6 Project: Towards Abstraction Exercise 6 Abstracting from man made form

Other artists influential for this exercise were again Jaap Wagemaker and Jane Frank, also Jasper Johns - 'Hateras' and collages of Charles Winebrenner, Maury Haseltine and Katherine Chang Liu http://www.collageartists.org/meetingsarchive/2010_03_Katherine_Chang_Liu.html


Subject: zoomed in area of an oil burner - a mechanical part of an oil heating boiler. This was a broken component taken off the house heating boiler and was lying around in the utility room. I concentrated on various zoomed in areas of my subject, but while doing the first four thumbnail sketches (not shown) I again fell into the trap of trying to represent correct perspective, form, scale etc becoming aware that I was somehow missing the point here. I had to change tack - what I have learned about  abstraction  is that important elements would include simplification, distortion, flattening, exaggeration. In other words changing the subject to a point beyond recognition.

Above - three A4
 pages of final sketches

A transition came about when I made a conscious departure from initial sketches and started to play around with selected features of one area in different arrangements - these are shown to the right. During the final few sketches and the colour studies I was mindful of trying to maintain an essence of the subject's character in this area of the component:  the hollowness of the circles and other geometric shapes and hinting at other small mechanical parts within and behind them. Also to suggest the surrounding area of mostly smooth and distressed grey metal surfaces.  This continued into the final painting.
My colour studies were a big influence on what was to follow for the painting. I used the colours from the second study - vermillion, and mixes of crimson, pthallo blue, magenta, raw umber and titanium white.
Paint and materials application was a similar process to the first study in yellow and blue.I tried to evoke the the underlying hues found  in the object, putting a more vibrant slant on them.

Painting from man made form

Towards the end there were areas I needed to resolve before I could say it was finished. After a bit of close scrutiny I tried the following:
toned down parts of the lightest areas  and tried to further integrate certain other areas using watery glazes of purple with dry a brush. I also
introduced more directional shapes and lines to link up the upper left of the large circular shape with the rest of the composition,
enhanced repeated texture and patterns of the smaller rough circles and dk purple/blue colour blocks.

 Right and below - colour studies