"Pumpkin with Mindfulness"

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I have spent a long time on this painting. I have entered a meditation stage. When I picked up a brush, I was aware of I have picked up a brush. When I needed to clean an area, I patiently used my tedious procedure of cleaning. When I wipe my brush on a paper towel, I paid attention to where on the towel I wiped, so the dirty paint on the towel formed a nice circular pattern. No rush, you have plenty of time. Be mindful when you do everything.

In a couple of hours, I will be on my way to my meditation retreat. Goodbye my friend. I won't talk to you for 10 days. Goodbye my art. I will understand you better, and love you more.

Workshops for the Future

Time goes by so fast. Now is close to the middle of the year. I have scheduled my workshops for the next year 2014, and placed a new workshop button on my blog. There is some difference of my 2014 workshop plan. For artists who lived close to Austin, or want to come to Austin. I will teach a 4-day workshop in Austin in January. There will be a workshop hosted at Bahamas. I am also working with an organizer in Spain to plan my first workshop in Europe. Lots of work, but very exciting.

Besides my 2014 workshops. I still have a few openings in my Sedona workshop on July 17 - 19, 2013. I hope more people can join me at this extraordinary beautiful place. Please contact Sedona Arts Center to sign up.

I am not so called "Master" artist, but I am an "improving" artist. In my teaching, I try to be very organized and provide you solid (no wishy washy) information. Since I learned my skills mainly from taking workshops, I understand my workshop students, and my experience is more relevant to yours.

Many of you know, I went to San Francisco last summer studied with a real master artist Zhaoming Wu. If you also want to learn from him, I have a good news for you. Zhaoming will teach a workshop at Whidbey Island, WA where I was not long ago. Contact WIFAS to sign up, or press the his workshop button on my blog.

"In a boat"

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Today, I want to share another part of my life with you. I have been sentenced to 10 days isolation. Starting from June 19 to June 20, I will be at a small town called Kaufman, TX. I have to hand in all my electronics include my phone and computer. Of course there is no Internet for me. Even worse, I will be not allowed to talk for these 10 days. There will be no dinner served for me during this time. Difficult work will start from 4:30 every morning. Painting? Just don't think about it.

Nobody has forced me to do it. The sentence was given by myself. What am I doing? Well, I am attending a 10-day Vipassana meditation course. Why am I doing this? Because I am crazy.

Vipassana is a Sanskrit word means "seeing things as they really are", In these 10 days, we will sit and observe our body/mind and see what is really going on, like a scientist observing the world objectively. We will also learn how to deal with ourselves, and how to live in the world. It is a highly spiritual art of living. However, I must say this spiritual practice is not religious, because there is no faith involved in it. When a scientist observing a star through a telescope, he/she sees it no matter what. So everybody can participate and learn.

"Two to One"

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Coming back to the basics, my daily painting looks more like the ones I did in the old days. I decided to pause my experiments and paint something I feel comfortable with. It is the time I need to digest what I have learned, and summarize the information collected in an organized way.

I want to tell a story I heard when I was in the elementary school. Once upon the time, there was a bear. He went to the corn field to get some corns (I don't know bears eat corns but let's assume they do). He removed one ear of corn and put it under his right armpit. Then he snatch the second one and put it under his left armpit. Well he didn't realized when he grasped the second corn, the first one had fell off  and dropped on the ground. He got third corn and put under his right arm, while the corn under his left arm had fell off. ..... In the same manner, he went through the whole row of corn field from one end to another, but he only got one ear of corn.

I have gone through part of my art journey kind of like the bear. I think it is a good idea to pause and review what I have learned. If the bear had stopped and went back. He would have got much more.

"An Apple A Day"

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"An apple a day keeps the doctor away" is a common sense. I will say "Painting an apple a day makes my art way". I think I am not alone enjoying painting apples. If I feel lost in my art journey, I always come back painting some apples. After I came back from Washington State. I have been busy doing some technical  work for my previous engineering company. I have to admit making living with art is a difficult way. I must be practical. My son is going to a boarding school in the fall. The cost of living is going up day by day. I will adapt as much as I can. Finally, I have resumed my technical in daytime and painting at night routine. Keep painting, apples will coming.

