Pink Abstract

I have been wanting to push myself just a little bit further in the direction of abstraction in my still life paintings.  I decided that a small 5"x 7" gouache on acid free paper would be the way to begin.  What did I do?  First, I decided (after many hours of setting up a still life) that my focus would be the fruit in the front of the painting and that everything else would be subordinate.  I then decided on a palette.  I wanted to create an expressive color scheme that came intuitively.  I chose the pink background.  Rather than laying out a carefully constructed drawing I worked directly on the paper using paint and tackled shape after shape after shape.  I felt that creating a drawing first would feel too much like paint by number or just coloring in the shapes.  I like the loose rendition of the drawing and tried to leave my choices clean and unadjusted.  There were some areas when I had to go back in a little bit.  I am so pleased with the results.  I will try a few more before I try a much larger size painting.  SUCCESS!