New lesson of Tracy Verdugo’s Abstract Mojo classes! In this unit Creating Story, we create an abstract painting based on a photograph as center piece. Tracy herself used an old vintage photo, whereas I found an amazing photo of an elephant in a wildlife magazine focused on saving animals. Let’s see what we come up with!
The Elephant
And why an elephant you ask? It was by chance. Considering I do quite a lot of paintings featuring cats, bunnies, teddy bears and more recently birds, I thought why not some different for a change? Besides, elephants are featured in a few of Tracy’s pieces. I have resisted painting elephants in my work because I’m not very good at drawing one. And hence, using a photograph of one came as a great opportunity. And here glued a photo clipping of one on a piece of Canson’s A3-size Watercolor paper, along with a few strips of orange mulberry paper.
Mark Making
A few streaks amd doodles thereafter, followed by color blocks of acrylic paint including Antelope Brown ink, Titan Green fluid acrylic and Light Magenta heavy body acrylic. See how the colors blend in with the dusty black charcoal. I tried not to make it appear too muddy…
Further Layers
Emerald green was then introduced to compliment the pink and orange. This was then followed by splatters of teal and some fluorescent pink as well as a few doodles with olive pastel pencil. To “unify” the blocks of colors, I then added a layer of some pearlescent white from the ARA range.
Just Keep Going…
And I continued incorporating layer after layer using the same colors as I’ve been using just to keep it under control. Some of the white spaces, for instance, got painted over with some streaks of Antelope brown for that “earthy” appearance in the wilderness. A third emerald green plant was introduced on the bottom as well as some white marking pencil doodles of flowers. A bit more teal splattered and fluorescent pink spread out, I was now good to go!
And always a pleasure following classes by artists! Tracy Verdugo is one of them as she comes up with a range of ingenious ideas to make your paintings more interesting. It’s a great way to confidently go beyond your comfort zone and produce something you never imagined possible. I’m glad I went for something out of the ordinary like choosing a photograph of an elephant and playing around with colors. Definitely something to try again!
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My Kawaii Quarter 