Another abstract grid piece

I seem to have fallen in love with these abstract grid pieces. Or rather, I should say "pieces developed out of the grid exercise". So, here is another one that I made on Tuesday. This time, I took photos of two intermediary stages so you get an idea how the piece evolved.

I also experimented with mediums. I like the effect of cold-wax on oil paint because it makes the paint film very matte and velvety (I used that effect also in "The Gap", see posting a few weeks ago). This time I wanted to stess warm/cool and matte/glossy constrasts in the piece so I went for the velvety, matte finish of the wax medium for most of the piece, and then put a very glossy feature on top of that. In addition, the main part of the piece is done in only cool colors and the last feature uses very warm colors as contrast. As you can see the piece was mostly in green and blue at first with a bit of red.

I felt, the composition was not focused enough. A trick to fix that is to control the light, for instance with black. So the black came in. It's funny but I used to never use black, as I was tought to try to avoid it -- an attitude that harks back to the impressionists, I guess. But it can be very useful for controlling light and focus, as I did on the second stage.

Now, at that point I could have stopped, and I almost did. Layering two wild swashes of intense color on a piece can totally break (or make) it. That's why I took a photo at that point ;) Luckily it all worked out pretty well and here is the final result.