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Abstraction

I did some abstract work recently, two of which were gifts for people. The others I made because I wanted to use up the acrylic paint before it dried up and was wasted.

I made this illustration for my brother’s birthday. This piece is more about him and what I remember of him growing up. Growing up as kids, he liked frogs and had a small collection of them as well as a few frog shirts. We would also play with them as kids when we found them in our yard, but those where mostly toads. Every now and then, we would find a tree frog and would capture it and hold it until we finally decided to let it go again, or when our mom told us to. As for the crown, that has to do with him being known as King Aaron. We went to a parochial school, and when he was in the 8th grade, he was the only student. So all the 7th graders and below called him King Aaron, and it kinda stuck ever since. I started with blocking in the shapes with a palette knife and when it got too detailed or tight, I switched over to a paintbrush. I also wanted the textures to show and some pencil to give the piece movement, expression, and energy. I looked to Picasso, Pollock, Kooning, and a few other Abstract expressionists as well as Matisse and Fauvism. This and all the following works were created on Canson Heritage hot press watercolor paper with Liquitex and Golden paints.

This flower piece I made as a gift as condolences for someone who lost two family members within a week. With this one, I did a mix of palette knife, and paint brush to get the different textures and movement. then I used a dip and fountain pen to get the line work.

The overarching goal of these was simply to have fun, use up the paint that I mixed, make art, and challenge my sense of design. I did most of these paintings with just the palette knives, as I enjoy how expressive and bold you can be with one as you lay on the paint and sculpt with it. It brings me back to several of my college painting classes where for a whole semester it seemed we were just painting with palette knives while working on still lives and models, letting paint give expression and motion even when the subject was still.

I’m not sure what exactly inspired these designs; I’ll let your schema create an answer. I more or less just put paint on the paper and started to build shapes, color relationships, texture and movement. I worked the paintings until they were done, which can always be a hard ambiguous line to come to. Unlike the frog and the lily, these last four works were not planned. I discovered the piece as I went for it. I would make a mark and consider my options before making the next mark, making sure that what I did added to the whole rather than take away. The only thing that I haven’t liked about this is how flat the pieces look on the screen. You don’t get the sense of their depth from the paint textures that are rising from the papers surface like a frozen wave. You can sort of see it, but you can’t experience it though a reproduction. Just like how if you were to see a block print, or intaglio in person, you could see the impressions or ink mounds on the paper. The physicality of art is often something that you can only experience in person, which is unfortunate. A good portion of art is often seen in person, when you’re face to face with the original and can see the brush strokes and energy that the artist put into the work: the thought and imprinting of motion stuck in time, physically recorded history of a mental process. Even when looking at a Rembrandt, you can engage with how he painted, laid down stroke by stroke onto the canvas. If you get the chance to go to a museum or gallery, go and engage yourself.

For those who have never engaged or given much thought to Expressionism, engage with your emotions. How does that make you feel? What is your experience? What is your reaction? Expressionism engages your mind on a different level of thought. More psychological. Why are you feeling what your feeling? What brought that up? Where did that come from?

Thanks for reading!

Fin.

Art Behind The Scene

It’s been a while.

The last time I posted a blog post on my site was in 2018. Two years later, a lot has changed for me. I’m in a different city, different working space, and different day job, plus I’m married and have a dog. And I’m still working my butt off to make the artist dream, my dream, come true. This whole time has been a roller coaster of growth and experiences that I could only being to describe in both my personal and professional life.

I could go on about all of that, but I want to show off my latest work. And future posts will be about my work and the process behind them, with the occasional personal life update.

I made this for one of my best friends as a birthday gift. We both are Star Wars fanatics, and have been since we were kids. With this piece, I wanted to capture that last episode of The Clone Wars (which this piece is titled after). I knew early on, as the image was forming in my mind’s eye, that I wanted Darth Vader looking into the distance, skyward, as if he was contemplating on his past and all that has happened. And I really wanted to do something with the last scene of the series, as it was really powerful seeing Vader walk across the snow to this grave and wreck of a Republic Venator, and to find Ahsoka’s lightsaber that he kept for her when she left the order. I especially wanted to capture this moment from Vader’s point of view, what he was thinking about and how he was feeling when he came to that grave. Since he was ordered to go there to confirm the death of his old Padawan, for him, this was sad closure to someone whom he loved.

