Radiance, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 9"h x 12"w, 2016 #14
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Showing posts with label Sold Painting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sold Painting. Show all posts
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Monday, September 12, 2016
April's Promise - 30/30 Challenge 2016
April's Promise,
Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2016 #5
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Thursday, September 25, 2014
Green Bells of Ireland -- Continue with the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge...
Green Bells of Ireland,
Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2014 #17
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With my third butterfly painting for Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" Challenge for this September still in the works, I thought I'd share with you one of my previous paintings that I have completed for this challenge. I did it while still in China, therefore haven't got a chance to share it here with you yet, although I have uploaded the image onto my Daily Paintworks Gallery Page. I have started this painting actually in 2012, and at that time my main goal is to explore different variation of greens -- mixed from yellow, blue and brown, or modified from different tube greens. I was a little intimidated by this color, as it is not easy to make it look natural with readily-available tube colors, yet it is so essential to flower (and all nature-related) paintings. I have worked on it on and off many times, and certainly have learned a great deal while working on it! The most interesting fact I have discovered is that you can add a lot of different hue -- blues, yellows, and even reds and brows -- to your painting in different locations at small portions and still have the entire image read as "green", as long as the colors adjacent to green on the color wheel dominate the pictorial space, and colors complimentary to green only occupy small areas -- and these sparsely placed jewels actually decrease the monotony of the whole painting, really making the color "sing".
Paintings in an almost-monochromatic scheme like this one is not easy, as it is relatively hard to place emphasis on the center of interest item without the help of a hint of the complimentary color of the large color field it is placed in. I have to rely on mostly cautiously placed details as well as the contrast of soft and hard edges to reach my goal, and direct the viewers' eyes toward the flower bells in the foreground. I have exaggerated the softness of the background from the reference photo to make the center flowers stand out, and add more atmosphere and movement to the entire image.
Paintings in an almost-monochromatic scheme like this one is not easy, as it is relatively hard to place emphasis on the center of interest item without the help of a hint of the complimentary color of the large color field it is placed in. I have to rely on mostly cautiously placed details as well as the contrast of soft and hard edges to reach my goal, and direct the viewers' eyes toward the flower bells in the foreground. I have exaggerated the softness of the background from the reference photo to make the center flowers stand out, and add more atmosphere and movement to the entire image.
In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!
You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:
Monday, September 22, 2014
Spring Feast -- Continue with the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge...
Spring Feast, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2014 #15
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Continue with Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" Challenge for this September! I am posting the new paintings I am finishing this week and will catch up with the ones I finished earlier in October -- forgive me if it is a little confusing! (The challenge has started when I was still in China, where I have no access to blogger or facebook due to government restrictions on internet there, so I have a few of those piled up, uploaded onto my Daily Paintworks Gallery Page but not here.)
I am doing a few butterfly paintings this week, among other things. This is the first one I finished. I tried something new in the background -- glazing wet-on-dry but still try to maintain the boundaries of different color-shapes soft and diffused. I found that I can control the shapes and values of each shape better, but multiple glazes do dull the color a bit if I am not super careful. I had some fun with the butterfly, letting the lightest background washes seep into the light shapes of its wings to add a hint of color, thus subtly show the translucency of the wings in sunlight. For its furry body I used very small brush and scumbled with think paint to get the texture of tiny hair, and contrasted that with the smooth, shiny underbelly of the insect. I am quite happy with how it's turned out. Now off to the next one! (Hardly any time to breathe with this challenge! How are you doing my friends?... :-)
I am doing a few butterfly paintings this week, among other things. This is the first one I finished. I tried something new in the background -- glazing wet-on-dry but still try to maintain the boundaries of different color-shapes soft and diffused. I found that I can control the shapes and values of each shape better, but multiple glazes do dull the color a bit if I am not super careful. I had some fun with the butterfly, letting the lightest background washes seep into the light shapes of its wings to add a hint of color, thus subtly show the translucency of the wings in sunlight. For its furry body I used very small brush and scumbled with think paint to get the texture of tiny hair, and contrasted that with the smooth, shiny underbelly of the insect. I am quite happy with how it's turned out. Now off to the next one! (Hardly any time to breathe with this challenge! How are you doing my friends?... :-)
In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!
