Where the Eagle Flies - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Where the Eagle Flies - Portrait of the Colorado Plateau I,

 Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2016 #8

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $65)

Recently I am having these almost obsessive fixation on the high Colorado Plateau, and seeing the somber, severe landscape whenever I close my eyes. The almost barren, treeless bajadas, the grey-blue granite cliffs and baked red-buff sandstone monoliths, the lone red-shouldered hawk soaring below the low-hanging clouds... I had to paint it. I would probably come back to this series a few times in the next couple of days. I know I have not exhausted it in this little study...

Eclectic II - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Eclectic II, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2016 #7

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $75)

This is my second take on yesterday's subject - a good thing that often comes from the daily-painting challenge. Often, you don't get to obsess over a project because of the time limit, but the "what-if"s that spring from it can germinate the next day, or the day after into a creature of its own. I wanted to play with the abstract background a bit more and make color and paint application (granulation, wet-in-wet shapes, etc.) the dominant factor instead of strong value patterns that dominates in yesterday's version. Instead of changing the last painting and trying to realize this goal, I just took another go of it. The result is today's painting -- less electric, more dreamy in its atmosphere. It is fun to look at the two pieces side-by-side and think how much a variation painting can take from its source material. Often painting from my own painting brings a great sense of freedom, as well as springboards my imagination. Staring at the shapes gradually emerging from the interaction of paint, water and paper surface often leads to such unexpected directions. All I need is to listen, instead of trying to beat the painting into the mold I had in my head before putting brush on paper...

Eclectic - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Eclectic, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2016 #6

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $50)

After painting something bright and colorful with warm reds and magentas, I wanted to explore the cool side of the palette and paint something dark and moody, like the neon lights in the night city street. Up till this point my florals are all pretty much natural-colored, and I want to see if I can pull off something with a very artificial-lighting-inspired color scheme and dream-like atmosphere. I am currently doing a second variation of of this painting, which is less value-contrast-dominated and a bit more colorful. It would be fun to compare the achieved effects...

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

Sold!

Field of Dreams - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Field of Dreams, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 12"h x 12"w, 2016 #4

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $195)

I really want to play with the limited palette on this one, and try to see if I could get the soft, dreamy, wet-in-wet like background by painting in thin layers wet-on-dry. I had so much fun... Using a limited primary palette of Vermilion, Aurelion Yellow and Ultramarine Blue, the color harmony was achieved without much conscious effort, which is the largest advantage of using a limited palette... I was a bit worried about color monotony resulted from all the red in the poppies, and really played up the warm vs. cool, saturated vs. muted variation of different reds. In the end I am very pleased with the result -- and I really missed painting flowers!

Red - 30/30 Challenge 2016 (Finally, an OIL Painting from Me...)

Red, Oil Painting on Centurion Acrylic Primed Linen, 8"h x 6"w, 2016 #3

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $85)

Something very different today... This is the first oil painting I've ever listed for sale. I have been studying classical drawing and painting methods in the Golden Gate Atelier for a little more than four years at this point, and have done quite a few projects (both drawing and oil paintings) from life at the atelier. In the past month I decided to test the waters to see if I could work outside school on my own on small projects: still life from life, plein air landscapes, portrait and figures from reference photos, even some animal paintings... In OIL. This is my first attempt. It is a very scary experience for me to try this still unfamiliar medium and let the whole world see my attempts. But it has to start somewhere.

When selecting the reference material to paint a portrait on my own I find myself often drawn toward mystical expressions and strong personality, something that makes it a little uneasy for me to stare for a long time, instead of just sweet beauty. This woman's face, it's slight distant, restrained expression contrast so well with the fiery color of her red hair, I just have to paint it. So here it is, my first oil painting for sale -- more to come!

