Painting an abstract face…Making of the painting “Inscrutable”

After making pure abstract faces in my paintings like “Soliloquy” and realizing that I can make captivating paintings using my blocks style; I had an idea. The idea was still about painting an abstract face. However, I decided to amalgamate the best of both worlds. I wanted to use my signature style blocks and make the face more recognizable but still abstract.

This gave me an idea of one of my most intriguing painting, inscrutable. It’s a 16 x 16 inches painting. It has a face of a lady using traditional hues of skin, yellow and browns. Background has shades in green. Both the foreground and background are made completely in my signature style blocks.

Remember, if you want to make a painting of an abstract face, practice making a lot of realistic faces, understand the proportions and then dive into abstraction. You can make few features abstract or a totally abstract face or just one feature realistic and everything else abstract. You can make the face recognizable or make it so abstract that its suggestion on the painting isn’t obvious at first glance to the viewers. Choice is yours. You can play with different colors, shapes, size and forms to show abstraction.

Experience of painting an abstract face:

Before diving into the canvas and oil paints, a lot of practice of making realistic faces was done by me. Also, I made a rough layout of this painting in water colors so that there was some direction beforehand. Next, was the time to start with the oil painting and a whole lot of excitement to just begin.

While making this painting, I just kept admiring the color combinations. The background combined with the foreground is very pleasing to the eyes. Even people who watched me painting it were of the same opinions. The hairs of the face were also done in hues of browns.

Making sure that light and dark shades are put in the right place, this oil painting was colored carefully and tactfully. While painting an abstract face; different shades helped in enhancing the features and defining the face even more. Though the shades of each block have slight variations but they combine and unite to be a part of the larger picture beautifully.

Next was the challenge to make the eyes. Although, this painting is abstract in nature, I kept the eyeballs realistic to make the painting more interesting. After all, as they say, eyes are the door to the soul.

When the painting got finished, I felt quite proud of this art work and particularly loved the breezy feel that all the shades used in this painting exude. As it’s difficult to decipher what the eyes of this face are trying to tell, this painting was entitled “Inscrutable” by me.

What happened next?

This painting was displayed in my art exhibition, “Colors of Life” in the year 2013. It was well received by the audience especially for its fresh idea. Later, I also displayed this painting on a website that features work of several Indian artists. This painting got sold through that website! As it was an online buyer, a third party website and I just had to courier this painting, till date I don’t know who the buyer was!

As it turned out, the buyer also is inscrutable or mysterious for me as I have never met him/her in person. Anyway, I am just grateful that this painting is now adorning the place of one of my artwork purchaser!