Summer Abstract – The 52-Week Art Project 2026

It’s week 36 of The 52-Week Art Project! This week’s prompt is Abstract in Summer colours. I painted 3 abstract pieces for this prompt and will explain the techniques and supplies I used on them below. I hope this post is informative and interesting and that it might inspire you to have a go and try some abstract art too!

Although I’ll be sharing my paintings here today, you have the rest of the week to work on your creations. Remember, you can interpret the prompt using any medium you enjoy!

The #CH52art Project Overview

• A creative project or those of us who can’t create daily, for whatever reason.
• There is 1 prompt per week to ​interpret in any way & take your time with.
• Use any medium (collage, clay, paint, photography, baking, knitting, lego, fabric, etc)
• You can skip a prompt anytime if needed, your wellbeing comes first. No stress here.
• You don’t need social media to participate, but if you share online, please use #CH52art
• Share your creations to the gallery on my blog (optional) & be inspired by other creatives.

Visit this page for more details.

I aim to post my creations at the start of the week, by Sunday evening or Monday morning. So I’m creating my pieces for each prompt one week in advance. That said, the gallery is always available, so you can browse or, if you’re participating, upload your creations, anytime.

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Wk36 Prompt: Summer Abstract

I used to be so uncomfortable making abstract art, but I so enjoyed seeing the abstract pieces that other artists make, so I forced myself to practice.

I needed to get comfortable making messes, making marks, not having a clear plan for outcomes, not having a sketch or lines to colour within – I had to be comfortable with the unknown. Not easy for me.

But like with most things in life, practice makes progress. Now abstract pieces are some of my most favourite.

Sometimes I have a plan, sometimes it’s just colours I want to use together, other times it’s shapes or patterns I want to play with.

The one thing that is consistent in all my abstract pieces is that I did not know how they would look in the end. That part is always a surprise.

Currently my favourite type of abstract pieces to make are mixed-media pieces. The ones where I use a combination of paints (gouache and acrylics), inks, markers, pens, coloured pencils as well as occasionally some shimmery accents. Soon I will also be adding oil pastels to the mix. I can’t wait!

The idea of using collage elements has also crossed my mind, but I’ve not been too happy with my past adventures into collage, so I am resisting this addition for the time being. It would be a great way to add texture to a painting though!

Please excuse any dull lighting on some of the photos below. I work in low light because bright lighting drains my energy (light sensitivity is an ME/CFS symptom). So progress pictures are often taken in low artificial lighting. I’ll try to correct the greyish/yellowish colouring, and get them as close to their actual colouring as I can, prior to posting.

* click on images to zoom in.

Blue Summer Abstract – Gouache

This first piece was done with gouache on 300gsm (140lb) cold pressed watercolour paper. It has a very textured surface which creates some lovely variation in the way the paint applies, depending on how wet or dry your brush is. The drier the brush, the more chance of little white areas remaining unpainted, creating a more textured look.

Compare the dark blue triangles below to the curvy shapes hugging the pale blue circle. The triangles had much more water mixed in, while the other curved shapes had a drier application.

But first, we have to apply tape to create those crisp white lines between our little painted tiles and all around the edge of the page. I use regular washi tape for the border of the page and then skinny washi tape for the grid lines that run through the piece.

I then filled my brush with a colour and hopped around from tile to tile, adding lines, swooshes, geometric shapes, blobs, washes and scribbles. Moving onto the next colour, I did the same, making sure to spread the colour throughout the piece, although not every single tile has every single colour in it. I like to leave space for variation and surprise elements. There’s no plan here, just have fun making marks on the page.

My main colours were a selection of blues. Then as a complementary colour I chose bright yellow (I love this combo, it reminds me of sunshine and the sea) and as an accent I chose orange. You’ll see by the end, there is very little orange on this page and it does not feature in every tile. But it provides a nice little pop here and there.

My aim was to cover each tile with paint, leaving little to no white, since removing the tape was going to leave lots of white on the page. I also wanted to layer the colours and shapes, so it was important to move around the page to give each stroke time to dry before adding more colour over the top.

