Today’s watercolor experiment:

Several days ago I began with a photo

and painted a study abstracting its contents. When I took the photograph, I framed it to capture the juxtaposition of different colors rather than emphasize the subject itself.

I used the resulting abstract composition as the starting point for my next abstract study.

My next abstract started with the study pictured above.

Today marks the next generation of magic-copy-machine images, seeded by the image immediately above. Instead of straight lines, I used curves, preserving the topography of the ‘original’.

I like the landscape orientation of this image:

Abstract 073015
12″x16″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

Today’s study does not resemble the original photograph very much. In a sense, the process of creating yet another abstraction is akin to making a copy of a copy of a copy. In the latter process, the idea (of the original image) becomes washed out and unrecognizable by virtue of the deterioration of the image. In abstracting, time after time, the clarity of the image is as sharp as the artist wants, but the idea of the image is the variable.