New Workshop Reminder

I am going to teach two workshops in Arizona in July. One of them will be in Scottsdale, a wonderful place for visual art. This one is unusual 4-days workshop, besides my idea and regular techniques of still life painting, I will share my more recent palette knife approaches in landscapes. This workshop will be held at Arizona Artists Guild. At this moment, we still have a few openings. If you are interested in attending this special workshop, please contact Li Mahalik to sign up.

After my Scottsdale workshop, I will go to Sedona. The workshop will be at Sedona Arts Center. It is such spectacular place to do art. I just love the beautiful red mountains there. We also have a few openings for this workshop. Please contact Qiang Huang's workshop at Sedona Arts Center if you are interested in taking this workshop.

"Demo at Whidbey Island 2" --- Sold

As usual, I did my second demo with some flowers. Now the workshop is over, but I hope you all practice what we have talked about. I am looking forward to seeing your progress if we have chances to meet again. I have returned to Austin safely. I have already started to miss the cool days on the island.

"Demo at Whidbey Island 1" --- Sold

This is the first demonstration painting I did at my Whidbey Island workshop. Thanks to the new artist friend from Oregon and Washington for attending. This is my first workshop in this part of the United States. With my demo paintings, I want to show both "variation", and "very Asian". And they pronounced almost the same any way.

"Whidbey Island"

Hello from the beautiful Whidbey Island, WA. I just arrived in Seattle a few hours ago. Starting from morning, my iPhone has been beeping almost every 5 seconds, and my heart gets warmed every time . I know that so many artist friends are sending messages and wishing me happy birthday. I am really touched. Big Thanks to all of you very very much. I hope all of you are doing well, happy, and paint a lot.

I want to thank specially Cary Juriaans for organizing a workshop on this beautiful island for me. I am looking forward to wonderful 3 days painting with a group of wonderful artists.

"Orchid Study 2"

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For doing the second orchid study, I have gained more confidence and freedom. I find the rubber tipped paint wipe off tool more and more useful. I got it from the Jerry's Artarama. You don't have to use the same brand. The idea is important. When you place new paint on the already painted area, it is a good idea to remove the wet paint at the spot first, then apply the new paint on top. This is a good way to create higher contrast and keep the paint clean.

"Beyond the North Light"

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For doing a still life painting, the natural north light is the best light source. When so many artists building their studios, having a north window is the fundamental requirement for the project. The understanding has been proved that it is true. I used it, and absolutely believed it -------- well, till yesterday.

This painting was done with a regular halogen light, but I filtered the light with 4 layers of my blue tinted filter (I call that my North Light Filter). Yes, I used 4 of them. In result my illumination on the setup is a way cooler than the natural north light, and painting felt almost as lit by the moon light. This exercise made me realized suddenly that illumination of the still life setup can be a part of the artistic design. Just like moving objects in the setup can ends up different composition, altering light is also can be involved into the artistic concept of your painting project. In order to create the effect you want, you have the freedom of use any kind of light. You may use the north light, but you also can use candle light, tungsten light, fluorescent light, LED light, Neon light, and even laser light. You may filter your light, focus your light, diffuse your light, and use multiple lights. In a nutshell, light source can be changed according to your design.

However, one thing you need to be careful. No matter what light you use to illuminate your still life setup, You MUST (yes, MUST) illuminate your palette and canvas with the natural north light or close to the natural north light. Otherwise you painting will change color when it is viewed under the natural light.

"Plein Air in the Morning"

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I went out and painted with Plein Air Austin yesterday in the morning. The place was very beautiful. The meadow was full of wild flowers of different colors. Lots of trees. But I immediately realized I could not make a good painting out of this beautiful scene, because I could not identify any 3D forms. If there is no form, there is no painting. Period. So I painted the painters.

I don't know if you have noticed that there are two kinds of artists. The first kind artists paint only landscapes. They don't paint still life, figurative, and portraits. However, the second kind artists painting still life, and figure mainly, but they hardly paint any natural landscapes. Even they paint out doors, they prefer painting cityscapes, building and cars. I am belong to the second kind for sure. Of course, both kinds  can produce great artists, but I just don't know why. Very very few artists can do both landscape and figurative well. Richard Schmid is one of them.

