Summer Flowers

Oil on linen panel, 11 x 14

These flowers are from a local fruit stand. I love how organic and unique they look with an explosion of colors and forms, unlike the typical bouquets you find in grocery stores and flower shops. 

I remember the great artist, Quang Ho, said in his still-life painting video that the best still-life has a sense of randomness in it, as if you happen to find the objects in their current state. It does not look staged or forced. To achieve the unfussed look, you can experiment and put different things together, and see how they look. You might spend hours arranging it, yet it looks beautiful and effortless in a haphazard way.

These flowers are a testament to this philosophy. They fell into a graceful arrangement once I put them in a tall vase, bursting with colors and energy. I didn't need to arrange them too much. I truly slowed down for this painting. Usually, I paint flowers fast, carried by the initial excitement and the urgency that the flowers could soon wither and change their shapes. But this time I was drawn to study each flower closely to see its structure and character. There is clarity and satisfaction in observing those details carefully. 

That light green flower on the left took me over three hours to paint. Then I scraped it and started over the next day. It was an absorbing and engrossing experience. What I learned was -- if I stare at the flower long enough, I can actually paint its every petal and come to a better understanding of the light and shadow pattern on the flower. What's more, the silhouette of each flower is super important in revealing its distinct character.

Joshua Been Lecture and Demo

I attended a Joshua Been lecture and demo last Saturday at my friend Hai-ou Hou's place, Chesapeake Fine Art Studio. It was fantastic. He has it down to a science from figuring out a myriad of plein air gear to his approach to plein air painting. His method is very disciplined, which I lack, that includes always doing a pre-sketch with four value markers before starting to paint. This neat little pack is what he uses to make black-and-white sketches. You can buy it on his website.

 

The pen with a little white sphere on top is what he uses to determine the precise direction of the light source. 

He breaks down the visual language into four elements: values, shapes, edges and texture. The values are the foundation and you lay it down by doing pre-sketches. I use this method sometimes and make a thumb-nail sketch before painting. But it's usually for my studio paintings or for figuring out a composition for my ideas. When it comes to plein air painting, I feel an urgency because the light changes so fast, so I tend to jump right in. If the first composition doesn't work out, I'll just wipe it out and redraw it. That tones my canvas too. In a way, I like the chaos, the not-knowing, and the unpredictable nature of the process. My friend Janice has been doing these sketches. They do help make sure your painting come out better. Maybe I should start making them now!

 

This is his palette on the day-tripper easel he designed and sells on his website. Janice already bought one. It's very lightweight. He only uses seven colors: titanium white, lemon yellow(missing?), cadmium yellow medium, cadmium orange, burnt sienna, cerulean blue hue, alizarin crimson, and ultramarine blue. No black. He starts the painting thick, no thinned washes.

 

This compact little thing is his fly-on-the-wall easel. It's good for painting in tight spaces where you really don't want to cause a scene. He used this to paint the dinosaurs in the Smithonian museum in DC. I like his dinosaur paintings.

 

 

And this little sunset(sunrise?) painting.

 

Then he did a demo, a larger piece from a smaller study. 

 

 

He's a great plein air artist, and articulated his methods clearly. I bought his book. It will come in the mail. Now the thing for me to do is go out there and practice it myself!

Outdoor Figure Painting

Oil on linen panel, 12 x 16

This is my first ever outdoor figure painting. Can you believe it?! I painted this with my artist friend Abigail on my deck. Abigail has a lot of experience painting outdoor figures since she studied with John Ebersberger and at the Cape Cod School of Art. She's done many mud heads, figures on the beach, etc. She couldn't believe I had never painted a figure outdoors. But it's true. Somehow all my portraits and figures were done indoor with controlled lighting. But I'm liking the outdoor light with the cool reflected light on the model's face.

It was a cloudy day and made for an interesting study of the colors on the model's skin and kimono. But the sun kept going in and out of the clouds, making painting more difficult. It's a complete different painting when the sun came out! 

Kuniko is a wonderful model. She always arrives early, times herself, and holds the pose steadily. We are happy to have her working with us.

Azalea Garden

 

 

 

The weather is getting warmer and better for plein air painting. My artist friend Janice told me about this pretty azalea garden in Clarksville and I painted with her there a couple of times in the past two weeks. There are tons of azaleas in different colors -- white, pink, fuchsia, and violet. They peaked last week and are going away now. But what a beautiful sight when they are all blooming by the water!  

Figure Studies

 

Same model in both paintings. The first one was done in Zoll Studio, and the second one was done in the open studio of the Howard County Arts Council. I'll have to work more on the second painting in the second session. 

Self-Portrait

 

Self-Portrait, 9 x 12

Painting a self-portrait is always an anxiety-laden process, for me at least. I don't know whether to make myself prettier or uglier, since capturing an exact likeness is elusive. It's grappling with the awareness of your own identity. Out of the desire to paint from life, this is the model who's always available. I worked on keeping the edges soft.

It's hard to photograph this painting because of the glare. I feel the colors are cooler and richer in the actual painting. 

Fishing Boats

 

Fishing Boats, 16 x 20

This painting is based on a photo I took on my recent trip to China. My sister took us to a small fishing village called Nan'ao in southern Guangdong province and we had the best seafood there, as fresh as it can be. I hope I can go back there. 

Sometimes a painting just paints itself, and this one did. I was done in less than two hours. I think I'm getting more confident about leaving things out and not getting too hung up on details--spelling everything out for the audience. Case in point: those boats in the distance. I don't need to paint everything to death so people know those are boats. I only need to suggest there are boats and other things in the distance. It's actually more fun to paint this way and the painting comes out looking fresher and better.

Another thing is that this painting was actually painted over a not-so-successful portrait sketch. I start to like painting over old pictures. I just turn the old painting upside down and start painting over it. The chaotic background provides a nice counterpoint and creates some excitement for the new painting. My paintings are done faster and almost come out better because of the layer of paint that's already on the canvas. Additionally, I like to paint landscape over portrait and vice versa because the warm tones of a portrait make a nice background for a landscape, and the cool tones of a landscape (blues and greens) work very well as an undertone for a portrait. So maybe it is like this -- that no effort is ever wasted. But I do have plenty of old paintings that cannot be salvaged. They need to go in the trash.