07: Railroad Crossing Sketch

Take a look at this untitled Jackson Pollock painting. Are those people? Maybe it’s a landscape with three towering structures like oil rigs, and that big circle in the back is the sun. Or, it could be an imaginative product of the artist’s emotions, conveyed through energetic action painting. 

While some people will see only squiggly lines, there is something at work here that makes it easy-to-look-at and interesting. The red overlaps and intertwines the black shapes. We are invited to follow the lines in a playful chase around a messy but defined composition. 

For this week, I thought it would be good practice to draw abstract from reality! Jackson Pollock style! Note: Pollock and generally abstract expressionists don’t draw from reality and instead from emotions, memories, and feelings. My short exercise would be helpful in practicing action painting and a more abstract expressionism style.

Railroad Crossing Sketches

On the left side you will see a more realistic sketching of a railroad crossing, and on the right a more abstract version. I will be completely honest with you. The right side sketches look wacky, BUT it’s fine because they are really more of notes for the future me. Next week, I attempt to paint the bottom right, and the paint acts differently than a pencil sketch. The circles, strength of shading, and squiggles you can’t really see with this picture tells me what I was planning and visualizing at that moment.

Closure

Thank you for reading this short blog, and look forward to my next painting (I will do my best)!