You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Soar II
Soar II, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2014 #10
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I have mailed out "Soar II" to its new home in England earlier this week. I thought it was finished at the end of last year, but as I looked at it everyday during the Christmas break, I just felt it is still missing something, so I held off mailing it out to the client (who has been very kind and not rushing me at all) and hope I will know what final "punch line" to add. I often do this to paintings and normally it takes a while for me to actually say to myself "this is done, I have nothing more to say in this piece", but in this case because of the special circumstance I feel I need to finish it ASAP. However, after gauging with myself for a couple of days I really thought I don't want it to take any less effort or attention just because I am repainting the piece, and I don't want it to be a mere repeat of the one that got accidentally damaged. Instead, I want it to be better than the first one -- at least in my own judgement.
As I was doing this my family member got admitted to the hospital due to cardiac issues, so everything got put aside, as you probably already know from my previous blog posts. However, when he got a stent put in his artery and I was in the hospital, I took this painting together with other two small pieces tat I once thought was finished, but not sure, with me, as I would have long time to look at and think about them. I did just that, and worked on all of them in the past two weeks again. I was really happy with how this one turned out...
This is a previous version before final modification. I have decided to darken the leaf against the light stamen of the flower on the upper left to add more contrast, and I am sharing this WIP image which is very close to the finished painting here as an example of the type of modification I have done during the long pondering period. On the topic of when a painting is done, there is really no road map. Most of times we could only trust and rely on our best judgement, which is continuously being refined as we make numerous mistakes and shout out "I wish I had stopped a couple of strokes earlier!"...
In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!
You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:
As I was doing this my family member got admitted to the hospital due to cardiac issues, so everything got put aside, as you probably already know from my previous blog posts. However, when he got a stent put in his artery and I was in the hospital, I took this painting together with other two small pieces tat I once thought was finished, but not sure, with me, as I would have long time to look at and think about them. I did just that, and worked on all of them in the past two weeks again. I was really happy with how this one turned out...
Soar II, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2014 #10
In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!
You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Fisherman's Evening II - 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Day 2
Fisherman's Evening II, Watercolor on Arches #140 Hot Press Paper, 7"h x 10"w, 2014 #2
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A while ago (yes, in the last 30/30 challenge!) I've explored this theme and really loved the composition. Back during my trip back China visiting my parents, I've got the opportunity to sketch out some old fishing boats and dingles that are common sights along the river ways of populated historical cities and towns built on the fertile delta of Yangzi River, so I thought I'd do a series of painting featuring various interesting ancient boat designs. I also wanted to try out different materials and this is the first time I painted on a hot press paper surface -- I really loved it! It was a great challenge, however, the Arches hot press paper is a little rougher comparing to a lot of other makers' (such as Fabriano), and pigments actually granulate a little on this surface, creating some beautiful texture and separated color effect that are hard to see on the photo. The drying speed of this surface is very fast comparing to cold press paper by the same maker, and water do tend to pool on the surface, making wet-in-wet manipulation very difficult. But it is worth all the effort! Wet-in-wet done on cold press surface just have very interesting creeping edges, and wet-lifting helps create very subtle color separations that gives a lot of depth to the painting...
I lifted a new moon at the upper right corner of the painting, and was very happy that I have finally captured that sense of inner peace and tranquility of floating on open waters into the dusk, after a day's hard work...
And, of course, you guessed it -- theme for this one is... "Water".
I lifted a new moon at the upper right corner of the painting, and was very happy that I have finally captured that sense of inner peace and tranquility of floating on open waters into the dusk, after a day's hard work...
And, of course, you guessed it -- theme for this one is... "Water".
In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!
You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:Thursday, December 19, 2013
Emerging after My Long Period of Absence... Some Fall Colors in Winter, Some New Finished Paintings, and My Last Holiday Fair of the Season
Fall Colors, Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah,
Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough, 12"h x 9"w, WIP 1
Finally painting again! From October to December the Atelier work turned out more demanding as the projects get harder, and I will finally start chalk and charcoal next semester! It has seriously eaten into my watercolor painting time, and the busy holiday fair season did not help either -- between getting prints and small gift products ready for the shows and doing my charcoal drawings from life, I did not have much breathing room in the past few months... Hence the lack of new paintings here and no update on my blog (shame on me...) -- but, no more excuses, I am painting again! Yay!
