Mimicking Art Styles

When people look at wall-sized modern art paintings with a single rectangle of blue, and say, 'anyone could paint that', I tend to wonder, 'could they though?'

You don't know whether you would pick a bad shade of blue. Or use an aspect ratio that is uncomfortable to look at.

There's balance in art, and I think detecting balance is a trained intuition. However I concede, to each their own. Maybe the reason I like simple, "abstract expressionist" work is because there's simply not much detail for me to nitpick...

I particularly like Jackson Pollock and Agnes Martin...

"Number 1, 1949", Pollock; "I Love Life", Martin

...and made a couple pieces inspired by their styles.

Splatter painting:

Splattering is SO much fun, flinging down trails of paint. I represented four favorite colors here: burgundy, pale yellow, medium-saturated navy and green-teal (whereas I dislike blue-teal very much.) Other colors I like include wine-magenta, deep rose, desaturated pale purple and burnt orange.

Special effect: the signature is traced and painted on clear acetate.

While I made this, my dad did his own splatter piece. He then glued springs and gears on top of his canvas, and it turned out great! What a fun bonding moment.

Line painting: 
A little fingerprint-y with the pencil marks, but I really like how the pattern turned out.

I won't be copying styles for a while after this, but I'm really pleased to have these two artists represented in my "portfolio".