True Abstraction

Lately in my roundism series I depict models in an art deco kind of style. My graphite pencil drawing ‘Roundism -25-12-17’ is a clear example. I like deco because it taught me a lot about abstracting forms. You have to know I am not the raggerty kind of abstracter. I don’t like to break down forms in broken structures or to splatter around with blobs of paints. To me those techniques, if you can call them as such, often are a poor man’s choice considering abstracting. With lots of texture, looking non-figurative with hefty saturated colors and no tonal rhythym, they look all the same. The sheer amount of them, piling up the internet is staggering and has led to an inflation, even an infarct of modern contemporary art. For true abstraction I would reccomend pre World War art, like Jugendstil or Deco.

Oiled Up

Enough negativity. As to this drawing, I am not sure why I picked deco as a comparison. I think it has something to do with tonality combined with clean cut contour delineations. The object therefor was to obtain great highlights, lovely midtones and smashing darker tones, all divided by abrupt threshold values. I see the latter in oily structures and find them dead sexy. They give a shine to fleshy structures and therefor also body mass. The tones just make everything work. In fact tones are the only thing we see. They make the woman entirely. This concept allows me to abstract the human figure even more because the basic atmospheric depth still will be recognizable. I wondered if I could pull it off to create sexy structures. They may appear almost not human like but just voluptuous basic geometrical forms? You decide.

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Graphite pencil drawing (Pentel 0.5 mm, 3B) on Strathmore Bristol paper (21 x 29.7 x 0.1 cm) – A4 format

Artist: Corné Akkers