Here's a couple of landscapes I have started in Carl Purcell's workshop the past summer (really? It has been so long?...) and like everything started during a workshop, they did not get finished. I've started five of them and the closest one is about 70% done, but none of these. Maybe it is just me -- I always feel quite rushed in the drawing part whenever I am attending a workshop, and was not quite happy with the hard-edged shapes of the foliage on all these tree paintings. To me, a foliage clump in a painting needs to have very interesting and well-designed but natural-looking shapes and a blend of hard, soft and broken edges to really make it look like "foliage" instead of just "choppy brush strokes", and mine in any of these paintings certainly did not meet the standard.
Not to worry -- off to the faucet! Arches paper can really take some abuse and that's why we love it! When the paper is soaking wet and the half-finished painting is not completely erased but with a lovely ghost image left on the paper, I took out the reference materials from the workshop and started to lay in colors wet in wet. Then I let them dry -- and I've liked these altered images much more. Next step is adding more definitions on dry paper, which involves some serious thought process on designs. Busy paintings filled with various shapes and colors (such as these depicting woods, forest, undergrowth, etc.) really needs succinct silhouette of the center of focus and some quiet areas to let viewer's eyes rest. For example, all the foliage clumps in "Quiet Meadows, Sonoma Pasture" are too symmetric and similar in size, which is a residue problem from the not-carefully-thought-out initial drawings during the workshop, and therefore needs to be redesigned. I will do some sketch to figure that out...
Quicken Aspens, Park City, Utah,
Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough, 8"h x 12"w, WIP 1
Quiet Meadows, Sonoma Pasture,
Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough, 12"h x 8"w, WIP 1
Summer Glow II, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2013 #81
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Here's a couple of paintings I've finished but never had a chance to share with you on my blog. The first one is a second version of "Summer Glow"... All because I was stupid enough to want to repair a small smear damage on the first one, and you know what happens next -- the repairs have completely damaged the first version and the only thing I could do is to repaint it... I should have learned my lessons of not messing with a finished watercolor by now... Sometimes I really wonder what I was thinking...
Soar II, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, WIP 1
This one is actually finished and sold to a collector in England. I just did not have a good photo of it -- accidentally dropped my camera and broke it so now I only have my ipad as a camera, which is seriously not adequate to take images of finished paintings... (WIP photos, maybe, but not finished works, especially not when a piece is flying out and I may never get the chance to see it ever again...) So I will be posting the finished image when I get my new camera, I promise ;-)
Finally, since I did quite a few holiday shows this winter, and the holiday fair season is drawing to a close, I thought I'd give a shout-out here for my last fair of the season... It is a very cool venue: I will be selling my Watercolors, Giclee Prints, Holiday Cards, Calendars and MORE in the SF Bazaar Zoo Lights Event at San Francisco Zoo Entry Village Circle, located at Sloat Blvd. & the Great Highway this weekend (both Saturday and Sunday), December 21st & 22nd, between 3:00pm and 8:00pm. So if you find yourself in the city over the weekend, or want to take your kids to see the animals in the San Francisco Zoo under the evening lights, drop by and get some beautiful, hand-made, animal-related art gifts for your holidays!
Especially for this fair I have designed and made some holiday cards (yes, they are year-round good but I made this set of eight especially for the winter season). These little ones are printed on 3.5" x 5" sized Strathmore watercolor cards, and a set contains 8 different winter snow scenes, with name of the painting and my info printed at the back of the card. I have named it "Winter Wonderland" and will upload it for sale to my etsy shop soon, at a price of $20/set. I also have the same set of a larger size -- 5" x 7" for $25. Drop me an email if you are interested in having one!
In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!
You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:Monday, October 7, 2013
Summer Glow, Crimsonscape, and Art in the Park
Summer Glow, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2013 #79
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I was quite busy over the past weekend, trying to finish some paintings for the "Art in the Park" event held in the central park of the lovely tri-valley city of San Ramon. And the show was a true blast! Not only did I meet some old collector friends, gained some new ones, I also got to meet a lot of wonderful artists working in a whole range of media from monotype and collage to pastel over traditional Chinese ink painting... The quality of artists are the highest among all the art fairs I have participated in, and they did a fantastic job organizing and marketing this event, providing booth sitters and helps for setup/take-down for people who are alone in their booth (like me) for free, and bringing some quality collectors who are not only knowledgeable about the process and difficulties involved in making a piece of art, but kind and appreciating in their personality. One of my collectors even stayed at the end of the event to help me pack my tent, since my hand was accidentally injured during the morning setup... I can't say how much I am thankful to them, and all the other wonderful people I met during the event!...
