Abstract Painting For Textile Artists

I taught this four-day workshop at Helen Day Art Center last week, geared towards textile artists with not much experience using acrylic paints. Most of the participants fit that description, but there were a few more experienced painters who were not textile artists.  I often get textile artists and recovering quilters in my classes, so this seemed like a natural fit. 

Here are a few pictures from the workshop. These are all Student Work, except for the photo of me fooling around at my table.

Thanks for visiting.  Check out Helen Day Art Center's other workshop offerings.  Among the people who teach there are Galen Cheney, Suzanne Siegel, Claire Desjardins, and others that I admire. 

Playing with Orange and Blue

Here is a short series of demo pieces I did in Green Valley, AZ, the other week.  We were using paint, collage, and mark-making to explore complementary colors.  These are all 10"x10".

Green Valley Demo #1:  In this piece I have almost equal percentages of blue and orange. I find that the most challenging ratio. 

Green Valley Demo #2:  Here I was playing around more with a range of value and saturation in the orange.  I love the pinks, corals, and salmon colors you can get in this range.

Green Valley Demo #3:  This is probably about 75 - 80% orange.  I am tempted to cover over the whole bottom left section with orange....

Green Valley Demo #3 Alternate:  OK, I just did that in Photoshop to see what it would look like. What do you think? 

Green Valley Demo #4:  Here I let the orange get really washed out.  More desert-like.  I love the contrast of the very light neutralized orange with the brighter colors in the center, and just teeny bits of blue. 

DO try this at home.  Choose one pair of complementary colors:  blue and orange, red and green, or purple and yellow.  Use as many versions of each color as you like, mixing them to vary the hue slightly (orange, red-orange, yellow-orange, but not red and not yellow), and mixing with white and very light gray to vary the values.  Paint, collage, use crayons, scratch into the surface with a razor.  The techniques are up to you.  The key is to do a SERIES of them exploring various proportions of the two colors.  Have fun!