Abstract Painting: Sunny Side - Work in Progress

Charlotte Wensley
Dec 4, 2022
2 min read

Updated: 10 hours ago

I'm working on a couple of big paintings at the moment for an upcoming exhibition in early 2023 and whilst I had greens on my palette I wanted to capture some of the colours in my sketchbook for future reference with a quick abstract painting.

I tend to have several pieces on the go at once, and when I have big canvasses to work with, I also like to have smaller sketches on paper to hand. I use these just to play with marks and colours in a very random way, I suppose they're a bit like a 'dump sheet' for ideas that spring to mind that I want to test before looking at ways to incorporate them into the bigger paintings.

I had started a couple of small works on paper, but rather than them supporting the bigger work, they quickly went off on their own tangent! They became 'alternative' pieces in their own right, but as I'd been working on them quite spontaneously, areas emerged that I liked and other areas not so much. So rather than engage with the tussle of trying to 'finish' them in some way, I decided to chop out the bits I was enjoying and use them for collage in my sketchbook.

And then one thing led to another and with the leftovers I moved to a small work on board and then back to my larger collage on the sheet of aluminum which I began a few weeks ago.

So lots of going round in circles - re-purposing, re-using and re-envisioning. Sections of these papers found their way into my sketchbook as part of this collage, along with some of my less recent gelli printed papers.

Lots of collage fiddles in this one!