These abstract vulture studies began as an exploration of shape, movement, and personality through minimal linework. Created with flowing marker lines and layered color edges, the pieces reduce the bird down to its essential forms while still capturing its posture, weight, and strange elegance.

I’ve always loved vultures artistically. They’re awkward, dramatic, intelligent, and somehow both ugly and beautiful at the same time. Their hunched silhouettes, stretched wings, and exaggerated necks create natural abstract shapes before you even begin stylizing them.

The first piece focuses on the back view of the bird, simplifying the body into large sweeping curves and layered arcs. The form becomes almost floral in places, with the neck and folded wings flowing together into one continuous movement. There’s very little detail, but the posture still feels unmistakably vulture-like.

The second drawing pushes further into motion and attitude. The wings spread outward in sharp, exaggerated curves while the head pulls forward with a tense, searching energy. The layered red, blue, and brown outlines create subtle vibration around the form, giving the drawing a restless, alive quality without needing shading or realism.

These pieces sit somewhere between animal study and abstract design with simplified organic forms, continuous flowing line work, minimal detail with expressive posture, and layered color edges to create movement and depth

What I enjoy most about this style is how little information is actually required to suggest a subject. A few curves, directional lines, and proportions can communicate far more than heavy rendering.

These studies also reflect something I return to often in my artwork—finding elegance inside creatures people normally overlook. Vultures are scavengers, awkward on the ground, and unsettling to many people, yet their shapes are incredibly graceful when reduced to rhythm and motion.

Sometimes the strangest subjects make the most interesting abstract art.

These pieces began as a series of small watercolor experiments—each one painted individually on circular sections of paper. There was no fixed plan going in. The goal was simple: let the paint move, react, and settle on its own terms.

Working this way removes control at the start. Color bleeds, edges form unpredictably, and textures develop in ways that can’t be forced. Some areas bloom softly, others create hard lines or unexpected patterns. Each circle becomes its own contained moment of movement and color.

Once the individual pieces were complete, I brought them into Photoshop and began building a larger composition. This is where control returns—but in a different form. Instead of directing the paint, I’m directing relationships:

How shapes overlap
Where color intensity sits
How transparency creates depth
What draws the eye first

Layering the circles allows the textures to interact in new ways. Soft washes stack over one another. Edges blur or sharpen depending on placement. The composition starts to reveal itself rather than being imposed.

This hybrid process—traditional watercolor combined with digital composition—is one I return to often. It gives me the unpredictability and organic movement of paint, paired with the flexibility to experiment, rearrange, and refine without losing the original energy of the work.

The final result is less about a defined subject and more about atmosphere. Color and texture take the lead, while structure emerges gradually through layering and balance.

It’s controlled chaos. Just enough intention to keep it from falling apart.

Many of my geometric pieces start in the simplest way possible: paper, markers, rulers, and a handful of circle templates scattered across my desk. No grand plan, no complicated concept—just lines, curves, and shapes beginning to interact with one another.

What I enjoy most about this process is the balance between structure and spontaneity. The tools create order—perfect arcs, measured angles, repeating circles—but the way those elements intersect is often completely intuitive. I draw a line, then another curve, then suddenly a pattern begins to appear that wasn’t planned at all. Once the drawing feels interesting, the second stage begins: translating that loose sketch into a digital composition.

The Hybrid Process: Hand First, Digital Second

Each of these pieces began as a marker drawing on paper. Using rulers, protractors, and circle templates gives the lines a clean geometric foundation, but the imperfections of hand drawing add a bit of organic movement. After the sketch is finished, I trace and refine it digitally—usually as vector artwork in Adobe Illustrator on the iPad. That stage lets me experiment freely with color, spacing, and balance while preserving the original structure of the drawing. This hybrid process is one of my favorite ways to work because it combines two very different energies:

• the spontaneity of hand drawing
• the precision of digital design

The result is artwork that feels both structured and alive.

Letting the Shapes Reveal Themselves

One of the most interesting aspects of these drawings is how the forms emerge naturally as the lines intersect. In some pieces, overlapping circles create unexpected shapes that almost resemble leaves or petals. In others, arcs sweep across the page like orbital paths or flowing ribbons of motion. Occasionally a single bold element becomes the anchor for the entire composition—like the red circular form that interrupts a field of intersecting curves.

Because I start without a rigid plan, the drawing often feels like a conversation between the tools and the page. A line suggests another line. A curve invites a circle. The composition slowly organizes itself through repetition and balance.

