USING BLUE AS A STARTING POINT

This abstract painting began as a study in various shades of blue.  Then I played with the complementary color, orange.  I mixed in umber, sienna, yellow, cobalt red, alizarin crimson, and white - to keep the orange changing throughout the composition.  The oranges were applied with a palette knife, then smeared with my finger tips.

ABSTRACT, "COMPLEMENT OF BLUE"

ABSTRACT, RED CIRCLE

ABSTRACT, RED CIRCLE: The background is a cool, neutral gray.  This gives strong contrast to the glowing red circle, whose edges are soft.  The horizontal gray bars have sharper edges.

ABSTRACT, RED CIRCLE

"Green Pear"

This is a miniature still life (5 " x 7"). It calls for using only a few brush strokes, to capture the light, shadow and composition. The background colors are complementary to the pear's green.

"3-Tier Cake"

This oil painting was done a few months back, as a way of doing a traditional still life, but with "FUN" included.  The warm background and the table cloth folds were the free-and-easy part.  The cake, the plates, and the cake knife were the tight, detailed part.  The cake knife is about to fall off the table, to add some motion and tension to the whole piece.  Oops!  There it goes!

"3-Tier Cake"

4 Abstracts: a series painted together

Here are 4 abstract oil paintings, painted together over a period of a week.  The starting point was to cover the canvasses with random brush strokes in the same color: pale Cerulean blue and Payne's gray - in impasto thicknesses and thin washes.  After all that had dried, I began adding various colors, using palette knife, brushes, finger tips and crinkled up paper.  It was all fun, fun, fun.