Step-by-Step Color Evolution

Come take a peek at how the color evolved in this abstract painting!

I've been having fun with abstract art - admiring the way colors dance and play off of each other. And marveling in the freedom to paint over, to alter the look and feel with just small dabs of paint here and there.

I often get asked how I pull colors together and my usual answer is to simply play, then figure out what is and what isn't working! On this painting, I started with a complementary palette of red-orange and blue-green geometric swatches and thought I would share the last few steps I took to pull the colors together:

 I liked the basic colors and design, but felt that the composition was spotty - the contrast between dark red-orange and light teal too great.

So I painted over some of the red with more teal, added some dark teal accents as well as some drips of rust to help pull the teal and red-orange together.

A bit of white here and there helped draw the eye in a circle around the painting.

 I felt that the colors worked better with each other, however still too much emphasis on the dominant red-orange.

So I painted over more of the red, softened the white with a bit of rust and added drip lines of teal to better link the squares and make the geometric aspect a bit more obscure.

'Copper Age'