Exploring Color and Motion

Once the drawing is digitized, color becomes the next playground. Some pieces lean into bold contrasts—deep greens, bright oranges, and sharp lines that cut across the composition. Others use softer palettes that create a calmer, almost meditative rhythm where the motion of the lines becomes the main focus.

In one of the designs, a strong purple tone anchors the entire piece, creating a unified visual field where overlapping curves form organic shapes. In another, layered arcs drift across the surface in muted earth tones, emphasizing movement rather than symmetry.

The digital stage allows these variations to happen quickly. A simple sketch can evolve into multiple color explorations before the final version emerges.

Finding Rhythm in Repetition

Geometric abstraction has always fascinated me because simple shapes can produce surprisingly complex visual rhythms. A few circles, arcs, and lines repeated across a surface can start to feel almost musical.

That rhythmic quality is what I try to preserve in these pieces. Even though they are minimal in structure, the intersections and overlaps create patterns that guide the eye through the composition.

• Some viewers see planets and orbital paths.
• Others see leaves, petals, or flowing fabric.
• And sometimes they’re simply lines enjoying their own geometry.

A Series That Continues to Grow

These drawings are part of an ongoing exploration of geometric abstraction. The series continues to evolve as I experiment with new combinations of circles, arcs, and intersecting lines.

What began as simple marker sketches has become a growing body of work that blends hand drawing with digital refinement—an approach that keeps the process playful while still producing clean, modern designs.

It’s a reminder that even the most minimal marks on paper can lead to surprisingly complex visual ideas. Sometimes all it takes is a ruler, a circle template, and the willingness to see where the lines decide to go.

Sometimes the most interesting creative experiments happen on the smallest surfaces. These tiny 3 x 3 inch abstract paintings were created during a short burst of studio experimentation where I focused on color, symbolism, and simple geometric forms. The inspiration behind the series comes from the bold visual language of Hilma af Klint, whose work explored spiritual symbolism, geometry, and color relationships long before abstract art became widely recognized.

While these paintings aren’t direct copies of her work, they borrow from the same idea that shapes, colors, and simple forms can communicate meaning without representing anything literal. Working this small forces every choice to matter.

Why Paint So Small?

Each of these pieces is painted on a miniature 3 x 3 inch canvas. At that scale, there’s no room for unnecessary details. The design has to remain clear and intentional. That limitation actually makes abstract work more fun. Every line, color, and shape has to serve a purpose. The result is something that feels bold and graphic despite the tiny size. These little canvases also make perfect small art pieces for places that normally feel a bit dull—desks, shelves, offices, or cubicles. Instead of a blank corner, you get a burst of color and form that catches the eye.

Exploring Color and Symbolic Shapes

Although the paintings share a common inspiration and size, each one experiments with a different color palette and visual rhythm. One painting centers around warm pinks and earthy tones with soft blue shapes floating among looping golden lines. The composition feels organic and slightly playful, like abstract seeds or cells drifting through space.

Another piece shifts toward deep blues and circular forms, creating something that almost resembles an abstract planetary system. The rings and spheres give it a sense of motion, like a symbolic map of energy or orbit.

A third painting leans heavily into bold yellow shapes against a strong blue background, using spirals and clusters of dots that feel both mathematical and whimsical at the same time.

The final piece brings in a warm orange background with rounded shapes and layered circles that almost suggest a strange abstract creature—or maybe a symbolic diagram of something alive.

One of the joys of abstract work is that viewers often see completely different things in the same image.

Symbolism Without Rules

Artists like Hilma af Klint treated shapes and colors almost like a visual language connected to spiritual ideas and unseen systems. While I’m not working from a strict symbolic system, I enjoy the freedom of letting shapes interact in ways that feel intuitive.

• Circles suggest motion, cycles, or energy.
• Lines create connections between elements.
• Color sets the emotional tone.

Put them together and a simple painting starts to feel like it’s hinting at something larger. Or maybe it’s just a group of colorful shapes having a good time on a tiny canvas. Both interpretations work.

Small Experiments Lead to Bigger Ideas

These miniature paintings are part of an ongoing exploration of abstract work that mixes bold color with simple graphic forms. Working quickly on small canvases is one of my favorite ways to test visual ideas without overthinking the process.

Sometimes a tiny experiment leads to a larger painting later on. Other times the small piece becomes the finished artwork. Either way, these little canvases prove that you don’t need a giant surface to explore interesting visual ideas.

