Abstract-ish portraits

In an order of art supplies I was accidentally sent the wrong kind of sketchbook. It's an A4 hard cover with strong binding that won't even open fully. As I always do, I work best on materials I don't respect. I started using it for portrait studies, using up old paints I no longer wanted, then tried different media. The good thing about having it all in a sketchbook was that I didn't have all those failures (because most of them were) flying around loosely so I would throw them out right away. I paint on the right page and make notes one the left: my media, date, time taken, if it's from reference, and the problems - application too wet, mixtures not working well, things like that. The diary effect is considerable, I know when something is too rushed because that day we went to the movies for a long anticipated film or something.
Thirty pages in or so, of ninety, I set it aside for a while. When I picked it up again a few weeks ago, I was ready for more abstraction, and tried what I could when the paper fights me at every turn. In any case, I tape a plastic foil under the page I paint on and also create a border with the tape to not soak through. For these sketches I used masking tape, masking fluid, I spattered, drew, brushes, flicked, used a mouth atomizer (yay for new art thingies :)), I dripped inks, hatched with coloured pencils, sprayed water, used rulers and collage. Some are going in the general direction of what I could imagine doing more often. In many cases things went horribly wrong (paper ripping is my least favourite but happens often in this sketchbook), but that's what you do studies for. I haven't yet done any with a decent amount of time, just making marks and combining colours over the faintest of line drawings. I am not great at finding shapes in chaos - so many wonderful artworks are created by making abstract marks, then painting over them, but somehow I am not particularly comfortable with this approach - so I am trying this for now.


 




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