Category: Abstract Art

Categories
Abstract Art

Waiting in the Wings

BlueAngel

Waiting in the Wings
Alex Hinders, 2013.
Colored pencil and pen.

It’s funny how the subject of a drawing can quietly slip away. .The purple in this angel’s coat isn’t really conspicuous enough to give it a bold distinction from the various shades of blue lingering around the drawing — it’s only a subtle division. If I had colored the coat in the same shades as the little crystals, then the coat would just be large blocks of color. If I hadn’t highlighted the wings, feet, and head of the angel then the main focus of the drawing would have disappeared in the wallpaper, so to speak; the angel would have been hidden.

I thought it was fascinating that if I wanted to I could have taken the focus out of the drawing. When I’ve got the outline of a drawing down the image is only half-way out of its quantum state — there’s still all of these possible color combinations competing for dominance. Then I choose a color scheme and all of the possibilities are peeled away leaving only the final product. I could do multiple different colorings of the same drawing if I wanted to, but as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I don’t want to drag my feet on the same drawing forever — I’ve got a lot of things I want to do.

As for the meaning of the drawing, I suppose it would depend on how much my fascination with focus interacts with the actual image of an angel. If you just want to look at the angel — who seems to be imbued with both grace and patience — Then I suppose you could take it as hope existing in the background of our lives. If you read a bit more into the meta-stuff I’ve rambled on about then you could say this drawing is about how we often can’t see any hope but that it still exists. Or maybe this drawing is just a playful reflection on focus in art.

Maybe there’s no meaning at all. Ooo, that’s unsettling.

 

Categories
Abstract Art

Moving On

MovingOnSigned

Moving On
Alex Hinders, 2013.
Colored pencil and pen.

I did this drawing just before moving into my new apartment a few months ago. I was feeling pretty optimistic about the future at the time. You’ll notice this drawing has an overall sense of balance, even though it’s asymmetrical in nature — this only adds to the optimism.

 

Categories
Abstract Art

All the Blood in the Forest

AllTheBloodInTheForestE
All the Blood in the Forest
Alex Hinders, 2013.
Colored pencil, pen, and computer.*

Red is an interesting color. It’s more obvious when you see this drawing in person, but I used four shades of red: red, cherry red, scarlet red, and carmine red. Yet when you look at it, the red assaults the eyes. It’s hard to tell one shade of red from one another and all our visual processing systems can do is shrug and say, “Yup, that’s sure an awful lot of red.” This is all laid on top of more easily distinguishable shades of green that both clash with and compliment the red, making the effect more intense.

*My scanner could not pick up the shade of green, so I altered the color and contrast digitally to make the image more resemble the actual drawing.

Categories
Abstract Art

Pious Girl

PiousGirl
Pious Girl
Alex Hinders, 2011/2013.
Colored pencil and pen.

I drew the initial drawing and colored the woman and the angels back in 2011 after my break-up with the Purple Girl. I think at this point I was reviewing my romantic history and the Pious Girl popped up into my sub-conscious. That was a really fun date, even if things didn’t work out between us. A miscommunication had us waiting for each other in the wrong locations while it was raining. During the dinner she bowed her head to say grace and I panicked, thinking maybe I was supposed to do something, too — though I wasn’t. Turned out I was on a date with a Pasteur’s daughter.

The drawing was left in my incomplete folder for nearly two years. I couldn’t really think of a background pattern that would really ignite the drawing and bring it to life — until this previous weekend. I looked at it, saw this background in my head, and set out to finally finish this little drawing. This is a more in-depth exploration of the color yellow than I’ve ever done and I also used a different coloring method than usual. Yellow can be a hard color to see, so I had to keep going over areas with different shades of yellow and gold. This proved to be quite fun and I’m pleased with the end results.

Categories
Abstract Art

Oh, no! I’m Turning into a Tree!

 

TurningIntoTree
Oh, no! I’m Turning into a Tree!
Alex Hinders, 2013.
Colored pencil and pen.