Sometimes three inches is more than enough.

Every once in a while, I make something that feels like it has absolutely no interest in following rules. This is one of those pieces. Floppy Flowers started as a simple geometric exploration—circles, curves, repeated shapes, a color palette that felt balanced and intentional. But somewhere along the way, it stopped behaving like a clean, structured design and started leaning into something a little… weirder. The forms began to feel soft. Flexible. Almost alive. Not flowers exactly—but definitely flower-adjacent.

Letting Motion Take Over

What really pushed this piece into its own strange category was turning it into a video. Once the shapes started moving, everything changed. Instead of sitting neatly in place, the forms began to:

• bend like they were made of rubber
• wobble slightly off rhythm
• droop and sway in ways that feel just a little bit wrong

And that’s where it got interesting. Because the moment you add motion to simple shapes, they stop being static design elements and start feeling like characters. Not literal characters—but something with presence. Something with attitude.

Why I Keep Coming Back to This Style

There’s something really satisfying about starting with precise geometry and then letting it fall apart—just a little. Not completely chaotic. Not random. Just enough movement and distortion to make the piece feel alive instead of static. That tension is what keeps pulling me back to this kind of work:

• structured but not stiff
• playful but not careless
• abstract but still suggestive of something familiar

In this case… flowers that absolutely refuse to act like flowers.

Watch It Come to Life

This piece was designed to move, so the still image only tells part of the story. You can see the full animated version on Pinterest. That version is where the personality really shows up—the wobble, the sway, the quiet refusal to sit still and behave.

Every once in a while, I step away from faces and let the rest of the body take over. This was one of those moments. These two pieces came out of the same session—same mindset, same flow, same refusal to behave. One became Backward Thinking. The other… just kind of slid off into existence as a body stretched out on the ground like it gave up halfway through making sense.

Backward Thinking

This one is exactly what it sounds like. At first glance, it reads like a loose, abstract figure. Then your brain kicks in and tries to solve it—and that’s when things get uncomfortable. The body almost works. Almost. But something is off just enough to keep your eye moving, trying to correct it, trying to make it make sense. It bends like a real body might… if it ignored every warning signal and just kept going. That’s the part I like. There’s a tension here between:

• fluid movement
• structural familiarity
• quiet distortion

You recognize the human form, but it doesn’t fully cooperate. It resists being understood too quickly. And yeah, there’s a little metaphor hiding in there whether I planned it or not. Sometimes your thinking loops back on itself so hard you don’t even realize you’re upside down anymore.

The One Lying Down

This one feels like the aftermath. Same visual language. Same continuous line approach. But instead of tension, it leans into collapse. The figure stretches across the space like gravity finally won the argument. It’s less confrontational. More… resigned. But it still plays the same game: your brain tries to piece together limbs, weight, direction—what’s shoulder, what’s hip, what’s even happening—and never quite lands on a single answer. It’s a body, sure. Just not one that’s interested in explaining itself.

Why Full-Body Instead of Faces

Most of the time, I work in portraits—controlled compositions, focal points, expressions that anchor everything. These are the opposite. Just line, movement, and the suggestion of anatomy. That forces the viewer to do more work, which is exactly where things get interesting. You’re not just looking—you’re solving. And while you’re solving, the piece gets under your skin a little.

Continuous Line, Controlled Chaos

Both pieces were created as continuous-style digital line drawings, which means:

• no lifting the pen mentality
• no clean segmentation of body parts
• everything flows into everything else

That’s what gives them that warped, almost organic feel. The line doesn’t stop to ask permission—it just keeps going, even when it probably shouldn’t. Especially when it shouldn’t.

The Real Fun Part

These are the kinds of pieces that don’t hit all at once. They creep up on you. You glance, move on, then your brain goes, “Wait… what the hell was that shape doing?” And suddenly you’re back, trying to untangle it like a visual puzzle. That’s the sweet spot for me—right between recognition and confusion.

These two pieces sit on opposite ends of the same creative process—one driven by instinct, the other refined through structure, but both rooted in simple shapes and bold decisions.

The first composition began the way many of my abstract pieces do: fast, loose, and completely unplanned. Originally created with markers, the shapes built on each other through repetition and balance rather than intention. It wasn’t until the piece was finished that any recognizable idea emerged—something loosely resembling “wine and cheese,” which says more about my subconscious than my planning.

