Learning Through Experimenting- Watercolor Abstracts

I've mentioned before how I basically only painted abstracts for about a year.  There was a lot to learn from that process-- no fear of failure, a general desire just to "try stuff out" and see what would happen, etc.  I was never really attached to the outcome.  Some came out better, some worse.  I just got to play and learn what water and pigment and paper would do.  Good times!

I recommend it to all painters, if you've not done it.  I found it very liberating! It allowed me to figure out how far to one side I wanted to pull, before I began the slow pull back to something more representational.  Those more "organic" effects are still with me though-- I want to combine the two approaches.

Take something like this--

and somehow merge it with an approach like this--

Still not quite sure how to do that!  Hmmm...