Archive for Abstract Art

Butter Face

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags , , , , on April 6, 2010 by jdhastings

This is not pretty, but not all sketches happen on paper. This is another post about process.

DSC_0137

This is a physical, 8″ x 8″ sketch of the type of “Flower” pieces I’ve been posting lately.

Because I hadn’t made on of the Flowers in a couple years I needed to remind myself how to make them. Additionally, while its hard to tell, I figured out how to construct layers of these around each other for an effect like this, but with the different shape.

This one turned out ugly because I used whatever scraps I had laying around regardless of color and used too small of a frame to adequately house the thing. I will likely un-stretch it once I start working on bigger versions and use the pieces in something else. However, the lessons learned in making this turd make it far more valuable than it appears.

-JD

PS, this song is freaking hilarious:

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Reuleauxs

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags , , , on August 4, 2009 by jdhastings

This will probably be my last posting for today. I have to save my secret cache of sketches in case I’m as useless this week as I was last week… Hopefully this is better than the last one. Seriously, sorry about that.

This piece is named after a Reuleaux Triangle, which is roughly formed in the centers of the 2 circles. This shape is important because it is a “curve of constant width,” meaning it shares certain properties with a circle. Below the jump I’ll try to link to the animation wikipedia uses to show why that’s handy.

Sketch349

 

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Steamy

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags , , , on August 4, 2009 by jdhastings

Since I seem unable to make anything other than small, quick sketches lately, if even that, I will be posting another selection of smaller, quicker sketches throughout the day.

Sketch348

I think this one is pretty self explanatory. When I make wavy shapes, I cut them out of a single sheet, which ends up leaving a lot of wavy holes like you see here. Normally I just cut those waves out too, but decided to see what happens if you role with it here.

More later…

-JD

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I have no idea what to title this

Posted in Art, art on paper, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags , , , , on June 30, 2009 by jdhastings

Thank you, WordPress for deleting my original version of this post by logging me out inexplicably for no reason. That was really awesome of you and if you were in front of me in personified form I totally wouldn’t brain you with my 3 hole punch.

Anyways, as I already mentioned at length to nobody but the electrons in my monitor, it’s hard for me to come with names for most of my abstract work. If there is a clear defining trait to describe it, then I’m good, but in cases like this, where the shape I’m using doesn’t have a technical name (as far as I know, and I’ve looked), so anything I come up with is pretty unwieldy. So far its stuck at “Nested Double Semi-Circle Squares,” which is just a smidge better than the latin “Duo Semi-Orbis Quadrangle”. If anybody else has a suggestion, I’m all ears.

Nested Double Semicircle Squares
“Nested Double Semi-Circle Squares,” 18″ x 18″ Paint on Paper, Collaged. (This is for sale if anybody’s interested.)

Detail and explanation of the process after the jump

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Loose Ends part 2: (Almost) My First Cascades

Posted in abstract, Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags , , , , , , on June 9, 2009 by jdhastings

Shortly after creating the piece posted earlier, Christmas came and I needed some art to give out to family members.  This was around the time that giving art at Christmas morphed from a cost saving strategy to being way harder than just buying something.  So that december I pulled out all my extra scraps, from several pieces I had put together then decided weren’t good enough, and set about making a few pieces.

After separating out all the pieces, I took the earth tones and decided to hang them loosely off the top of the frame.  I had done something similar once with leftover pieces of a regular woven piece (which is no longer extant and I have no photos of online…), but this took the concept further.

Unfortunately, at the time I gave it away I only had a cheap 2 megapixel digital camera to record it, so the photo is far from even my low standards.  And I have no details.

Dean2

I call this “Dean Cascades” (my uncle’s name is Dean). I believe it is 18-20″ wide. Acrylic and watercolor on canvas with safety-pins. Circa 2005.

I am attending a seminar on Green Building Practices at lunch, after which I’ll post something else. Maybe some background on where these were made or my process. We’ll see.

-JD

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From the Archives: A Couple Loose Ends

Posted in abstract, Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags , , , , , , on June 9, 2009 by jdhastings

Good morning, fellow travelers. Or if you are part of the massive metropolitan sprawl known as the Easten Seaboard, happy noon.