Crimsonscape - Red Poinsettia,
Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2013 #80
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Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2013 #80
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"Summer Glow" and "Crimsonscape" are two of the paintings I have sold during the event, and I have learned valuable lessons from the experience of selling them: sometimes it is not the best practice to go full out to greet your collector and try to strike small talks with them -- that could totally seem too eager to sell and thus scare away an interested customer. Instead, respect your collector's personal space, and let them look at the art at their own pace, consider about them, compare them, and only try to provide information when being asked, or after they have lingered in front of your booth for a while, and seems a little puzzled and in need of some information from you, is probably the best practice. Bring a painting with you to work on is also a good idea, so that people who are collecting your art would have an opportunity to see how they are created, and ask you questions regarding your process if interested. Also, working on your paintings can prevent you from staring straight at your potential customers when they are trying to study and compare your paintings and make a decision. That kind of stare can make both you and them quite uncomfortable and at times can become a unintended hint of "Please buy something or leave!", which is appreciated by no one.
I think for face-to-face sales like those made in an art fair, we as artists get a rare chance of meet and get to know our collectors, and make some good friends by sharing our life experience and love of what we do, why we do it with them. If a sale results from such communication, it's great; if it happens that the pieces showing are not exactly suited for them, we can still plant the seed of friendship and possible future sales. The most important part of making and selling art to me is to reach out and start a conversation regarding the good things of life, the beauty and kindness I experience everyday, a lot of times from totally unexpected encounters and total strangers. I am grateful for all of them, and really hope that through the art I create, I can share such sense of gratitude with everyone I cross path with...
I think for face-to-face sales like those made in an art fair, we as artists get a rare chance of meet and get to know our collectors, and make some good friends by sharing our life experience and love of what we do, why we do it with them. If a sale results from such communication, it's great; if it happens that the pieces showing are not exactly suited for them, we can still plant the seed of friendship and possible future sales. The most important part of making and selling art to me is to reach out and start a conversation regarding the good things of life, the beauty and kindness I experience everyday, a lot of times from totally unexpected encounters and total strangers. I am grateful for all of them, and really hope that through the art I create, I can share such sense of gratitude with everyone I cross path with...
In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Wild Growth III -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 23, and What One Do in Days of Frustration...
Wild Growth III,
Watercolor on Winsor Newton #140 Cold Press paper, 5"h x 11"w, 2013 #73
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Today is a very frustrating day in the studio -- you occasionally (or perhaps like me, more than occasionally) get them and just about nothing seems to work. I started a couple of paintings only to wash three of them right off the hose, the new paper I tried is against everything I expect it to do, and all my drawings look unnatural and stiff... It's already late at night and I have nothing to show for today's work, while I have actually worked really, really hard for an entire day!
In the end I decide to go back to the basics -- take a simple composition and just try to make interesting textural marks on the paper. I started three new and small pieces this way, not thinking about how to finish them, and just allow myself to play... Since there is no reference image, I just painted from my imagination, and perhaps from imagery have recently created or visited. The first one of these followed the pattern remembered from "Wild Growth II" and evolved into a field, the second one became a high mountain peak in sunset, and in the third one the sun has completely set behind the mountain, leaving only purple-grey sky and a faint orange glow. (I am still working on the other two so they will be shared in my post tomorrow.) By not concentrating on the process itself instead of on creating a piece of work that is "beautiful" to showcase on the challenge page, I was able to make something that I am happy about, again.
Perhaps this is a lesson I should have learned long ago, but still learning again and again everyday -- I am painting to enjoy the wonder of creation from heart as the foremost goal, not to compare to all the other wonderful artists out there. Sometimes, something small and unassuming is just what I need. Out of its simplicity lies what my heart is craving for on that particular day. Sometimes I do need to listen, more carefully...
In the end I decide to go back to the basics -- take a simple composition and just try to make interesting textural marks on the paper. I started three new and small pieces this way, not thinking about how to finish them, and just allow myself to play... Since there is no reference image, I just painted from my imagination, and perhaps from imagery have recently created or visited. The first one of these followed the pattern remembered from "Wild Growth II" and evolved into a field, the second one became a high mountain peak in sunset, and in the third one the sun has completely set behind the mountain, leaving only purple-grey sky and a faint orange glow. (I am still working on the other two so they will be shared in my post tomorrow.) By not concentrating on the process itself instead of on creating a piece of work that is "beautiful" to showcase on the challenge page, I was able to make something that I am happy about, again.
