In this one, I worked back and forth with acrylic paint and adjusted by "correcting" with strips of phone book, both yellow pages and regular listings. There's 3 or 4 layers in a few places, and it still looks messy, but the central circle I find interesting, somewhat sexual and female amidst all this Kline maleness.
Finally, here's a simple "neat" one, black over red with collage. Seems a little tied-down to me, but the simplicity also appeals.
I'm finding doing these extremely addictive and freeing, once the arm gets going. Here's a simple one with a little yellow to supplement the yellow of the yellow pages. For some reason this shape keeps recurring in what I've been doing. My gesture always (because I'm right-handed, perhaps) starts from upper right to lower left corner, then moves elsewhere. If this seems important to me, perhaps it should be important to me, but I don't know why.
I need to get another big piece of luan so I can work on a really big painting. Everything I have right now is small. Great for the quick studies I've been doing, but I want to start something meatier too, and worked in oil, which takes longer to dry.
One step at a time, however. I'm learning a lot. People have always assumed (as did I) that he was heavily influenced by Chinese calligraphy -- not true, however. He was more interested in shapes like railroad trestles, bridges, tracks, and urban scenes.
Plus jazz...
Was listening to Leonard Cohen this afternoon while trying to work on these, but ended up listening to his sad and depressing tales and only got going again when I turned it off. Ah, music.