I started this piece with an idea from a recent New Yorker article on the artist Mark Bradford. What Mark often does is build up multiple layers of paint, often ending on top with a layer of white, and then scrapes the top layer or layers off with various instruments. He also uses collage to create other effects.
For this piece, I put down different colors and patterns on a couple of Photoshop layers. On top of those, I created a solid white layer. Then I masked that layer and started “digging through” the mask using various shapes, lines, and patterns. My initial idea was to do it all with rectangles, but in the middle, I thought it would be more interesting using other shapes and patterns. And in many places, the top layer was made partly transparent, so elements of the underlying layers only partly came through.n Toward the end, I added arcs and other lines on top of everything.
Prints and other fun stuff here.