Abstract Paintjam

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Howdy, /ic/! My art group and I have been doing this pastime for a bit and I wanted to share.

The premise of the activity is sharing abstract images with your friends and trying to make some sort of a readable composition from them within a set time frame.

Firstly you and a few friends get together on skype/hangout or whatever your preferred chat program is. We prefer hangout as it's easy to share screens and give each other advice while talking about specific areas of a piece. For the second step, each of you should spend the next five or so minutes chopping together an abstract image, aiming to have an interesting range of colors, values and shapes. I advise using lots of scatter brush, warp tool and adjustment layers to give a sense of detail density while still keeping things vague. Once your abstracts are completed they should be handed over to one another so each participant can spend the next hour(or however long you want) attempting to hash out some sort of full image from what they've been given. Keep in mind, the goal isn't to make anything great, nor impress women, or produce content for your failing Patreon. However, it can serve as a fun warm up, get you in the habit of drawing ever day, and I find it's quite useful for discovering the area where you've been struggling the most before you tackle it with more serious work.

In the end, the only rule is that there are no rules. You don't have to use much if any of the abstract you're given. Crop it, adjust colors, warp it, whatever. It's great to share it with your friends, if doing so hurts then you'll only get tougher.

I collected a few of the abstracts we had saved as examples and boosters in case anyone's interested. If you happen to this up you're more than welcome to post your results in this thread.

>tl;dr Draw random shit, make your friends draw over it, have a laugh and work on something serious.

FYI believe this idea was taken from elsewhere, I wouldn't want to take credit.