In my early sketches, I had an space owl up above and at one point I thought about including Padmé or Rex in the illustration as well. But it made more sense to have Ahsoka behind Vader, especially when you consider the abandonment that he felt when she left the Jedi order and now is dead to him. The abandonment and sadness that raged with in him must have been immense, especially since she was his only Padawan, and I can imagine he felt regret about her training and felt like he failed her.

I gave Ahsoka a look of disgust toward what Anakin became and to also play off of how Anakin would imagine her if she saw him now, how disappointed she would be in him. It took me some time to figure out how I wanted to have her show up in this piece. I knew I wanted her to have a ghost of herself type of feel, given that Anakin believed her to be dead now. Then it hit me to illustrate her in a sky blue hologram type of way which would give that ghost/ memory feel that I was looking for. And I’ve seen this done before, I just can’t remember where.

I included the wall of color partially as a design element to break up the page and to help move the eye around the piece. I also put it in to also show Anakin’s emotions as he walked up and stood in front of the graves. From the blue sadness of being there and losing someone and having to confirm her death and all those memories, to the love for her, the purple and violet, to the anger and rage, the red, that he had towards himself and possibly her for leaving him and for being dead instead of joining him and being a Sith Inquisitor. Especially when you consider how as a Sith Lord, Vader would use anything to fuel his anger and rage, so that he could have more power, even as distorted as it wold be to pin someone’s death on them, I wouldn’t put it past Vader.

As for the technical process of drawing and painting this piece, I always start out with a few thumbnail sketches until I find one that I like, and then I just fiddle with it until I like how the composition and elements are all placed. That is all done either in my sketch book or on cheap drawing paper. Then I move onto the final paper and re-sketch everything out so the drawing has the same energy that the early sketches. That allows me to make any minor tweaks and to improve the piece until I am ready to start painting over the pencil.

After that, I do the final pencil and then go over the whole drawing with a dry cleaning pad eraser to lighten up all the lines enough so they don’t bleed through and get covered up by the watercolor.

With the watercolor, I started with painting in Ahsoka first, as she was the lightest most crucial thing to get blocking in and done first. The tricky thing with her was rendering an colorful alien species in light blue scale. And being me, I just went for it with no study in mind and just let my gut have at it, not overthinking it (which is key in anything).

With Vader, I started with a light black wash of water color. Then, I realized it would take too long for me to do it that way, so I jumped over and used my ink brush pen and started to put ink down, just filling in the areas of black that I wanted. The patterning on Vader is from me using a rag towel right after I put ink down, pulling up some of the ink so it wouldn’t go to dark. The most annoying thing to get on Vader was his chest controls because I didn’t want to go back in after filling it with black and using an acrylic to get the detail, which I had to do with the green and red marks on his belt. So I piled the black on around all the buttons and then used a pen to get the lines right. Then I filled in the red and green squares with watercolor. Likewise, any of the light grey on Vader is just layered watered down black watercolor.

As far as to how I got the grey cloud look, I just used a 1/2″ Wash brush and went back and forth from the darker grey color that I had, watering it down, and dry brushing, splashing it on the paper making sure it matched up and gave good direction and helped as a design element too. And speaking in the psychological aspect, I put grey clouds in, as the overall mood of this piece is darker and speaks to how grey Anakin’s journey is. Though he dresses in black, an absolute color speaking to the evil that he is, the reality is that there is still good in him and he is burdened by all that he has done but refused to reflect on it, though it haunts him.

For the materials, I used a sheet of Canson Heritage Hot Pressed w/c paper from a 12×16″ block that I cut down to 11×14″.

The paper itself is okay. I won’t be buying it again for any watercolor work, as it has proven to be hit or miss in how it takes the watercolor, and the paper gets pulled up with any tape, no matter what one tries. I will be going back to Arches.

The watercolor that I used is Winsor & Newton, and the brushes I used are the discontinued Utrecht Masters W/C brushes. As for the acrylic, I used Liquitex basics and the Uni Posca Extra Fine paint marker.

The ink I used is Noodler’s Heart of Darkness black ink with the Kuretake No. 13 Fountain Brush Pen with converter.

I loved how this piece turned out and I hope you enjoyed the behind the scenes thought process of mine.

-Seth

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