Perhaps this is a lesson I should have learned long ago, but still learning again and again everyday -- I am painting to enjoy the wonder of creation from heart as the foremost goal, not to compare to all the other wonderful artists out there. Sometimes, something small and unassuming is just what I need. Out of its simplicity lies what my heart is craving for on that particular day. Sometimes I do need to listen, more carefully...
You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:
Friday, September 20, 2013
Ancestor's Land -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 19
Ancestor's Land,
Watercolor on Cartiera Magnani #140 Cold Press Paper , 7"h x 10"w, WIP 1
I don't think this one is quite... finished. It's missing something -- focus, maybe. I could rush and call it done tonight, but I really like the lonely atmosphere in it, and do not want to rush and ruin what I have on paper so far. Some paintings just cannot be rushed. They need proper time and contemplation. Sometimes you just have to sleep on it... (It's not an excuse for being lazy today, really...)
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You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:
Ancestor's Land,
Watercolor on Cartiera Magnani #140 Cold Press Paper , 7"h x 10"w, 2013 #69
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I think it is now finished. I am still not sure... I am happy that it does have the feeling of emptiness and loneliness that I often feel when walking in the red rock desert along Arizona-Utah border. I added the shrub and several birds circling in high sky to add to this feeling. But I think I still need to look at it for a couple of days to decide whether it is not in need of anything more...
Friday, September 13, 2013
Spring Meadow, Tamalpais -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 12
Spring Meadow, Tamalpais,
Watercolor on Winsor Newton 140# Cold Press Paper , 6"h x 10"w, 2013 #63Sold!
My theme for the "30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge" this week is "landscape with water" -- I guess fog is a form of water hence this painting still fits the theme. ;-) I've learned a lot about using aerial perspective and soft-to-hard edge transition to create a sense of depth from doing this painting, as well as how to create varied shapes within repetition -- it is really hard to make every next stroke representing a fir branch to be of a different size, shape, direction and color from the last one! I don't think I've done an excellent job here -- more practice definitely needed. I've also experimented only using color transition and texture to represent the meadow. Unfortunately it looks more interesting in person than on the photo...
For those of you who are in the bay area -- tomorrow (Saturday, September 14th) and the day after tomorrow (Sunday, September 15th) will be the "Meet the Artists Day" event for the exhibition at Filoli Garden - "Nature’s Many Splendors: Farms, Gardens and Woodlands"! You are all invited to this special art-festival-like weekend, to meet the artists in the show, watch them doing art demos, chat with them and learn what has inspires them to create their art pieces. Framed pieces, prints, note cards and other items will be for sale both during the show and at the "Meet the Artist Day" event. And I will be doing demo there! The show runs from August 27th through October 27th, at the art gallery area in Filoli Garden, which is located at 86 Canada Rd in the lovely town of Woodside, California.
You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:For those of you who are in the bay area -- tomorrow (Saturday, September 14th) and the day after tomorrow (Sunday, September 15th) will be the "Meet the Artists Day" event for the exhibition at Filoli Garden - "Nature’s Many Splendors: Farms, Gardens and Woodlands"! You are all invited to this special art-festival-like weekend, to meet the artists in the show, watch them doing art demos, chat with them and learn what has inspires them to create their art pieces. Framed pieces, prints, note cards and other items will be for sale both during the show and at the "Meet the Artist Day" event. And I will be doing demo there! The show runs from August 27th through October 27th, at the art gallery area in Filoli Garden, which is located at 86 Canada Rd in the lovely town of Woodside, California.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Misty Dawn -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 10, and Thoughts on How Artists Create Art
Misty Dawn, Ruby Beach,
Watercolor on Richeson Zoltan Szabo #140 Cold Press paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2013 #61
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Watercolor on Richeson Zoltan Szabo #140 Cold Press paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2013 #61
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Since I was going through the reference photos I took on the trip to Ruby Beach, Washington when doing "Sea Stacks, Ruby Beach" a couple of days ago, I couldn't help but picking out a few more favorites to work from, hence this little one today (and a few more to come). Lucky for me, it still fits in my theme for the current week: landscape with water (ok, ok, yesterday's piece was landscape but without water, I got it :-P... I just got carried away designing those trees and finished it in the end...)