"Head Study 052213"

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I went to portrait painting last night, and did this head study. This week I am busy doing my technical consulting work, so I have to pause some of my art work. Like Confucius said: If you want to do something well, you have to not do something else. But nowadays, we are use to multitasking. I don't quite like this kind of culture. It is so difficult to concentrate.

"22nd Oil Painters of America National Exhibition"

I attended the reception and award ceremony of the 22nd OPA National Exhibition at the InSight Gallery in Fredericksburg, TX. It was a great reunion with so many artist friends. I was so happy seeing all of you. This photo shows me with two outstanding artists I think you all familiar with. Scott Burdick is my very first workshop teacher. We met more than a decade ago. He taught me the bold and expressive art style. John Michael Carter is an OPA Master. I love his wonderful narrative figurative paintings.

I was surprised when this year's OPA judge Sherrie McGrow announced that my painting "Awakening" won the Still Life Award of Excellence. I really appreciate that Oil Painters of America gives me such a honor. It gives me more inspiration to explore more in my art journey.

"Orchid Study 1" --- Sold

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I am wandering out my comfort zone of still life painting for a while now. I touched many new things and found they are all tips of icebergs. Just like a young boy goes out of the house and play. He finds so many new and attractive things. He followed his temptation really had a good time. Now the little boy feels hungry, so he has suddenly realized that he is far away from home. That is my feeling right now. I am going back to still life painting and will pay more attention to my art business.

A friend of mine sent us a beautiful orchid. So I did this study last night. It was pretty hard (another tip of iceberg). I hope you like it.

"On a Street"

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This is a good exercise. Painting Abundance has been always a challenge to me. You might have remembered my exercise of painting leaves a while ago. I am glad I stepped into this domain again. I have approached to this painting a little different from the one I did yesterday. I painted the background first. Then I used the rubber tipped paint removing tool (I got it from the Jerry's Artarama) and clean the figure area then I painted on top.

"Party in a Park"

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You may have felt tired of my gray building landscape paintings. So I decided to do something else. I want to paint small figures and suggest a mass of crowd. It is another very interesting direction. It will go together with my landscape naturally. This is my first try. It wasn't bad, but it shows my lack of experience. I have a lot of unsure areas on this painting. It is a good start. It does show the effect I wanted. Improvement will come. I will get better from here.

“Flower Spirit Temple" --- Sold

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I have been called for some technical consulting by the engineering company. Feeling like a dream, but I am back into my rash hour commuting "job" temporarily. Yesterday I tried to repeat my old routine: technical work during the day and paint in the evening. My life was like that for many years before. But yesterday I felt very different. I was so tired, almost sickly. When I painted this one, my brain was completely dead, I have forgot all of my study about grays and what ever. I have moved back to my "just do it" mode of painting. I moved like zombie, slow and clumsy. Oh! boy. I am old man now. My days are numbered.

"A Small House at Wuzhen" --- Sold

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My gray colors are getting cleaner now. I even understood more today. My rule of thumb presented last time applies only under the condition that the general tone of the painting is set in orange or yellow deep. That is the tone I usually use for my landscape paintings. You know you have the choice to setup whatever tones you like. If you like cooler tones like blue and purple, your feel of dirty or clean can change right away. In a nut shell. We need to be sensitive in setting up the general tone of the painting, than harmonize all the colors in the painting around the tonal color.

This painting is from a photo I took at Wuzhen. Our painting trip to China is forming well. It looks travel to China from US in September will get pretty good deal, which is much cheaper than my trip there last year. I am very happy another of my dream will come true. It is not late. I hope more people can join me. We will have a great time together.

"Cloudy Spring Day" --- Sold

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I went to plein air painting with a group of local artists this morning. It was heavily clouded at the verge  of drizzling. The scene I picked had absolutely nothing special. But I had a wonderful time. I was simply looking for a piece of gray color I wanted practice with. Here I had it.

I asked the question of how to paint gray colors last time. I really appreciate the feedbacks from many artists friends. A few artists got a little confused with my recent gray paintings. Well, my motivation was trying to figure out why some artists paint beautifully with muted subtle gray colors while others can only make a mess, showing ugly, dirty, and deadly results. This secret is well kept by quite a few "good" artists. I heard so many time in workshops or demos that the instructors say "I just painting intuitively" or "It just feels right". I have to say these kind of statements have absolutely NO information in them. Through many days of research on gray colors, I start to get a conclusion (works for me at least): Blue and purple make a gray (especially dark gray) look dirty. Green and yellow make a gray clean.