Purple Dream - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Purple Dream, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2016 #2

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $85)

In the neighborhood I live in there are many lovely old Victorian homes with wisteria leaning onto their front gates, and during the walk one morning I spotted this beautiful butterfly spanning its wings in the morning fog on one of the large flower clusters. The temperature was low in the moist morning air of San Francisco, and large droplets of water were dripping from the wisteria leaves, so I wondered whether the wings of this butterfly was wet and it could not take off. When I sneak closer I realized it was... mating, with its lover hiding in the shadow of the leaflets underneath the first butterfly. I snapped a photo and decide to capture this rare moment with my paintbrush... And every time I look at the painting, I can almost smell the clear, cold, moist air of that morning, and the slight aroma of wisteria... 

Gossiping Ladies - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Gossiping Ladies, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 9"w, 2016 #1

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $95)

I can hardly believe that I have not posted on the blog since the last 30/30 challenge! I have actually been painting (mostly in oil) and having some exciting news to share, including getting included in the Splash and Stroke of Genius books of North Light Publishing, and winning the budding artist category in the Art Muse Contest, as well as being selected as judge's pick this month on Daily Paintworks! I am super excited about every one of these opportunities...

I have plans to paint more smaller oil paintings outside the atelier this year as practice, and try more diverse subjects as well as painting some larger compositions in my watercolor paintings. So for this September's challenge I would try to just do that. Here's the first piece -- an animal subject I have tried to tackle for a while but always felt inadequate at the moment. But the longer I waited, the more I felt that waiting along and think "one day when my skill has reached the level to tackle this subject" is never going to get me there. One can only learn how to tackle an unfamiliar and daunting subject by working on them again and again! So here we go -- these two colorful parakeets (love birds as they are commonly referred to in their native tropical Indonesia) whose body languages and facial expressions just crackle me up every time I look at them.   

Innocence - Day Thirty of the 30/30 Challenge

Innocence, 

Watercolor on Saunders Waterford #140 Cold Press Paper, 15"h x 11"w, 2015 #32

Master Study, Not for Sale

Day Thirty of the challenge -- I've made it this time! Yay!!!

This last painting I've completed for the challenge this month is also not done in a day's time, but on and off at every chance that a day's painting has not taken the entire time of that day. It is also a master study of Jan Kunz, as I have set a goal for myself to learn the basic of portrait and figure painting in watercolor in the coming year. I have learned a lot from doing this one -- from how to mix believable skin tones to the procedure of rendering the features of the face, as well as how to apply a background that does not detract from the figure. It's also done on a surface that is hard-sized, but for some reason dries much faster than Arches, so the window of time left to manipulate wet washes on it is not ideal. But it forces me to simplify and work fast, and in the end, I think I've learned to apply multiple light glazes to fix soft half-tone shapes that don't quite have the right value, color or edge quality. I would like to do some figure paintings of children in a simple, one-light-source setting like this one next. If you have a good photo of a child that I could use, please email it to me. Thanks in advance!

It Takes Two to Tango - Day Twenty-Nine of the 30/30 Challenge

It Takes Two to Tango, 

Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 11"h x 7"w, 2015 #31

Master Study, Not for Sale

Day Twenty-Nine of the challenge -- never thought I would make the whole challenge again! Yay! It is almost the end!!! This painting is a study of master watercolor artist Jan Kunz, whose work I have admired since I took up watercolor a few years ago. The clean, colorful washes that radiates with light just grabs my heart the first time I saw one of her books. Since I haven't painted many still life setups, I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to experiment with different texture -- glass, silver, wood, etc., before to attempt assembly a grand still life and paint it. So this is my practice for capturing the texture of clear, thick glass. It combines something that I am familiar with and feel comfortable painting -- rose, with something I am feeling a little bit timid about -- glass. I had a lot of fun doing it, and painted it over a few days of this month, whenever the day's painting did not take up too much time and leaves a few hours to spend on other projects. I have discovered that painting glass is not unlike assembling a big piece of puzzle -- I have lost numerous times over the different patterns of reflection and refraction painting the ball jar, and it is just one simple little jar! Clearly I needed more practice on this subject, but it was so much fun. The next step is to assemble a still life of my own similar to this setup and see if I could carried out what I have learned doing this master study into my own painting. Can't wait to do that!