It has been a long time since I took the trip, but I stood on that beach from dawn (which was nice and sunny) till past dusk (which gradually got very cloudy and finally started to rain -- as I complained in the post about "Sea Stacks, Ruby Beach", looked, listened, smelled, pondered, drew and painted, even took a nap! The place with its unique windy, salty atmosphere was well burnt into my memory. Had I not spent such precious time lingering in a place like this, but only snapped a photo and left, I probably wouldn't have felt being suddenly transported back again when my eye accidentally scanned across the reference photo I took there at dawn. I remembered how the warm mist gradually rose from water as the sun slowly climbed up, as if the spirit of the land was waking up along with the warmth provided by this source of life. I remembered the amazing rosy golden glow around everything behind the veil of fog, and the purple-orange shadows of the back-lid sea stacks standing against the rising sun... I just had to get it down on paper.
After finishing this piece I started pondering about the creative process -- what an artist, every artist goes through after being hitting by that overwhelming sense "I have to paint that!!!"... First comes looking: a sensation; seeing a piece of nature and saying, "There is a beautiful tree", or "I love the light reflected on water's surface". We as artists start to be aware of the "present". Eyesight reception stirs up a chaos inside us. Something has to be done. Then it all quiets down to a more pure, condensed perception: the artist acknowledges him/herself the existence of the scene, and a deep, more real "seeing" is retained within our memory with every extra stare, providing a storehouse of visual data for us to mull over and over, ponder and digest, which finally may be integrated into a "concept" -- a perceived experience with intention. At this stage we as artists have gained an awareness of what stood in front of us in the totality of personal experience. It has become axiomatic, and can be held as a scheme in our mind's eye as an integration of similar units whenever we want to recall it. It matures, and waited to be executed, carried out as a visual statement about the experience -- experience not as what happened to us but what happened in us. And as we finally do that, the finished work becomes separated from us, the artists by time and space. It enters a life of its own, to stand or fall, no longer within our control. There is often a sense of deep vulnerability felt by the artist when such a product makes its public appearance, as for so long we have lived with it, held it deeply in ours minds and hearts, being tortured by its will of coming out of us, worrying that even after giving it our best effort, the result still could not stand up to the beauty we see in our minds' eye...
It is such a painful, labored exhilaration, an addiction, a powerful experience that we repeat again and again, everyday. The most powerful and most vulnerable position: the position of the creator.
... And that, is exactly why I am doing it again today.
It has been a long time since I took the trip, but I stood on that beach from dawn (which was nice and sunny) till past dusk (which gradually got very cloudy and finally started to rain -- as I complained in the post about "Sea Stacks, Ruby Beach", looked, listened, smelled, pondered, drew and painted, even took a nap! The place with its unique windy, salty atmosphere was well burnt into my memory. Had I not spent such precious time lingering in a place like this, but only snapped a photo and left, I probably wouldn't have felt being suddenly transported back again when my eye accidentally scanned across the reference photo I took there at dawn. I remembered how the warm mist gradually rose from water as the sun slowly climbed up, as if the spirit of the land was waking up along with the warmth provided by this source of life. I remembered the amazing rosy golden glow around everything behind the veil of fog, and the purple-orange shadows of the back-lid sea stacks standing against the rising sun... I just had to get it down on paper.
After finishing this piece I started pondering about the creative process -- what an artist, every artist goes through after being hitting by that overwhelming sense "I have to paint that!!!"... First comes looking: a sensation; seeing a piece of nature and saying, "There is a beautiful tree", or "I love the light reflected on water's surface". We as artists start to be aware of the "present". Eyesight reception stirs up a chaos inside us. Something has to be done. Then it all quiets down to a more pure, condensed perception: the artist acknowledges him/herself the existence of the scene, and a deep, more real "seeing" is retained within our memory with every extra stare, providing a storehouse of visual data for us to mull over and over, ponder and digest, which finally may be integrated into a "concept" -- a perceived experience with intention. At this stage we as artists have gained an awareness of what stood in front of us in the totality of personal experience. It has become axiomatic, and can be held as a scheme in our mind's eye as an integration of similar units whenever we want to recall it. It matures, and waited to be executed, carried out as a visual statement about the experience -- experience not as what happened to us but what happened in us. And as we finally do that, the finished work becomes separated from us, the artists by time and space. It enters a life of its own, to stand or fall, no longer within our control. There is often a sense of deep vulnerability felt by the artist when such a product makes its public appearance, as for so long we have lived with it, held it deeply in ours minds and hearts, being tortured by its will of coming out of us, worrying that even after giving it our best effort, the result still could not stand up to the beauty we see in our minds' eye...
