Abstract Art Mistakes You're Probably Making

When I was very small I decided I was going to be a Grandma Moses and paint when I was Old. When I saw Easy Rider at 18 with my future husband I can remember thinking..."I'd rather be in NM than married". So here I am at 72 in Santa Fe as a hobby artist doing abstractions. Looking back I feel my "detour" adds to my need to create. :) I will look for your work as I gallery hop this summer. Thank You for this info.

Good video. It'll be news to many people that just because you paint in an abstract style that doesn't mean you get to ignore the things that make a realistic style painting good too. Balance, flow, focal points, color, composition and even perspective, are all things to keep in mind when you paint anything. I normally paint in a realistic, representational, style. Yet, when I wanted to understand what abstract art is about, I tried it. It gave me respect for the style, and respect for the accomplishments of good abstract artists. I believe that my exploration of abstract painting really helped my realistic art as well.

This is the best video I have heard about creating an abstract painting….will now watch your free one hr video. Thanks. 😊

Abstract work is a good way of relaxing and having a good laugh. The big mistake is thinking of selling. Forget it, just have fun. Make cheerful paper cards to send friends and cheer them up. We should all dance, sing and make marks, like our ancestors did.

I struggle the most with composition and not so much color, but value contrasts

I'm glad you said abstract painting is hard. I approach fine art painting of either realist work, impressionist or abstract painting from a designer's perspective. I was a professional graphic designer/illustrator for major companies in my design career of over forty years and I see everything in terms of effective composition and finished product. I was responsible for gaining multi-million-dollar contracts for companies I worked either fulltime or as a freelancer within design companies. I had to deliver at a high level. I also believe through much of my work in architectural and interior design renderings that I learned color well because I had to constantly match color selections and render surfaces in light and shadow. I'm sixty-three years old now and the one thing I know for sure is we are never done learning. It's a constant journey. I had success as a realist painter and was published in many books, magazines and so on in being there and done that. In recent years I started into abstract painting because I love the adventure and unpredictability of it which was somewhat by accident because of my varied interests in design. I'm a collector of vintage midcentury modern furnishings and grew up in household where my father was a design director for four major companies in his career. I was surrounded by that period my entire life and it just became part of me and a vocabulary. I started doing abstract paintings that were about color, composition and texture. I have found success in that as a painter. It feels good doing it and primarily at its core is design. I see equal value in all of it when it comes to how one approaches painting.

I studied color theory years ago, but still use it every time I create. I do get into a meditative state and listen to music I love when I create. I use dozens of colors in my paintings. I paint with a shish kebab skewer and a chopstick. I paint primarily abstract expressions on magnetic vinyl. In 28 years of painting I’ve sold thousands of pieces. I still haven’t found other artists using my media in a similar fashion.

Hi Andrea, thank you for this valuable information. I struggle with composition, but I keep trying.

I feel like I've heard all this advise before and I "think" I've adhered to it but my paintings are still "not there yet". They're getting better though... albeit slowly... thank you! I will try the one hour video...

The biggest problem for people making this type of art is that they do not understand the word “abstract”. It means taken away from something. Reducing the information and altering it to create the essence of the THE SUBJECT. So the first mistake is not observing a subject to make your abstraction from. You paint treeiness not trees for example. Art college for 4 years for training and knowledge might help. Anything else is just messing with paint.

Just started, mud is my colour (🤣), i am an old man trying to have fun and learn. Some tools I use are a bottle wash brush, skewer stick, cotton buds. My biggest issue with abstract work is clarity of idea and how to express it. I understand it comes with practice and visualising! Thought/idea from mind to surface as intended is a goal. A work/s in progress.

You're an excellent teacher!

Such wonderful advises and the painting behind you so wrong 😝: having the biggest contrast et bottom right edge, having colors of equally rich chroma saturation everywhere, the choice of colors themselves….. But the one from the poster about the course is wonderful, including the brushstrokes and shades of grey as background to reacher spots.

I know the popular view of Picasso is that he was an innate genius but his father was a painter and renowned art teacher who taught his son how to paint from his earliest years. His father was also a curator at the local museum where Pablo would have seen many of the ethnographic objects he turned into Cubism. That said, I don't know where he got his misogyny from.

Thank you for this video. Hit on key struggles that i have had ❤❤❤

After taking quite a few classes on color theory, my last teacher recommended this book “ Color Choices by Stephen Quiller “ it brought it all home for me, the big aha moment… we already know so much, it’s that trying it all together… Thank you for reinforcing the Creative Journey is just that… push pull.. resistance / joy…

thank you for sharing 👏👏👏🙌

I can't get anything right. I start with an image in my head. And as soon as I start with my color. It changes in my head. I don't know what are why this happens

gianttttttttt window squeegee, cheap paint brushes i cut to an inch long bristles so it's great for dry brushing, card board pieces used like a wedge

I have difficulty in knowing when to stop a painting. Is it intuitive?