Wholesalers Of Flowers

It can seem intimidating making the jump to abstract. It helps to get an idea of what abstract art is. Abstract is a style, or form, of painting that has at its core:

colors value changes textures reliance on shape or form.

Representational painting has at its core the depiction of something recognizable.

An example of a representational painting (you can also use the term realism here) would be a landscape with common pasture lands, farm buildings, barns, a mountainside with "real" trees, a stream lined with shade trees...recognizable scenes. These could be done realistically, almost photographically, or they could be done in painting styles like impressionism. When you look at this type of work you understand that the point of the work is its subject matter.

The point of an abstract work is not its subject matter. Rather it is about all of its parts. My definition of abstract is that the work is not about the objects depicted - if any are - but rather it is all about the manipulation of form and color...and that it is another way to look at something ordinary or common.

A nonobjective abstract work has nothing recognizable in it...it is all colors and/or texture and movement of color and/or texture. There are abstract works that have recognizable elements, such as flowers or animals or cups and teapots, but the works are not about those elements - rather these works manipulate those objects right along with the colors and/or textures.

Ways to abstract a common object include but are not limited to:

exaggerate some part of the image eliminate some part of the image distort, skew the image magnify the whole or a part reduce the whole or a part reverse the image or the lights and darks stretch the image beyond what's natural subtract out some part of the image substitute something unexpected use an unusual color scheme use dramatic value contrast changing attitude and or plane view - flatten the image, make it purposefully one-dimensional breaking down components into basic shapes

Here are three easy exercises using a simple drawing of an eight petal flower to get started with abstract [your flower will have a circle as its center and radiate eight petals evenly around it]:

1: Use exaggeration: draw the center of the flower in one corner of your drawing paper- draw three petals coming off the flower center, but make the petals very large, filling up the rest of the paper. This piece becomes about form and shapes and not the flower at all- here you are using parts of the flower to create something new.

#2: Use substitution: instead of a circle as the center of the flower, draw a triangle- and instead of the usual shapes for the petals, draw them as long rectangles that have one end very narrow and the other wider- have the narrow end attached to the center- also don't evenly space the petals, put more on one side of the triangle center than on the other two. This work will be about the idea of a flower.

#3: Use distortion: take the flower apart- draw the center in one part of the paper and place each petal separately in random areas of the drawing. This abstraction will be about the flower's elements.

My favorite artist is Georgia O'Keefe* and she used techniques of abstraction to a brilliant degree in her flower paintings. She would often paint just a portion of the flower but in close-up. In other works she would saturate colors and have great value contrast. Sometimes she would paint what in real life is a tiny flower quite huge, exaggerating its impact.

Abstract art is simply another way to look at the world around us.

*book: Georgia O'Keefe - One Hundred Flowers, edited by Nicholas Callaway. [ISBN 0-7607-1112-7] The dedication page has, in her own words: "...A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower - the idea of flowers...I'll paint what I see - what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it...." "About Myself" 1939

Linda C Smith, Artist I am a mosaic artist and home-business owner. I write an art blog at and I write a blog about business at