, just that if you want feedback on your project painting you need to post a photo of it in the Painting Forum (in the Painting Projects Folder).
See Also: