Creating "Love & War" | Abstract Realism Oil Painting Time-Lapse
Hey guys! Welcome back to the blog or welcome if you’re new here. I’m Carla the artist behind Arie Debren Art. Today, I’m going to be showing you the creation process of my painting entitled “Love & War”. This is the first painting in a series that I’m doing. The theme of the series is “challenges in a relationship.” Once the series is complete, I’ll be doing a solo show that I will organize myself. Unless there is someone out there that sees this and wants to host it for me (lol). Hint, hint to any galleries that may stumble upon this blog.
This painting is entitled “Love & War” because it discusses how you can love someone and still be at war with them at times. When you’re in a romantic relationship with someone, there are times when things come up and you guys don’t see eye to eye. You may have periods where you’re battling each other, especially when you’ve been with someone for decades. On top of that, life is stressful – stress from work, stress from raising a family together, paying bills. Sometimes these stresses get in the way of being able to see eye to eye on things. So, the painting reflects how you may love that person so much but sometimes you’re sick of them and want to choke them out which is why I have the figures posed the way that I do.
With this series, I’ve decided to do contrasting colors for each piece. I tried to pick colors that coincide with the specific theme of the painting. For this one, I chose orange and blue. When I thought of the idea of the painting, images of war and things exploding on a battlefield came to mind. Those images made me think of orange with a slightly reddish tint to it. So, the next logical decision based on color theory would be blue. I think blue still goes with the theme as well outside of color theory. Within the chaos and violence that the orange represents, there exists sadness. Blue has represented sadness for centuries. But blue can also be viewed as a peaceful, calming color. The hope during any tumultuous times in a relationship is that at some point, you’re able to work things out and get to a good place – a place where things are calm and peaceful.
I painted the figures nude because I wanted there to be some sense of passion between the figures. Passion plays a big role on both sides of the argument. You’re passionate about how you may feel when you are “warring” against your partner and may not want to give in and put up that white flag of surrender. But you’re also passionate about your love for that person. When things are good, they’re really good, if you get my drift.
I started using a different technique with this series. I’m using slightly bigger brushes than what’s necessary and also holding my brush at the very end of the handle, which I think is actually the proper way to hold a paint brush anyway, lol. I wanted the piece to be more loosely painted than how I normally paint and have that painterly, visible brush stroke look. I also don’t want the brush strokes to be too blended. I love the look, but I’ve had some comments from other artists who say the pieces I’ve done with this technique don’t look like oil paintings. I think mainly because of the lack of blending and I’m using thicker layers and not much glazing, if any glazing at all. It bothered me at first, but I kept reminding myself that if I love how my work turns out, that’s all that matters. It’s ok to be different from others. People are still drawn in by my art and are engaging with it in a meaningful way. And that’s the whole purpose of creating – to communicate with others on a deeper level, a level they may not even know exist. So, I’ve been trying to embrace the style I’ve developed for myself and not let other people’s opinions affect how I paint.
So, at this point in the painting, I’m scared and hesitating because I’m about to purposely “ruin” the painting. I want to add a sense of chaos at the bottom to really reflect the war part of it all. Even though I painted the figures completely all the way down to the bottom of the canvas, I wanted to go over it with globs of paint and then use an old credit card to swipe it across the canvas to give it that chaotic, explosive look. This was very scary for me, and I had to work up enough courage to haphazardly place these globs of paint on the canvas.
I found this stencil on Amazon with little figures of soldiers at war with guns. I wanted to use the stencil to add these figures at the bottom to add an additional war element to the piece. I’m using an oil paint marker to draw them in. You may notice that I added a smokey heart in the background to represent that once the smoke clears, the love is still there between them.
Here’s the speed painting video that I posted on YouTube if you’d like to see the process in more detail. I’ll be posting more on this series so if you’re interested in seeing the next piece or following along with the progression of the series, please subscribe to me on YouTube and follow me on all my social media. Links are in the description below. Thank you so much for reading. I’ll see you guys next time. Bye!
- Carla
