Don’t assume abstract painting is easier than realistic painting.
True, an abstract painter never needs to worry about getting anatomy wrong, or failing to capture the light accurately. Still, abstract painters have worries of their own.
Consider this blast of a painting by Phil Hale.
Hale knew what clouds look like and painted them beautifully. He knew how golden sunlight looks on skin. He understood muscles and tendons, he knew how to pose the human body like the rock of Gibraltar in the center of the painting. Ahhh, but the hair– that’s the one part he had to invent from scratch.
In his preliminary drawings for this very confident painting, there’s only one element that Hale changed and changed again: the abstract shape of the hair.
How would Hale know when the hair finally looked “right”?
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| What is the right number of accents grave et aigu that should be spitting from his hair? How long should they be? Should they be straight or curled? soft or jagged? Nature provided no clues, so Hale was all alone on these choices. |
The importance of this black abstract shape is clear from the fact that Hale made very different choices in other paintings and those choices had a significant impact on the tone of the painting, strongly affecting the “realistic” elements which took up 90% of the image.
Sometimes the black abstract shape swallowed up the head altogether…
If you’re doing it right, it’s not so easy to be untethered from mother nature.