I’ve been working near-daily in my art journal — adding collage, oil pastel, tempera paint, drips of acrylic ink, and pencil and paint marker scribbles. Here is some of my recent work.
Recent Work
Tag: abstract art
Make Ugly Art
For each piece of polished, finished art shared online, every artist has a whole pile of unfinished, “messed up,” or ugly pieces. And that’s exactly as it should be.
I, for example, don’t love the art journal spread above.
It started out with some collage and minimal marks with oil pastel and black India ink, but I realized that it reminded me of camouflage and hunting — not something that resonates with me. I added more colors and marks, still hated it, and then covered up most of it with white tempura paint. It’s fine. Whatever. I’ll turn the page and do something else.
For years, I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen: make ugly art.
It’s one of the first things I recommend to emerging artists, those who are afraid of messing up (whatever that might mean) or who desperately want to be able to translate what’s in their mind onto the page but haven’t practiced long enough to know how to do that.
Purposefully making ugly art lessens the fear of creating something you dislike and is a great exploratory process.
Some ideas for making ugly art:
- Use color combinations you don’t like or usually use
- Scribble out or paint over sections of your work
- Stick down collage any which way
- Try using tools you haven’t used before
- Use materials you aren’t usually interested in or aren’t special: tissue paper or wrapping paper, a receipt, a ripped ad from a magazine, etc.
- Move quickly and impulsively, not thinking about what you’re going to do next
The best part about setting out to create ugly art? If you finish it and hate it, you’ve succeeded. But if you finish it and love it or love sections of it, you’ve also succeeded.
No matter the outcome, you are creating, exploring, practicing, and learning so much more about what you do and don’t like.
Summer Greens
The best days are those where creating comes easily and the results are loose and balanced. I worked on this rich green art journal spread over several short sessions, first collaging, then adding paint pen, tempura, and acrylic ink.
Later, some black ink on another page seeped onto the edges — but that’s all part of the experience of art journaling, and the results are never a disappointment.
Joan Mitchell
In May, I went to see the Joan Mitchell exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art; this weekend, I went for the second time. Most of Mitchells’ paintings are huge and full of energy, big strokes, and drips.
My favorite works feel deeply exploratory and focused on the process, not the outcome, and are a reminder for me to do the same.
When I am working, I am only aware of the canvas and what it tells me to do… I am certainly not aware of myself. Painting is a way of forgetting oneself.”
When I go to see artwork in person, I crouch and squint and look at it from the side, wanting to see the artist’s process. How did they use their brushes? Which layer did they add first? What is the balance of looser, watery elements and marks made with dry bristles? I took so many photos of details and texture.
I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me — and remembered feelings of them, which of course become transformed. I could certainly never mirror nature. I would like more to paint what it leaves me with.
I also loved looking at and comparing the two diptychs below. Both were painted in the same year, and I’m so curious if she created them around the same time. See how the top left both have vertical, solid colors, and the paintings move into smaller and more energetic strokes as she moves right and downwards?
