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Advice re first attempt to go back to abstract
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Message
Posted
I have made my first abstract painting attempt for quite a long time, using different methods from before, which produced work I really wasn't satisfied with. I know that this style is not everyone's cup of tea, but I would appreciate critique on composition, choice of colours, balance, anything that strikes you as not working. I know that the blue area bottom left is rather streaky, I used layers of glazes and wonder if I should add a little water to paint+ glazing liquid? I must say that I enjoyed doing it enough that I shall try more. 
Posted
I like it - it's very hard to crit these things, because what do you base judgement on? You can only tell if it appeals to you or not, and this does. The streaky element actually rather adds to it, but yes, you might find using some water with the paint as well as medium helps smooth things out a bit.
Posted
Yes it's all in the eye of the beholder. When I do mine I continually adjust and play around with the shapes, colours and composition until I have something I am pleased with. With this one I am mindful of composition and whilst the overall flow is great and there are some superb shapes within it, the painting is very strong and might benefit from more of an overall compositional structure,
I think if it were mine I would be inclined to add a weak glaze over certain elements of the painting. One way to do this is to put a thin white glaze over the entire painting with the exception of the three bordering blue areas - the would give the effect of a 'hand' reaching up with the darker blues leading the eye in. Alternatively you could achieve the classic 'L' shaped composition by putting the glaze over the central circled area and the two bordering green areas. there are other variations on this idea available but in essence you will be looking for more tonal variety to help the eye focus on an image.
Another option would be to rotate it anti-clockwise which would suggest more of a landscape with the rising sun and perhaps converting the central blue area to another shade of green.
But these are only my thoughts and there will be more I am sure and even if left as it is it still is an interesting work full of vibrancy and energy. And the 'streaks' are fine and add to the interest.
Posted
Thank-you both for taking the time to look at my painting and comment. It is getting late here so have finished for the day, but have followed your suggestion Michael of rotating it anti-clockwise, and will think about your suggestions for tonal variety (which seems to be a weakness of mine) overnight. I shall definitely green that central blue area, and will look at a softening glaze. There may well be more comments when I log in tomorrow morning, too.
However, I now have a separate question, and that is a title for a completely abstract painting. Unfortunately I don't have your ability to think up these wonderful words of yours Michael, Abstract 1 (2,3 etc) is pretty unimaginative, and I don't really like leaving a painting untitled (also someone else on the Gallery is calling their paintings "untitled"). Any suggestions?
Posted
One other thought strikes me - as with all forms of art it is often helpful to have what I would call a 'rest' area where there is little going on - this does help in establishing a good composition. in my village scenes it might be a foreground area (a stretch of grass or a sweeping road) or a simple sky especially where there is a busy scene beneath it. This stops a busy areas competing with each other and I use the same idea in most of my abstracts - you might find this will help.
As for titles if you want to adopt my method of using made-up words as titles, there are several nonsense word generators on the web. The one I sometimes refer to which you may want to try out is at:
http://soybomb.com/tricks/words/
Hope this helps.
Posted
I love the bright colours it reminds me of stain glass windows. ( but in my defence it is not what I would like to paint.) there are times when I wish I could just lay paint down and create an abstract painting.
what medium did you use ? did you have ideas about structure before you started?
well done Sandra
Posted
Well, this is such a helpful forum. I really appreciate your advice Michael, Syd, Tao.
Michael, you are quite right about having some restful areas in a painting, something I didn't remember about here. I'll go with the anti clockwise rotation as I like the idea of an abstract landscape with the rising sun, will green that blue central area, and then see what I can soften without changing it too much. And thank-you for that website link, will explore it today.
Syd, thank-you for your comments. I recognised the example you uploaded straight away as I have that book, (I have all four of Rolina's), and have been going back through them which is probably why mine ended up a little like your example. I think I'll just make slight changes to get more tonal variety. I realise that now I have a concept of abstract landscape I'm taking it away from the purely abstract, so in this case might give it a title.
Tao, your paintings are beautiful. I used acrylic, realised after I'd posted the initial message that I should have said. I didn't have definite ideas about the structure before starting. Actually, I worked over the top of the beginning of a sort of watery drip technique which I could see wasn't going to work, so the shapes developed from that.
Posted
Actually I ended up doing rather more work on it than I had intended at first. I liked Michael's third suggestion, abstract landscape with the sun rising (I hope I've made the yellow shape the focal point?). Once I had done that it made sense to go for a couple of lighter blues to make an abstract sky (and hopefully get a bit more tonal variation), and also tried to vary the greens a bit more. Also toned down the reddish brown somewhat. I left the shapes as they were seeing people liked them, except for a small change top right. I know that I'm now not looking at it as purely abstract. I'm posting it, be interested to hear whether you think it is an improvement or not. 
Posted
Sandra - I love what you've done to this - the tonal variation with more weight at the bottom takes you into the picture and the colours all work so well - well done you.
Quick edit to add that the toning down of the 'sky' area provides a bit of softness against the more intense 'foreground'.
Edited
by MichaelEdwards
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