Jenny from the good classes has a Pinterest page where she puts various boards of things that might interest students - including one that is 'ideas for complete beginners' - and it is full of excellent things to inspire. Or copy, as the case may be. One of the paintings there that quite intrigued me was by Shell Rummel, who is a Californian artist/designer that does abstract things. I do not know about abstract things so I googled, then straight copied a few of her works to see what was involved.
Tonal colours, some unexpected bits, outlined in fine liner pen. Much more complicated than it looks originally, and somehow manages to suggest something landscape-like. Kind of.
This is a tree I copied where I experimented with different types of outlining, which is why it looks a bit scrappy. I tried charcoal pencil, felt tip pens, coloured pencils, watercolour pencils, thicker and thinner marker pens. Anything coloured that isn't exactly the right tone feels a bit rough with this type of painting. It either has to be black or the perfect colour, which is hard with a 12 pack of textas from Officeworks.
I did a couple of other copies that weren't particularly successful, and then went off-books and invented my own landscape. Not 100% what I was after, the colours are a bit crude and don't fit together properly. But all of it was very fun to do, and not able to be rushed, so it took quite a long time. Meditative, which is nice. I don't think I'm fully committed to abstract work, but I'm pleased I took a little detour.
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