It is such a painful, labored exhilaration, an addiction, a powerful experience that we repeat again and again, everyday. The most powerful and most vulnerable position: the position of the creator.
... And that, is exactly why I am doing it again today.
You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Wild Growth II -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 9, and Some Thoughts on Beginnings
Watercolor on Winsor Newton #140 Cold Press paper, 4"h x 11"w, 2013 #60
Sold!
Today is a good day at the studio in terms of actual work that's been done: I have laid out different maker's different surface-finish of paper, tried all of them out by starting a new landscape wet-in-wet on them. So... There were a lot of messy starts -- not one of them finished since a quarter-sheet soaking wet requires some time to dry naturally, hence I was running between projects. For wet starts like this I also stand up and paint, which means at the end of the day, my legs are about to give out. But it was exhilarating, since I can see a few possible good paintings start to emerge, and I have also discovered some good techniques for certain makes of paper that I did not know how to paint on before.
But I did not forget about the challenge! I developed one of the sheets (ok, only part of it) into this little study of texture of field and shapes of dark conifers. It was painted more abstractly than normal, since my focus was to test out how different texture-creating procedures would work on this particular type of paper when it is gradually drying. Of course, only textured, undefined large span of field requires some smaller, more defined areas with hard edges to contrast with it so that the whole picture could work, hence the conifers, which were painted first as abstract combinations of shapes made by deliberately varied brush strokes. The whole painting process is very brain-intensive, and I felt totally exhausted coming out of it, but also filled with sense of pride and joy, because I have challenged myself and learned something again.
It is Glasworthy who said, "The beginning and endings of all human undertakings are untidy: the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge and eminently, the finish of a voyage." So true.
These new starts I made today would become finished paintings in the next few days. I am so excited and could not wait until tomorrow to work on them again!...
But I did not forget about the challenge! I developed one of the sheets (ok, only part of it) into this little study of texture of field and shapes of dark conifers. It was painted more abstractly than normal, since my focus was to test out how different texture-creating procedures would work on this particular type of paper when it is gradually drying. Of course, only textured, undefined large span of field requires some smaller, more defined areas with hard edges to contrast with it so that the whole picture could work, hence the conifers, which were painted first as abstract combinations of shapes made by deliberately varied brush strokes. The whole painting process is very brain-intensive, and I felt totally exhausted coming out of it, but also filled with sense of pride and joy, because I have challenged myself and learned something again.
It is Glasworthy who said, "The beginning and endings of all human undertakings are untidy: the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge and eminently, the finish of a voyage." So true.
These new starts I made today would become finished paintings in the next few days. I am so excited and could not wait until tomorrow to work on them again!...
You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Sea Stacks, Ruby Beach -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 7 (And I Did Finish This One!...)
Sea Stacks, Ruby Beach,
Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough paper, 7"h x 10"w, 2013 #58
Sold!
Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough paper, 7"h x 10"w, 2013 #58
Sold!
I've always loved Travel. A journey to somewhere always seem to give an aim of some sort to me: I have to get on with the trip every day when waking up, and the road is right there in front of me; accommodations and dinning options are often frugally simple, far from extravagant to say the least, but just because of this, I believe journeys are addictive, at least to me. In between a long journey's quiet loneliness and busy clamor, there is often a clear river of thoughts extending until infinity. Thoughts about past. Thoughts about future. Thoughts about people I have met and people I have missed. Whenever I have a little bit time, anytime, I often would rather spend it on the road. This one has started as a plein-air sketch on the Ruby Beach of Washington coast. Time was late. The sky is always cloudy there. It almost seemed like it was going to rain, but finally didn't. Last light of the day has gradually seeped though the bottom of the meandering clouds, back-lighting all the sea stacks. The sky was a strange deep, saturated blue-purple, with a tinge of warmth along the horizon. Then it started to drizzle. My paper got damp. I got back into the car.
But I've never forgotten that moment, just like I've not forgotten another ten thousand random moments on my journeys.