"A Stone Bridge" --- Sold

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After came back to Austin, I immediately resume my study on gray colors in landscape painting. This is  a very high key painting I did yesterday. Please correct me if you think I am wrong: I feel low value gray colors are easier to look "dirty" than high value gray colors. Making clean gray paintings has been challenging me for a while. I would appreciate if some one can verbalize some principles of using grays. Currently, I am working like a blind person touching an elephant. I am learning the hard way. I know I will be there eventually. However, if some advance painters could help me out, it would be great.

"Demo at Albuquerque 2013 2" --- Sold

My workshop at Albuquerque ended today, and this is my second demo. I hope all the workshop artists can practice what we have talked about on the workshop and hope your art improve significantly. I will be home tomorrow, and continue my exploration in my art journey.

"Demo at Albuquerque 2013 1"

I have arrived at Albuquerque, NM yesterday. My workshop is at New Mexico Art League. I want to thank NMAL for organizing and all the artists for coming. This is my first demo. Having not painting still life for a while, I thought I may have forgot how to do it,  but this one turned out pretty good. I made a part of the painting very abstract, and paid a great attention to the transition between the realistic center of focus to the abstract peripherals, so they can go together without any conflict.

"Old Balcony" --- Sold

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In my last post, I asked feedbacks on weather I am on the right direction. I got many responses. I really appreciate your valuable and honest comments. They help me to grow and keep me out of trouble. Thank you so much.

My today's painting was still on practicing using gray colors in landscape painting. I have to say I have just touched the tip of the iceberg. My knowledge and experience on gray colors is very limited. I will explore more and will summarized what I have learned into a system. Currently, my gray colors are lack of variation. It needs more drama. I consider my skills with gray has just reached the functioning stage, It is not at the "stage of art" yet. but I will get there.

This coming week I will pause my study for a while, and concentrate on art teaching. My friend Colley Whisson will be here at Austin teaching a workshop, and then at the latter part of the week, I will go to Albuquerque, NM teaching a workshop. Life is so exciting.

"Old Window" --- Sold

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This painting was based on a photo I shot at Wuzhen. The old houses had very delicately designed windows. With this painting, I was practicing on showing more interesting textures on a white wall and control the temperature of the gray in casting shadows. I have moved away from my comfort zone quite far now. So please help me to have my sanity checked. If you think I am going too far, or I am going the direction you don't want to see I go into, please let me know. Thanks.

“In an Organic Garden" --- Sold

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I went to plein air painting again today with Plein Air Austin. This is a good practice on how to paint a wooden structure. I used a brown transparent color (transparent oxide red + viridian) painted the small house first, then I swept on top some opaque colors following the orientation of the wood planks. Finally used knife to define the gaps between the planks. I think it has shown the wooden texture pretty well.

"On a Beijing Street 7" --- Sold

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When I was in Beijing in January, I did 6 small paintings of my "On a Beijing Street" series. Yesterday I was checking my photos and see one I was interested in, and painted this one.

After my vermont trip, I have a relatively long time I can concentrate on studying and painting. I am satisfied what I have done so far. I have gained momentum in landscape painting and seen progress. I am getting more sensitive about my gray colors. and this one I paid much more attention to my designs on the balance of transparency and opacity.

"A Round Door" --- Sold

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This painting is from a photo I took earlier in China. I saw many round doors like this, but this one I was tempted to call it "a wrong door". I don't who places that stone slab in the way and puts a pot of flower on it. So this doorway is not functioning. However, it looks pretty good for a painting. I am practicing more with my palette knifes, trying to create more abstract effects.

"On a Texas Farm" --- Sold

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This is my very first plein air painting of the year. Yesterday I joined Plein Air Austin and painted at Michaelis Farm in Kyle, TX. I was very late for this event. When I started, Everybody has gone. The place is beautiful. I would like to go there again. My control on gray colors are getting better. I also used a lot of knife work on this one.

"A Small House" --- Sold

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How to make gray color colorful and not muddy. Many master artists know how to do it, but many of them either can't or do not want to talk about it. That is my objective now and maybe for a while. I hope some day I can nail it.