When I first added the orange, I was not happy with it and thought I had made a big mistake, but oddly enough, once I removed the purple tape, the whole piece looked way more cohesive. Funny how even the tape we use can affect our opinions of a piece. I’ll pay more attention to that going forward and perhaps try to match the tape to the colour palette I’m working with.

Not only did the tape removal provide a clearer picture of the overall colour palette, it also provided much needed contrast and a clean frame for each tiny composition. The initial plan had been to take black ink to this piece and create marks and patterns over the paint, but I liked how it turned out and was actually too afraid to make marks on this one. For now.

Although I only used blues, yellows and orange, if you pay attention, you can see here how the overlapping yellow and blues created various shades of green and the orange overlapping the blue creates a deep red-brown shade.

But our brains don’t necessarily register those colours as we understand it to be 2 colours overlapping each other more than 2 colours creating a third. Or at least that’s how my brain interprets it. When I look at this piece, I see blue, yellow, orange.

I might go in and add those black accents after all, but for now, I’m enjoying this as is. I loved making this one so much, I decided to make another using a different colour scheme.

Red Summer Abstract – Gouache

This piece was done on hot pressed paper instead, it’s still 300gsm watercolour paper, but smooth. You can see the colour goes on smoothly and evenly on this paper.

I made a mistake here, so please be careful of this if you use the same technique. Don’t reuse the washi tape if you’re using a completely different colour palette. I reused the tape from the blue painting for this red one and in some places the blue paint on the washi tape rehydrated and bled into my new painting. This created some green and brown areas that I had to carefully paint over multiple times to hide.

I used the same techniques for this pieace as for the one above. Moving around the page with each colour. Making sure previous strokes were dry before painting the next colour over them. Layering shapes and colours as I went until there was hardly any white space left. Until I removed the tape to create those crisp white grid lines.

This piece has a combination of warmer tones including magenta, red, yellow, orange and purple. By mixing a bit of magenta, red or yellow into each other as well as into the orange and purple mixes, it makes them feel more connected and it creates a more harmonious palette.

Varying the amount of water and pigment in each mix also creates a nice variation in saturation of colour. So there are some areas of pink or peachy tones due to adding more water. Overall, I think this piece is very striking. I love the colour combination and will definitely be making more art with these colours!

Again, I was not sure whether to add the black detailing, so I’ve left it as is for now. The more I look at them, the more think I will probably upload these photos to the iPad and draw over them digitally to see how it looks before I use any pens and ink on them.

Pink Summer Abstract – Gouache

This piece started as one of my palette cleaning pages. For those new to my art journey: I don’t like to waste any paint, so I do not wash my mixing palettes.

I usually add black line work to my abstract art, to add contrast and depth, but I opted to use darker shades of the same colours on this piece instead. I think it adds a good amount of contrast without overpowering the bright colours. Although black would certainly work very well with this colour scheme.

Once I was happy with the outlines, I added shading and mark making, before using a fine point brush and some white gouache to add highlights to the shapes. You can see below what a difference it makes to add some shading with coloured pencils and highlights with white paint. Both photos are of the same area on this painting.

Doing a piece like this is very interesting, because I get to try many different supplies and techniques which shows me what I like or don’t like. What I enjoy doing and what I would rather not play with again. There are certainly parts of this page that I don’t love (all the acrylic paint pen parts for example) as well as some aspects that I definitely want to explore more of in future pieces (shading, highights, certain shapes and marks). Overall I am pleased with how it turned out.

The colours in my new kit are super vibrant so I’ve loved seeing all three of these pieces whenever I walked past my desk this week.

Mark making, shading and highlights make such a difference, don’t you think?

Next Prompt, Wk37: Party Time

I’m not sure what I will be doing for this prompt. I have a couple of ideas, but I might end up doing digital art. I have realised that I prefer digital for illustrations and traditional mediums for abstracts and botanicals, and perhaps some landscapes.

I love how doing this challenge for the past few months has unexpectedly taught me so much about myself and my artistic preferences. Things I never really noticed before.

Would You Like To Participate?

The #CH52art Summer Gallery 2026

Blog Parties & Link-ups where I’m sharing this post. Click here to see my link-up calendar and find new blogs to enjoy!