That sketch was later translated into a vector format, where the lines were sharpened and the structure became more defined. The spontaneity remains, but it’s now supported by clean edges, controlled spacing, and stronger visual contrast.

The second piece takes that process a step further into deliberate design.

This one began as a construction-paper study, focusing on bold shapes, color blocking, and composition. It was then refined digitally in Adobe Illustrator, transforming the original cut-paper feel into a crisp vector illustration.

Here, the influence of Bauhaus design becomes more apparent—minimalist geometry, intersecting black lines, and a limited but confident color palette. The composition leans into structure, balance, and repetition, while still maintaining a sense of movement through angled lines and overlapping forms.

Together, these pieces show two sides of the same approach:

• Intuitive, hand-created beginnings
• Digital refinement for clarity and scalability
• Strong geometric forms and simplified shapes
• A balance between accidental discovery and intentional design

Abstract work like this doesn’t rely on a fixed subject. Instead, it creates a visual language—one that hints at meaning without locking it in place. Sometimes that language turns into something recognizable. Sometimes it just holds a mood. Either way, the process is where the real work happens.

This piece started as a very simple, hand-drawn abstract bird created with markers. The shape is intentionally geometric—reduced down to sharp angles and flat planes, with just a few line details to suggest form and texture. There was no complexity in the design. That was the point.

What made this piece interesting came later, when I turned that static shape into a short motion experiment you can view on Pinterest. By separating the illustration into layers in Adobe Illustrator and bringing it into After Effects, I was able to explore how minimal forms can suggest movement.

The goal wasn’t realism. It was suggestion.

• A slight shift in angle.
• A subtle rotation.
• A repeated motion pattern.

Suddenly, the rigid shape becomes a fluttering bird.

This kind of motion relies less on detail and more on timing and structure. Because the design is so stripped down, even the smallest movement becomes noticeable. It forces the animation to carry the weight instead of the illustration. The process itself was straightforward:

• Create a flat, abstract design in Adobe Illustrator
• Break the artwork into separate layers
• Import into After Effects
• Animate simple, repeated motion to imply flight

Even though the final piece is intentionally rudimentary, it opened the door to a much larger idea—using abstract shapes to explore motion, rhythm, and transformation.

This is the kind of work that tends to evolve quickly. One small experiment turns into ten variations, then into a series. Different shapes, different movements, different levels of complexity layered on top of the same core concept. Consider this the first flutter of many.

Over the years I’ve filled many sketchbooks with quick drawings of people. Not detailed portraits—just simple line work that tries to capture a moment or emotion.

These abstract portraits came from one of those sketchpads.

I started drawing them many years ago while experimenting with how little information a face needs in order to communicate a feeling. A few lines for the eyes, a curve for the mouth, the angle of a head—suddenly a personality appears. Sometimes they look thoughtful. Sometimes suspicious. Sometimes like they’ve just caught someone doing something they shouldn’t be doing.

The Family

One of my favorites is a piece I call The Family. It reminds me of those childhood moments when you knew you were in trouble and every adult in the room seemed to be watching you. The expressions aren’t detailed, but the tension is there.

That’s what I love about line drawing. With only a handful of strokes, the characters seem to pop off the page. When I was working on these, the faces appeared quickly—almost as if they were already there waiting to be revealed.

I ended up filling an entire sketchpad with these abstract portraits. Each one has its own personality, even though the drawings remain simple and minimal.

I’ve recently started sharing several of them on Pinterest, and I’ll continue posting more from the collection here as well. They’re a reminder that sometimes the simplest drawings carry the strongest emotions.

Thinking Man

This abstract figure is one of my favorite line people pieces because of the quiet character in the face. I think of it as my version of a thinker—introspective, calm, and a little removed from the world. These drawings begin as pencil sketches on a large sketch pad and are then carefully traced digitally in Adobe Fresco to become clean pen-style line drawings.

Inspired by Matisse and decades of working with abstract figures, this piece reflects how mood, age, and life experience subtly shape line and form. I’ve been creating variations of these abstract people for over 40 years, and it’s fascinating to see how each era leaves its mark.

Wondering

A simple yet deeply expressive line drawing inspired by the fluid minimalism of Matisse. I create many of these intuitive “line people,” and they often appear on the page before I fully understand them—emotional figures shaped by mood, gesture, and quiet honesty. This piece captures the feeling of contemplation and weariness through subtle shifts in line and form.

Drawn using clean, continuous lines, this minimalist illustration reflects how powerful simplicity can be in conveying character and emotion.