Building Figures with Abstract Shapes

Judy Buswick

"I start from simple lines and go deeper and deeper," Daniel Varoujan Hejinian says. "Even though I consider myself a figurative painter, I get my ideas from mental images and lines I draw on my canvas, not from models. I see relationships in lines, and then the lines lead to shapes. Shapes lead to divisions of black and white, and then I build up my layers of color to create perspective with objects, faces and figures." By creating three-dimensional shapes, he brings his paintings to life. "Colors start talking to each other," he says. "As a second color is added to the flat roof, you get the dimension of that roof. It's shadow and light that make recognizable objects from flat shapes." In order to more precisely control his shading, Varoujan finishes his pictures with a layer of blended oil glazes, which are slower drying than his base-coat acrylics. His process of building on the relationship of lines, shapes and colors provides him with a painting formula that is limited only by his fertile imagination.

Sketching the Basics
Varoujan first pencils in a three-inch border around his acrylic pre-primed canvas. Then he lets his Sharpie permanent marker swirl curves, boxes, curly-cues and triangles in a free-flowing design around half the border. "If doing a circus theme,I picture the movement of a circus, see lines hanging from the top of a tent,andthen I start putting lines on my canvas." Though he introduces many smallshapesof triangles and cornucopia curves, he cautions that it is important to leave some large, open areas. An artist experimenting with this design-approach may want to first pencil in the lines, adjusting and erasing as needed, before tracing the design with the permanent marker which is meant to show through the paint. After turningthe canvas to check the flow and balance of lines, Varoujan completes the drawing. Next he looks for lines that suggest heads or figures. He compares this process to seeing shapes in cloud formations. "You try until you see a shape and go with it. If you see nothing, turn the canvas, or start again with new lines. Once you see one, you'll see another and another.