Artist Process: The steps in my latest abstract painting.

I have a best practice of taking photos of my paintings and studying them during my down time. Recently I have begun collecting those images for the students in my online abstract painting workshops so that they can review my process. I am making this a regularly occurring process as I complete each painting, so I thought I would share some information here with you.

I frequently share extra information like this in my private Facebook Group for all of my workshop students. I think the group is a great benefit because I coach and help students through paintings there and all students can read through the information (including a lot of photoshop mark-ups for visual aides). The workshops are expanding at all times through the group!

Here is my latest abstract painting in 5 stages. “Evermore” is a 30x40” stretched canvas, with a gallery profile. Scroll down to view the progression and read my process thoughts.

Here is how the painting started:

For this painting, I used the processes I teach in my “Expanding on Color” online workshop. To begin, I used colored pencil to make random colorful marks on the canvas. At this stage, I have already painted my swatch sheet and zeroed in on the colors I wanted to work with. The colored pencils are what I had on hand that most closely resembled the swatch sheet.. they were not an exact match. In retrospect, I probably should have used Neo Color II’s or paint, as some of the pencil colors would not let me cover them with paint. After this stage, I used workable fixative before moving forward with paint.

Paint with a small, long handled brush to start. I am concentrating on not concentrating and staying loose. I am mixing the colors to match the pencil marks and using the marks sort of like a coloring book to guide my paint placement. The upper right corner is where the pencil won’t cover.. you can see those marks like they are still on top.

Much more opaque paint in the upper right to try to cover the pencil.. Like A lot. The pencil was possessed! I was putting that paint thick on top of them and they kept creeping back in.

Death to the upper right pencil marks. I used a Barvotti tool to trowel gesso over them. I was not concerned about this because I was also using white in other parts of the painting..so I knew I could easily paint on top of the textural gesso I added. It worked.

At this stage I am happy with the composition and all that is needed is some strength to some of the colors.. Some areas look like they have weak paint coverage and I need to even them out to mirror the coverage in teh rest of the painting. Since this piece has a lot of energy in the brush strokes, I keep the “marks” in the final stages reduced to a minimum so that I don’t overcrowd the composition.

“Evermore” original abstract painting. To purchase, please click here.

If you enjoy reading and looking at the stages of an abstract painting, please take a look at my book, “Caught Up in the Layers”. I photographed two paintings start to finish and wrote about my process simplified into 8 steps. The book has been helping a lot of artists when they get “stuck”. You can order a print version of the book and have it shipped to you anywhere in the world or you can purchase a digital copy by following this link.

I’m happy to answer any question you have about my process for this painting. I’d love to hear from you, leave me a comment below and check back for my reply. Have a great weekend!