In my last post I suggested painting non-representational art by gradually moving away from realism. If you want to try painting abstract art but have no idea where to start, another approach is to use your emotions to get you started.
Listening to music is one way I enhance my emotions when I paint. Sometimes I choose music to reflect my current mood: new age, jazz or classical for reflective moods, rock for strong, driving emotions, and so forth. Sometimes a particular mood develops as I listen to and empathize with the lyrics of a song.
Music's rhythm and tempo can also have an influence on the quality and speed with which you apply a paintbrush or palette knife to the canvas. How you apply the paint will be reflected in the result, leaving a trace of the musical rhythm you were listening to as you made it. Try this experiment some time: think of yourself as an instrument or tool of the music in your head. Relax and let the music select colors, control the movement of your hands, and create the content.
Aside from music, emotion itself can drive the painting process. Non-representational art is the best way to directly express emotion because it isn't constrained by attempting to be "true" to a particular subject matter. If you wake up mad at the world, you can paint a jagged swath of red across the canvas, directly expressing your anger. Color, line, form--everything in your painter's arsenal are available to say exactly how you are feeling.
One day when I was in a particularly dark mood, I kept feeling "bloody secret" as I painted. Yet I wanted this feeling to be both exposed and hidden at the same time. The result was my painting, "Tied in a Bow." I painted the bloody secret in thick red paint in the center of the canvas, but I also tied it in a bow and framed it prettily in pink.
If you are feeling a strong emotion of any kind, try expressing it directly through color, line and form on the canvas. But whatever method you use to begin an abstract painting, you’ll end up with the same concerns for composition, interest, energy, and focus to decide when it is finished.
