Well, I had my first day at Abstract Painting class and I have to say it was a BIG challenge for me to escape from getting into detail. Our first exercise was to take our first initials of first and last name and make a design using the whole page. Most of my work I have a photo or design in which I work from. You can see from my picture what I came up with.
Our next exercise was to use the 4 slips of paper that she gave us, mine had the words fork, apple, pear, and vase. With these we were to make 3 quick scetches using the 4 objects in each within 2 min. That will get the brain moving.
Our last exercise was to take the shapes of a circle, a zigzag, and a line and create a design in color, making sure that you have a focal point and the eye moves throughout the page. I think I improved a little, but still with a lot of frustration. I don’t work with sketches first when I quilt. I just dig right in. Sometime my plan changes as I go. The instructor wanted the design sketched out befor I colored. Sometimes color can lead your eye. she said I had a nice painterly effect and asked if I’m a painter. I said , “I paint with fabric and thread.” I gave her my business card so she can see what challenges I’m up against. This picture was the final exercise. One statement she made that has stuck with me is a good abstract design will look good anyway you hold the picture whether it’s rightside up or upside down, etc.

On Sunday, I decided to play around with my Ultr Fractal software. After many hours of learning the basics and progressing to layers, I started to keep some of my designs for future art quilts. Posted is one of them and it’s line drawing made from it. Now I can have many options as what to do with it. I can scan into Corel Draw and play around with it as a drawing, see how mutiple images and mirror images of this might look. For now though, I’m thinking about doing the design in air brush using Stewart Gil paints that I’ve purchased. I love the glittery look of them. Depending on how that looks, I might do an appliqued version of the design. I have lots of ideas floating in my head. The motivation for working with fractals came when I received an entry form for a show: Art Futura 2009: Infinite Possibility.