“Lotus”

Hi friends! Today’s piece of Autistic Expressionism is a work of art called, you guessed it, “Lotus.”

I made this piece right on the tail of another piece that I created for my daughter for Christmas. My kid is an anime lover and so I drew a favorite character as the central focus in a color palette I knew would be a favorite. I would have shared a photo of the painting, but I forgot to take one and now it lives in Japan!

Anyway, I loved the color palette of her painting and wanted to make one for my own collection in the same colors. I won’t repeat some of my kind of standard design elements (which you can see for yourself and I’ve listed as part of my process in other blogs), but there are a couple of things I would like to share. This color palette is a variety of blues with hot pink as the main accent. I’m sure this does not surprise you after the raving of pink in my last blog though! Another favorite color of mine is aqua blue, and I will say that periwinkle has been growing on me the last couple of years as well.

During almost every piece of art I make I listen to worship music which is a meditative practice that leads me down rabbit trails of thought and emotions. I process feelings, talk to God, sort through my never ending thought parade, reason out things I don’t understand, process the many sides of a circumstance, and problem-solve. Listening to the music and painting and drawing are the BEST ways to clear my tornado brain and it calms my whole body down. What’s interesting to me about this piece is that I was more focused on my art choices than mental processing. My family’s state of being at the time was one of calm companionship because my husband was on leave from work so he was home with me and my mom, Christmas had passed (though I didn’t really feel like Christmas until January when the kid came home), and my mom was on the mend. All three of us were watching Christmas movies together while my mom and I crocheted.

I can’t honestly tell you how the lotus emerged, but I’ve painted them before because they are a fun flower to draw, whether realistic or illustrative. Color-wise, I really focused on getting a contrast in lights and darks, so I used a pretty dark blue and a dark magenta as well as a few medium tones and even variations of the lighter blues that I listed above.

I marked out what were starting to become signature patterns for me: dots, rings, swirls, straight & variable lines, and repeating rainbow lines and then I started to play with new patterns. Paisleys were awkward at first as there is a flip in the way it’s drawn, but I really like their shapes. After the way “Fuchsia’s” center plaid did not work out for me, adding plaid here among the paisleys had the opposite effect. I tried my hand at bubbles and then I drew scrolls. I think scrolls are beautiful, but I feel like mine are a bit on the busy side here and don’t love them. In one of the circular spaces, I created rings inside each other and spent quite some time varying the size of the lines so they almost look wobbly – in a good way. Surprising things happen sometimes when we are experimenting and playing in art and this is a perfect example because when I was making the rings, my marker overshot and as I tried to fix it, the first thick portion on a line was born.

The central triangle was a batch of straight lines and I added miniature patterns inside the small spaces created in a different color and is a precursor to another pattern that has become a signature of mine, which I’ll talk about in a different video.

Overall, I really love this piece. I love the color and hue variations, the new patterns, but also the quiet areas to rest the eyes. Overall, I think it’s a really cohesive artwork. There is no specific theme here, but I feel like it defiantly fits into an “abstract” style of art. Next time I redecorate my studio, this art may find itself hanging in a frame on the wall there.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this discussion of “Lotus,” and I wish God’s many blessings on you! If you’d like to check out the vlog for this piece, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/p2V2J0k_2tQ

Dawn