play the way

Abstract 1 - digital art - improvisation - Dan Beck 2008

Creating an abstract painting for me is like improvising music without a chord progression. I start without a plan - just moving and creating shapes - overlapping , building, not so much thinking as observing.

The digital painting is about the process - the movements, the colors, the layering. Whatever form there is happened out of this dance of color - out of the play of comfortable swirls and movements - watching, observing - adding with balance - but not so much that is feels even and symmetrical … these are my rules - my way of doing - one layer of color at a time - occasionally coming back to an original color, but generally adding only new variations.

The black lines were not thought through either - but there seems to be a bit of a tree shape - a common theme right now - not surprising a comfortable motion would yield such a reference.

This is probably the truest dan art - if there is such a thing. All my representational, impressionist, landscape art, or figure art etc. draw from the vocabulary and techniques developed from this abstract play, and if not, it was because I permitted the same degree of looseness in the other work.

See Also

• Abstract Art Gallery - some of the abstract explorations at Outhouse Studios
• Improvisation - Milestones of the Millenium - discussion of how classical composers improvised - though not discussing how communication itself is about improvisation - music and art connect and this connects to something I was thinking about earlier today