New abstract drawing, work in progress!

I felt it was time to get started on a new abstract drawing!

Keith Haring is a big influence in my art. Ive been told by viewers that they see his artistic influence in my work! While this is great, I always strive to bring my own perspective to the idea of stark, cartoonlike, glyph-like art!

My process
I may have mentioned before,  my abstract artwork is not planned. Each piece is an experiment in following the shapes and symbols. each stage of the piece is a choice, a decision in time, like a binary tree filled with decisions. My work is metitative and mathematical in its own way; since each line is a decision taking me down one path, what would happen if in that point of time rhat the line is made, i chose to put another symbol in its place? With this line of thinking, one drawing, in alternate decision pathways, has the potential to be a slightly different drawing, yielding an  infinite number of designs.

Unfortunately, i dont have infinite time to contemplate these designs nor create them,  which makes the designs i do discover and create much more unique. Fun, huh?

Jtp/Mnr

Wings - Oil on Canvas, Abstract, beginning of the series

Untitled, 8 x 5.5", ink and colored pencil on paper.

Justin (MNR) Phillips

This is the image that started my current series of abstract linework!
It was a 'doodle' in my sketchbook that happened to look great enough for me to put some color on. This is why you keep your sketchbook pictures! This was created a few years ago, and inspired dozens of paintings and drawings!

I'm always putting together new ideas to see how far I can take this series of paintings and drawings.

My painting, Wings, came as a result of this drawing and was the first of this series.

Wings, 16x20", oil on canvas 

Justin (MNR) Phillips

At first, I used this drawing as a direct guide for how to paint this painting, then I diverged from it and only used some of the design elements from the drawing. I have trouble creating the same exact piece over and over again! D; In the end, I just 'let the brush guide me'. I essentially make up each abstract piece spontaneously, finding a rhythm and harmony in each mark on the page, and then creating other marks that make sense.


-Justin Phillips/MNR

Abstract Landscape Village Drawing

This abstract/figurative landscape was created earlier this year. It is 11"x14", and drawn with india ink. Made by me, Justin (MNR) Phillips, 2016.

Like most of my ink drawings nowadays, I didn't plan this one.
Prints and merchandise of this piece are available on my Society6 page, here: https://society6.com/product/abstract-ink-village_print

This was rather a fun creation, I hope to make a series of this. In creating this, I was considering a book called 'Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions' by Edwin A Abbot. The gist of it is there are shape people who live on a 2 dimensional plane. The reader learns the culture and lifestyle of these 2D people, and basically how their villages are constructed. To us, the villages would look something like an architectural floor layout plan. Anyone in the '3rd' dimension would be able to see within the houses and within the bodies of the shape people.

Early video games, often called 2D sidescrollers, take on this principle, but a different variation of it. The "north-south" direction is where gravity acts upon everything, and most objects are solid, and have to either be destroyed or jumped over for a player character to progress.

Think: Super Mario Maker, Spelunky, early Rayman, and early Castlevania, if you are a gamer.

I look forward to playing with this design in the future!


-JTP/MNR