This was such a fun class. I got hooked on studying Masters' color palettes and creating these little abstracts.

 

I've been making them over the course of a few weeks now.

 

I was so happy with the first set, inspired by a Gauguin painting:

I became more critical of how they were turning out after that.

 

The second set was also inspired by Gauguin and although I love the colors in the painting, these are some of my least favorite:

But I kept going, even if I didn't like what ended up on the page. And that's how it seemed, working on these, not that I was creating them, but that they were showing up. I worked without much thought. Which was fun.

 

One frustration I had was the tape. I tried painter's tape because I had it on hand, but it tore the paper. One of the paintings in this set, inspired by Matisse's Goldfish, was ruined when I removed the tape (so badly that it's not included in this photo):

I tried cheap masking tape and on some papers it was better. I also bought some artist's tape from Blick, but I wonder if the tape I got is different from the tape you use, Denise. Mine seems thicker, heavier, more opaque than yours (and also stickier). It also tore the paper.

 

The paper had a lot to do with how well the tape came off, too. I used three different sketchbooks as well as scraps of watercolor paper and some cheap Canson XL watercolor paper. It was also fun to recycle the sheets that the printing company I use for my desk calendars stuck between each calendar (to keep them separate). The tape tore that paper up worse than any of the others, though! Except for the tape issues, I'm not sure which paper I liked painting on best. Each was different.

 

I used a variety of different paints, but mostly cheap acrylic craft paint because I liked the texture. I also mixed them with Liquitex soft body acrylics and I used both white and clear gesso. Using white gesso instead of white paint was a revelation! 

 

On top I used Neocolor IIs and Posca paint markers, two of my favorite mediums for playing in my sketchbooks.

 

I need to study all of the pieces I've done and figure out what my favorite marks are. In some ways the mark making was the hardest part for me and sometimes I think the paintings would have been better without them, or at least some of them.

 

One of the fun things about choosing these color palettes was honing in on colors that weren't obvious in the paintings, like the dark brown from this painting by Matisse:

Having used blue in the first three sets, I chose not to use blue in these, although blue is the most prominent color in the painting.

 

I thought I painted more inspired by Toulouse-Lautrec, but when I sat down to match paintings with color inspiration, the only one I found was this set:

I love this color palette.

 

I went back to Gauguin for color inspiration for a couple more sets:

 

And then back to Matisse. This painting had so many colors and it was hard to choose which ones I liked the best.

I tried a different sort of tape for these. Denise, you mentioning how your artist's tape doesn't stick well got me thinking about some washi tape I have that doesn't stick at all. While I was painting I kept having to push it back down on the paper. Even so, it kept a clean line and came off so easily!

 

This was such a fun class, Denise! Thank you. It will be fun to keep going with abstract painting.