New Triptych Painting

This is a new painting that I just completed for my mother in law's birthday! The design is very loosely based on elements from Frank Lloyd Wright's "Tree of Life"... very loosely based. The pattern repeats every 10 inches, with each parallelogram being 1/2 inch wide. I created a custom template out of clear acrylic using my new Glowforge machine, to assist with the initial drawing of the design. Compared to how I would normally work, needing to measure and draw out each individual design object onto the canvas, I was able to save many MANY hours of drawing time. I'm still coming to grips with the possibilities of this new toy!

I have included a few process pictures below, showing my custom template of one full repetition of the design, as well as the initial background which was created to mimic an old tarnished mirror feel. All of the paint used in this piece is metallic acrylic, and therefore changes in reflective qualities based on the light. And, the design was created to dissipate as it approaches the top and bottom edges, creating an overall circular feel for the triptych. 

Let me know what you think!

And, as always, please contact me if you are interested in a custom designed commission piece. I love working together with people to create something special, specifically for them!

info@stevepaulsenstudio.com

Combining Styles

Recently, I have been experimenting with combing my abstract and op art styles. I have a few more that I will be posting soon. But, I'm really enjoying the effect of overlaying my geometric painting on top of the organic abstract backgrounds. The contrast between the two is very exciting to me, and they seem to compliment each other perfectly! I'm applying the op art painting with a slight transparency to allow the abstract to show though. I feel that by doing this, I'm allowing the two style to merge, rather than compete. I'm really enjoying this process, and there will definitly be more of this to come.

New Painting - Untitled - 30 x 40, acrylic on canvas

Staying with my Reutersvard inspired impossible repeating design, this is the newest painting in the series. It's the largest of this theme, at 30 x 40 inches. It's also one of the most symmetrical, as far as the distances between the "caps". This was designed with a 1:2 ratio, which creates a very structured look. I hope you enjoy it!

Block Party: Expanding on Reutersvard's Impossible Cubes, 48" x 48"

This is my newest painting based off of the design's from Oscar Reutersvard. In this painting, I wanted to create an "impossible" repeating pattern that also contained depth. The seemingly simple design that Reutersvard created is extremely fascinating to me. So, in this painting, I wanted to try to harness that impossibility of the overlapping cubes, and make them create what appears to be an endless stack. This design can repeat for ever, but does not appear to be flat. It's one of my favorite aspects of the painting. The color scheme is a 9 color value scale in blue. Each combination of "impossible cubes" contains a 3 step separation, starting with 1 as the lightest blue and 9 as the darkest. So, the top cube has values of 1,4,7. The middle side cube has 2,5,8. And, the bottom cube has values of 3,6,9.

I hope you enjoy looking at this as much as I do.

As with my last post, I will be posting higher resolution shots to my gallery section later in the week.

-Steve

Impossible Link To The Past: Inspired by Reutersvard

Last weekend I started a new painting based off of the impossible designs of Oscar Reutervard. This is one of the first paintings that I've created using my own "impossible design". My process began with an initial sketch (not pictured), and then I moved on to recreating the design on the computer (pictured). As well as this type of drawing really messing with my head while I tried to conceive it, the biggest step was figuring out the scale of the grid in order to produce the design for the canvas dimensions (in this case 24" x 48").  After that was determined, I carefully drew the grid and design onto the canvas(pictured). The next step was choosing the color scheme, in this case I chose a complementary scheme using mustard and plum, and decided on an airy dulled out blue to give the impression of a sky and depth, while keeping the color flat in order to not detract from the foreground design.

For those of you not familiar with Reutervard's work, I strayed slightly from what I have determined to be his "rules". From what I have seen of his work, he never allows his drawings to show more than three surface planes, meaning every plane of every object in his drawings live in the scene together on these planes. By inverting the two objects, I have purposely created a fourth plane... I like to break the rules a little and see what happens. If you look at the painting as two separate designs, they individually abide by this three plane rule. But, if you look at it as a whole, I used four. They each have a left and right plane. The mustard design has a bottom plane but, no top. While the plum design has a top plane but, no bottom. Does that make sense?

Also, I realize these pictures are not of the highest quality. I like to take process pictures with my phone while I progress through a painting, specifically for this blog.  I'll have some higher resolution pictures added to my gallery at the end of this week.

I hope this little insight has been helpful.

-Steve