I thought today I’d show a couple pieces that maybe don’t warrant their own weekly post, but are worth showing.  So I’m going to post 3 or 4 things throughout the day.

The first piece, “Red, White and Dark” was one of the first pin weaves I did way back when. The intent here was to try to wrangle a composition into the mix. This ultimately proved a little unweildy, and led me to find other means of composition in later pieces. But I still have a fond place for this one.

Dark, White and Red
16″ x 20″, Acrylic on canvas w/ safety pins

I’ll have the next post around my lunchtime- in 2-3 hours.   Hope to see you then!

-JD

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From the Archives: Blue Concentric Rings

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags , , , , on May 19, 2009 by jdhastings

I had hoped to have a new piece here today, and that piece is theoretically more finished than not, but it does need a few minor adjustments that would have been hard to accomplish along with photographing everything.  Rather than rush through that I thought I’d post this old piece from 2006.

Blue Concentric Rings

26″ x 26″ x 5″, 6 layers of Acrylic on Canvas with Safety Pins

More info and a detail after the jump. Read more »

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From the Archives: Green Cascades

Posted in abstract, Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags , , , , , , on May 12, 2009 by jdhastings

I’m hoping I’ll have a new safety-pin piece to post next week, but until then, walk with me down memory lane. 

The year is 2006, the world is marveling at the silly name and silky sounds of Gnarls Barkley’s first record, Superman Returns was moderately entertaining people in the theaters and Edmund Phelps was winning the Nobel Prize in Economics for his analysis of intertemporal tradeoffs in macroeconomic policy. While I had leftovers from this thing.

I took those pieces and built this:

Green Cascades

60″ x 12″, acrylic on canvas with safety-pins.  There is a full sized detail after the jump.

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“Sunny”

Posted in Art, contingent art, J. D. Hastings with tags , , , , , , on May 5, 2009 by jdhastings

This piece was started during the first really hot spell of the year here in Berkeley. By the time I finished it this week it was raining again. But I think the original impression stuck with me.

Sunshine

16″ x 16″ Acrylic on Masking Tape on Paper, then collaged (aka Mixed Media) 

So I decided to call it Sunny for obvious reasons. But  whenever I think of that word I think of this song:

Detail and another, related piece after the jump.

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Woven Weaves

Posted in abstract, Art, J. D. Hastings, mixed media, Painting, Textile with tags , , , , , , , on April 14, 2009 by jdhastings

When I first started wrecking canvases for reassemblage, I mainly wove various paintings together. At the time I didn’t know it but this is a fairly common practice, springing as far as I can tell from the steady merging of fiber arts into the traditional, paint-dominated “fine arts” canon. This piece is made of woven paintings that I’ve stabilized with acrylic medium, then cut up and wove a second time.

Hopefully the detail after the jump makes it clear what’s going on here.

The blue bar and red square are my standard saefety-pin style. They and the vertical black bar are stretched to separate bars that are mounted atop the main canvas and frame, giving the piece a three dimensionality tht is probably impossible to convey here.

WovenWeavesWeb

24″ x 24″ acrylic on canvas, with safety-pins. Click for access to larger versions. Detail shot after the jump.

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Tiny Little Archives

Posted in abstract, Art, Individual Scraps, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags , , , , , on April 7, 2009 by jdhastings

Its always frustrating to post photos of my safety-pin paintings because even with details the individual scraps that make up the pieces get lost like a tree within a forest. In person I work hard to make the individual scraps worthy of study over time. In fact the tiny scraps are the main focus of the series. Their nature and how they’re used is the motivation to pursue this direction. The overall compositions is ultimately just the framework to fit them into.

Because of that, I like to save some of the better individuals to blow up and show as their own pieces. Hopefully its easier to put the photos of entire pieces in better perspective with more knowledge of what the pieces making it up look like.

So here are some of my collection of select scraps. Each is between 1 or 2 inches by 1 or 2 inches. All are acrylic on canvas.

Multi-Colored -Arches

19

3 more after the jump.
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