This is an abstract colored pencil drawing I did yesterday. It’s done on Canson Mi Tientes Touch heavy duty pastel board. It has a toothy, rough surface that holds many layers of pastel or pencil.
When I do an abstract, I start with a basic idea. However, I let the artwork unfold and I let my idea evolve. This makes it more fun, and more of an adventure. When I first started drawing and painting, I was very rigid, and mainly wanted my art to look like the objects I was representing. That’s probably because I was learning the skills of how to render real life objects. Doing abstract work is freeing, and more relaxing for me. I can express a concept, or a feeling, not just physical objects. It’s also fun to play with color, lines, shapes, values, and so on. I love doing geometric forms.
Two things happened with this, that I had not planned. First, the fact that my lines are closer together and less diagonal in the background gives this piece a feeling of one point perspective. Second, I like the striations of light and dark violets in the upper 1/5 of the piece. It reminds me of a sunset with a couple of cloud banks down by the horizon. The green areas remind me of a rural landscape. The yellow/gold/orange in the middle reminds me of the path life takes us on.