Sometimes in life thoughts take root in your head and keep playing over and over again which only further nourishes the thought. Then the thought sprouts and grows into an entire tree that takes up all of the space inside your head and your brain gets squished into a tiny corner of the cranium. Before you know it the plant erupts from your head and your skin turns to bark — you’ve turned into a tree! You start craving fertilizer and undergoing photosynthesis because you’re an extended metaphor for obsessive thoughts!

 

Categories
Abstract Art

Time and Time Again

BlueWheel
FullBlueWheelJ
Time and Time Again
Alex Hinders, 2013.
Colored pencil, pen, and computer.

When I had finished coloring the initial drawing, pictured first above, I felt that it was more cryptic than usual. I’ve certainly had a fair number of drawings that I have no idea what they represent or are supposed to mean, but this felt different somehow. It was like I was missing something or I wasn’t seeing the full picture.

I found my personal answers for this drawing after having scanned the image twice. On my computer screen I had the folder with the scans up and I saw the two images side by side — although one was upside down, as I had laid it in the scanner a different way. I realized that the parts of the blue wheel could connect with rotated versions of itself. In other words, my sub-conscious had created a drawing with rotational symmetry.

So I digitally rotated the image and pasted it together to get the larger image you see. The image feels complete this way. I can now see that the drawing was trying to detail how we humans are creatures of habit, and we go about preforming the same mistakes over and over. Then there are times where we think we’ve learned our lesson by repeating these mistakes so many times, but in truth, we haven’t — or we forget — and then we go about continuing to repeat those same mistakes again anyway. I also considered the name “The Same Mistakes; The Same Solutions” before deciding on “Time and Time Again.”

You’ll notice that the second image has some darker lines and other small differences than the original drawing. I wasn’t entirely happy with how the scanner picked up some of the details and decided since I was already digitally altering the image that I might as well make a few more tweaks while I was at it.

Categories
Abstract Art

Alex is Working on Her Art

AlexIsWorkingOnHerArt

Alex Is Working on Her Art
Alex Hinders, 2013.
Colored pencil and pen.

When I do my artwork I feel more in tune with myself and my feelings. The time I spend on creative projects is also the time when I feel most alive — it’s like my entire self is being utilized, instead of just a specific muscle or thought process. This drawing is a visual representation of what working on my art is like and what it means to me. I colored myself using the warm colors to illustrate how engaged I am and I used the cool colors on the abstract background to give a more magical feeling.

Categories
Abstract Art

Flower Field

 

FieldofFlowers
Flower Field
Alex Hinders, 2013.
Colored pencil and pen.

This drawing is one of those rare drawings where spatial distance comes into play, although it only seems to affect the two women, and not the flowers. The woman on the right is closer to the foreground of the drawing while the woman in blue is farther into the background. If the flowers were obeying the same rules as the two young women then the ones around the blue woman would be getting smaller and less detailed in the distance as well — but for some reason, they’re immune to spatial reasoning. They also don’t root themselves into any kind of ‘grown’ and float up the page without any horizon line to be relative to.

But I think the distance in this drawing exists for a thematic reason, besides being an interesting technical detail. The two women are looking towards each other, but due to the distance between them they aren’t actually looking each other in the eye. I think this represents some kind of mis-understanding, or mis-communication.

Note, also, that the scanner had trouble picking up some of the coloring details on this one. The colors are a bit different in reality.

Categories
Abstract Art Backlog

Backlog #6: Bird and Egg

WIPbirdandegg
Bird And Egg
Alex Hinders, 2012.
Colored pencil and pen.

Another drawing from late 2012. I can’t really explain why I’ve never gotten around to coloring this one; I guess there’s something about this drawing that just doesn’t interest me that much.

Categories
Abstract Art Backlog

Backlog #5: Falling Down

WIPfallingdown
Alex Hinders, 2012.
Colored pencil and pen.

This was drawn in the same batch of drawings as Exhausted during the tail-end of 2012. Unfortunately, this is also the reason why this drawing hasn’t been colored just yet. The color scheme for this that I’d like to do is basically the same as the one for Exhausted — Green vortex in the background, and a red person in the middle. It would be boring for me to go about doing the same color scheme so soon, so I skipped it and went about coloring other drawings. I still haven’t gotten around to going back and finishing this one up; maybe someday.