A methodology for painting abstracts

First of all, let me calm your fears, I am not suggesting that abstracts should be mechanically created. But I have found that many of my amateur artist colleagues have a mental block when it comes to abstract art.

When I have been painting an abstract, I always get the same questions; why are you putting that colour there? whats that supposed to be? what does it mean? All the sort of questions that are associated with the statement, a child/chimp/elephant could do better than that! Some of them do say they like abstracts or wished they could do them but there still remains that mental block. By the way, it has been proved that humans can tell the difference between abstracts by professional artists and those by the previously mentioned groups.

Being used to realism and the realistic depiction of subjects, they seem to find difficulty in tackling abstract paintings. Following research for the workshop I devised a simplistic methodology which enables the artist to overcome this mental block and with a little use can provide practice in creating non-representaional art works.

One simple example I painted for the lens was based on a solid colour background, Two large rectangles, three triangles. lines and deformed rectangular grid shapes. It looks something like this:-

Now whilst you are probably never going to get a masterpiece from this method, it does enable a certain measure of ability to create paintingsin this gendre. Read the full article in my Squidoo lens, How to paint abstract art.

a few "how to paint" abstract books from Amazon

What subjects and styles sell the most paintings?

I realise that I have not been posting for a little while but I have had a total knee replacement. The procedure was considered necessary because the cartilage had worn down to zilch on one side causing me massive problems.

I thought that to get going again I would promote one of my Squidoo lenses ( a lens is a single page web-site focusing in on a niche area)which discusses the best selling subjects for art that sells. The most popular subject is traditional landscapes followed by local views and then surprisingly perhaps modern semi-abstract landscapes.

Not surprisingly, prints of various types are the most popular media. Presumably because they are relatively inexpensive. But oils and acrylics sell better than watercolours and this does not reflect the ratio of costs.

As far as prints of deceased artists go, Lowry and Monet are the top two best sellers.

If yopu would like to read more details then surf over to "Popular subjects for art that sells". 

As I say in the lens, it is an  interesting read, but most artists will paint what they like or are best at, painting simply to sell can be soul destroying although it may pay the bills - sometimes.

Hope to be back more regularly now things are getting back to normal.