Megasketch Monday -- Abstract Art and Doodles

Golden High Flow in an empty Montana marker

While many artists are happiest when doodling or playing around with abstract concepts, I get bored to tears. Pushing around paint or pens without a specific image in my mind always felt like a waste of time. I was determined to spend at least a small part of my Project Megasketch time trying to understand what it was about these genres that appealed to others. Maybe it could become appealing to me too. Hopefully I could learn something from it that would be useful in my representational work, or in my appreciation of abstract art in general. Maybe it would improve the quality of my line
work, or I'd even end up enjoying the process!

 Noodlers Zhivago ink and water brush

I did pages and pages fill patterns and mini abstracts like the ones above and below. They gave me lots of ideas to work from. Some were copied from other sources, and some were from my own references or imagination.

 Private Reserve Velvet Black ink in a Lamy pen with water brush

Much can be derived from nature, and from what we see and experience in our everyday lives. Sometimes we just need to open our eyes to what is in front of us.

Ideas develop from other ideas, and as I did these, I could see a progression in the elements I was using in my doodle work. I kept trying different forms, lines, contours, fills and materials to find out what I liked, and what I felt could develop into something interesting.

Like much of the Project Megasketch journey, it was an exploration. I was way out of my element here, so I looked around for inspiration. Unlike my desire to copy from some other artists in the representational areas of the project, I didn't want to copy in the abstracted arena.

Bic Cristal Extra Bold 1.6mm pen

Initially, I had to force myself to doodle. After awhile, I found myself occasionally wanting to just enjoy the feeling of making contact with paper without requiring a representational result. The exercises I'd done on the DrawABox website provided a lot of inspiration, and gave me an opportunity to put those lessons into practice in an abstract manner.

Black Swan in Australian Roses ink in a Lamy pen with EF nib

If you missed my original post describing Project Megasketch, you can find it here. To see all the posts I've done so far about Project Megasketch, click here. In an attempt to stick to something of a schedule for the sake of you viewers, I'll try to do my Project Megasketch posts on Mondays from now on, and we can call them Megasketch Mondays. :) My posts on other subjects, or other sketch projects, will be posted on other days of the week.

Coming up soon on other days of the week:

• I have some lightfastness test results to reveal from swatches that have been in my window since 2015. They include several brands of pastels and drawing media. 
• I've got a December Daily Doodles sketchbook that I made and have started working in, using both representational and abstract elements. It's mostly ink, with watercolor and gouache. This is a current, ongoing project.
• I finally did a video of my Floral Explorations Sketchbook. I should be able to post that within a week or so.
• And more! Stay tuned...