"SANDSTONE" 11005, daily painter geologic abstract © Carol Nelson Fine Art

"SANDSTONE" 11005

"SANDSTONE" underpainting

I took a workshop yesterday.  It was about approaches to abstract expressionism.  We examined the work of three prominent artists, including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Richard Diebenkorn.

Of the three Diebenkorn is my favorite probably because his style is the closest to the type of work I do.  We worked on raw canvas that was stapled to a firm support - masking tape covers the staples so they don't get paint on them and become harder to remove.

Above you can see the under painting, which was in warm tones analogous to the finished piece.  I scraped the painted surface with a large comb to make some parallel lines.

If you compare the random color fields of the under painting, you can see that I merely enhanced what was already there.  It was truly a case of letting the painting paint itself.

Of course, it ended up looking like a geologic abstract!  No surprise there.  I'm not putting this on my website yet because I'm not sure how I'm going to finish it.  Right now it's stapled to a support and doesn't have a finished edge.