Having got the ‘art’ bug again, as well pursuing Abbie and Dan’s commission, I’m trying to pick up where I left off. Here I’m attempting to resume my Manolo series.
The left sketch is his face, melting ever further into abstraction. At right it’s the backdrop again. The cloudscape. This time the yellow is overstated. And some former parts of Manolo are introduced, via masking off the background.
One thing that bugs me about my methods, is how, in trying to superimpose layers, things often get too busy, and something breaks down. The above would be a case in point. Trying to combine the figural abstraction and the background, somehow neither seems right.
This frustration prompted me to further ‘worrit’ these ideas. But now in black and white only. It’s another way of trying to reduce and knock back the noise! Of the two I think the pastel effort, at left (and below) is the better.
Running the same ideas through all these iterations allows me to explore different ideas via varied mediums.
Ultimately I’ll probably explore these ideas further – or not, if I abandon a vein, thinking it a poor prospect – in one of two ways: black and white prints, or full colour paintings.
Esp’ with the latter, whether it’s going to be acrylics or oils, the opacity of the medium adds yet another different facet to the process. And I can of course do monochromatic paintings and colour prints.
The permutations are endless!