random photos

I was shooting some jewelry and clicked off a few random shots that I thought might make good starts and compositions for a series of abstract paintings ( my daydream series) that I want to explore more. These were potoshopped a little for color and cropping. The top one is an untouched original. I know, everyone has photoshop but the idea was to come up with a way to start an abstract painting not to produce finished art with manipulated photos. Allot of abstracts that I see just look like a infantile versions of a subject. Sometimes it seems like an excuse for not developing drawing or painting skills. Sometimes it's just random marks, or color fields or grids, or "expresionism". They don't seem to have a composition, design or a focus. The good abstracts have design and focus and are well made. (IMO). But where does the original idea for non objective abstracts come from?. That's where I'm having trouble getting started. My daydream series has been about the landscape so far with elements of watercolors on paper as collage. They are more surreal than abstract but they are usually based on or around the collage element. This series may continue with the collage elements but using this idea of random, found designs as a starting point appeals to me. I've used the idea in jewelry with a series called "throwing bones". (If your interested in that idea make a comment and I'll post something about it on the jewelry blog.)

This is an untouched photo from this series