I’m thinking lately about how to bring together my very organic ink paintings and more structured abstract landscapes. I’ve been practicing a little bit with landscape and abstraction by taping a large piece of paper into four rectangular sections. You can then do a mix of painting across the whole sheet of paper, as if it was one composition, and painting within each square. It’s a lot of fun because once you peel the tape off there’s usually some surprises. I was pretty pleased with some of the effects in the paintings above and wanted to work it into a larger painting on canvas. Unfortunately, I relearned that you can’t easily just remake or scale up a piece that you liked small. For one thing, when I painted the small ones I didn’t have much intention. I had a general idea of a view around the corner from my house but I did not try and create that. I was very loose with the paint, using various different tools and just not over thinking it.
Of course once I tried to somewhat recreate this, all looseness and surprises just went out the window. The above pic is the canvas after one painting session. There are a few things I like about it, mostly the shape in the front right. But it’s just not going anywhere. There’s nothing there that I want to build off of. It made me realize as well, that I really like to see some clean white paper around my abstracts. Not sure how I’ll execute this with canvas because white painted or bare canvas doesn’t have the same freshness. So anyway this one had to go. Got out the white paint and some ink and just started messing it up. No real plan or intention just hoping for happy accidents that I could build off of.
Here’s the result after throwing some paint at it. It looks like a mess but I do see a little bit of interesting potential here and there, whereas before I didn’t see anything I wanted to play with.
After messing this one up, I started another. Again very loose. No design idea beyond I want to save some white space. I think this is the best way for me to start right now. The happy accidents rarely come later, they are always best when they happen right at the start.
This one is giving me that hint of Japanese woodcut, the 100 views of Mount Fuji, vibe. I think it is the strong top edge of a mountain-ish shape combined with a mistier base that reminds me of the woodcuts.
As always, much more work to be done. Good thing I’m obsessed with painting lol.