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Creating abstract compositions with Blender

11

ikyste writes:

I've been messing around with Blender since 2015, and at the time I decided I wanted to have a career in the arts and I was trying to figure out my style and experiment with different mediums. I hadn't really done any 3D work besides a few awful renders using SketchUp in architecture school. When I first got into it my goal was to create lowpoly assets, but as time went on I realized I should try to come up with something of my own. Even though I enjoy modeling assets, I wanted to create unique visuals that people could enjoy. I love traditional art and mostly abstract art (futurism, surrealism, suprematism, etc.), and I thought it would be a fun exercise to try to come up with something that I could draw inspiration from all the abstract painters and sculptors that I like, while working with a tool completely different from what they used.

So I began playing with geometric shapes and abstract visuals inside Blender.

These were my first attempts. Even though it looks really simple, I like showing it so people can see where it all started. The isometric camera felt like a more effective way of taking advantage of simple geometric shapes. It also makes it easier for me to come up with compositions. I don’t move the camera and most of the time I don’t even get out of camera view. My workflow is actually pretty simple: I set the location and rotation of the orthographic camera, then I add a plane to act as a ground and just start adding random shapes on top of it. Usually there are no sketches, I just add stuff and move it around until I like it. Then I add colors, textures and lights (planes with Emission).

At this point I knew I could get something from isometric view + pastel colors. These two are from when I started to figure out where I could go.

Almost a year later that’s how it looked. I understand it may be too much for some, but I really enjoy exaggerating while people are obsessed with minimalistic trends. And even though working on these are incredibly therapeutic to me, I got a little bored.

Then I changed the image size proportions and tried something different, keeping all other settings the same.

A process gif from another square piece.

(old vs. new)

I’ve been going back to my old stuff and playing around with what I know now. It’s been a good exercise.

Here’s some of the latest stuff I did. Also new interpretations of the old isometric style. And these are the settings I used for the final renders (I’m used to making adjustments inside Photoshop but you can do the same with Blender):

Aaaand that’s it.

I highly recommend people experimenting with 3D compositions, but most importantly I really wish people would open their minds to abstraction. It’s super relaxing but more than that, it’s such a great practice for understanding how objects, colors and textures interact with each other. If you have any questions or if you’re doing something similar with Blender and want to share it with someone, you can find me as @ikyste pretty much everywhere. :)

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