Then recently, I have thought about how ancient Chinese Sumi Paintings are taught, and started to do another type of study -- I realized that landscape painting is largely about creating your own symbol of different landscape items (trees, rocks, clouds, grass, water, etc.) and express them with abstract brush-stroke-created-shapes. Dots and Dashes. Lines and Curves. The next question is: how do you translate the landscape in front of you into an image basically composed of these dots, dashes and various shapes? I believe this is like learning a language: you have to learn the vocabulary before being able to make a prose. Then, can brushwork be learned? Some say not -- they say it is part of you and has to come from within yourself, but I believe otherwise: one's "self" is constantly being shaped by what we take in from others -- by that I mean from other artists as well as the nature. You can collect the silhouette of a real tree by sketching it on paper, and you can collect a beautiful tree shape created by another artist by practicing making it on a scrap piece of paper as well. Guaranteed, it will probably not be identical as the original, but by this practice you can learn how the individual brush strokes creating that shape is made -- their direction, strength and timing, as well as just practicing making a pleasant abstract shape.
That is exactly what I do every morning nowadays: just like the morning workout routines for some people. I would take a random piece of image from an artist I like for his/her ability to create beautiful shapes of landscape elements, and isolate one shape -- a tree, a rock, a cloud shadow, you name it -- and try to analyze how he/she has made that shape with their brush marks, and try to recreate it on my practice paper. By isolating the shapes the task does not seem as daunting: I am not asking myself to recreate an often seemingly "fast and loose" master landscape painting entirely, but just a tiny section of it -- one shape. By doing this again and again, I've already realized that I've started to incorporate these learned shapes into my own paintings out of memory. Again, they won't be exact copies, but my hand seems to have gained some muscle memory of the dots and dashes it has been making again and again!
So finally I've taken out this piece and decided to give it another try. This time I felt much more smooth and confident, more at ease with it, and much less mechanical when making the cloud and rocks of this painting compared to my first attempt of it (which I did not dare to share with you guys), and I think I have to thank such exercise for it. Maybe I should also thank time -- it is time that has made the scene simmer in my heart until it was ready to flow out.
But I've never forgotten that moment, just like I've not forgotten another ten thousand random moments on my journeys.
Then recently, I have thought about how ancient Chinese Sumi Paintings are taught, and started to do another type of study -- I realized that landscape painting is largely about creating your own symbol of different landscape items (trees, rocks, clouds, grass, water, etc.) and express them with abstract brush-stroke-created-shapes. Dots and Dashes. Lines and Curves. The next question is: how do you translate the landscape in front of you into an image basically composed of these dots, dashes and various shapes? I believe this is like learning a language: you have to learn the vocabulary before being able to make a prose. Then, can brushwork be learned? Some say not -- they say it is part of you and has to come from within yourself, but I believe otherwise: one's "self" is constantly being shaped by what we take in from others -- by that I mean from other artists as well as the nature. You can collect the silhouette of a real tree by sketching it on paper, and you can collect a beautiful tree shape created by another artist by practicing making it on a scrap piece of paper as well. Guaranteed, it will probably not be identical as the original, but by this practice you can learn how the individual brush strokes creating that shape is made -- their direction, strength and timing, as well as just practicing making a pleasant abstract shape.
That is exactly what I do every morning nowadays: just like the morning workout routines for some people. I would take a random piece of image from an artist I like for his/her ability to create beautiful shapes of landscape elements, and isolate one shape -- a tree, a rock, a cloud shadow, you name it -- and try to analyze how he/she has made that shape with their brush marks, and try to recreate it on my practice paper. By isolating the shapes the task does not seem as daunting: I am not asking myself to recreate an often seemingly "fast and loose" master landscape painting entirely, but just a tiny section of it -- one shape. By doing this again and again, I've already realized that I've started to incorporate these learned shapes into my own paintings out of memory. Again, they won't be exact copies, but my hand seems to have gained some muscle memory of the dots and dashes it has been making again and again!
So finally I've taken out this piece and decided to give it another try. This time I felt much more smooth and confident, more at ease with it, and much less mechanical when making the cloud and rocks of this painting compared to my first attempt of it (which I did not dare to share with you guys), and I think I have to thank such exercise for it. Maybe I should also thank time -- it is time that has made the scene simmer in my heart until it was ready to flow out.
You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:
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