"Yesterday's Glory"

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After having a delicious Chinese meal, I cracked open my fortune cookie. It said: “being famous just likes a pig being big”. Wow! What a deep wisdom it is…. Well, I made this story up. However, the saying is rather well known. We all want to be successful, and work hard toward our goals. However, not everybody is aware that there will more work to do when we get there. It will be more difficult to keep in control. Michael Jackson died at ago 50. I felt very sad. He was very successful, but he lived a pretty miserable life for the last decade. I don’t consider myself successful yet, but I am on my way. Recently I have felt my life has changed quite a bit. I have spent more and more time on business, but not on art. I paint less and less. I feel I could do better, but there is no time and energy. Having a balanced life is hard to come by. Tomorrow, I am leaving USA for a month long vacation in China. I don’t know what I am expecting, but I will paint and keep you posted as much as possible. So long.

"Demo at Lacombe LA 2"

I came back from Louisiana last night. We had delicious beignet at the French Quarter, saw alligators in one of the bayous. It surely was a very enjoyable trip. This is my second demo painting I did at the workshop.

"Demo at Lacombe LA 1" --- Sold

I am at Lacombe Louisiana now and just completed another workshop. The workshop was hosted in a Unitarian church. I am enjoyed learning the local culture. People are wonderful here. I want to sincerely thank Barbara, Carolyn, and Chris for put this workshop together. I had a great fun meeting new and old friends and talking about art. This is my first demo. I hope you like it. Tomorrow I am heading to New Orleans and expect to have some wonderful cajun food. I will be back to Austin Monday night.

"Strawberries"

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"Warm shadow and cool light" is a kind of rule of thumb for still life paintings. However, for this painting, I did the opposite. The setup was lit by a halogen light. It was very orange, but the shadow got quite bit of cooler reflection light into it because I was using filtered light for my canvas and palette. Some of the cooler light got into the shadows. I don't particularly like this lighting conditions, but it doesn't hurt to try one and two.

"Emptiness"

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This is my "Zen" painting. Well, be honest to you. I wasn't very "Zen" at all when I start it. I was deadly tired and the time was about 9:30 PM last night. My mind was completely blank, and I did not know what I want to paint. I scanned through my junk pile, and this small glass was glittering a beautiful blue light to me. Its chroma was so high, intense, and ptheloish (can I invent this word?). So I painted it with my 50% consciousness.

"Blue Center"

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If you have attended my workshops and demos, you might still remember that I use a piece of blue transparency to filter my light, so it produces an illumination very close to daylight. Now I put more information about this "North Light Filter" on my website: http://www.qhart.com/Still%20life/Pages/Blue_center.htm and my blog. You are more than welcome to check it out.

"Spectra of Onions"

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Onions are so colorful. On this gallery painting, those onions gave me opportunities to use red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. They are rich in textures too. Some parts are paper thin, and some parts are solid. Some parts are translucent, and some parts are opaque. I had a lot of fun painting them.

"Flute Study" --- Sold

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One of my collectors loaned me a flute. She hopes I can do painting of flute someday. I thought about this project for a long time. I found my usual approach didn't work well with this elegant and intricate instrument. It is very different from painting flowers. I have to follow many of my engineering discipline for this painting. Now I am out of my comfort zone now and explore new territories. I am glad I did it. There is a lot of fun to give precisely designed mechanical parts a painterly look. I think I will involve high-tech stuff into my still-lifes soon.

By the way, the magazine that has the article about me is on the shelf of major bookstore now. I hope you enjoy reading it.

"Three Roses" --- Sold

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I did this painting on Tuesday night. It felt like doing en plein air. At that evening, my son had a concert. He plays trumpet. So we went to see and cheer for his show. Due to the time constrain, I knew I didn't have enough time to paint. So I asked my wife in advance to set up something she likes. Well, She did a very complicated one for me. I didn't change anything in the setup, but painted only a small portion of it. Can I call it plein air still life even it was done indoors? Maybe not, but who cares.

"Colorful Time"

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After I posted my "color of white" question, I got many many "two cents". My piggy bank has exploded. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences and knowledge with me. Today I want share one of my gallery paintings with you. I did this one about a week ago. That was the time I was pondering about the color of white. I am going to practice the tips I learned. After I become good at it, I will feed back to you.

"White Rose" --- Sold

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I don't remember I painted white roses before, but with this one, I was working on painting the colors of "white", I did similar study on white cups and drapery before, but I feel I am still not there yet. I really admire those master painters who can put many colors on a white object, but still be remarkably convincing the object is white. If you have experiences of doing that, would you mind share your two cents?

American Artist Magazine Article

The article featuring my painting and workshop teaching has come out. It shows on the summer issue of the "Workshop" magazine, which is the special edition of the American Artist Magazine. If you are a subscriber of the magazine, you should have received it now. I have not seen this issue at the bookstores yet, but it should be available soon. You may read the on-line version of this article by click here. This article marks a major milestone in my art career. When I started daily painting 2.5 years ago, I never thought I could go this far.

Currently, I am scheduling new painting workshops for 2010. If you are interested in having me teach a class at your location, please send me an email. I will be more than happy to share my experiences with you.

"Demo at Austin 2" --- Sold

This is the second demo painting at my Austin workshop. I did a similar painting not long ago, and I like the composition a lot. So I did it again.

"Demo at Austin 1" --- Sold

I just had another great workshop last weekend. This one was local, in Austin, TX. I want to express my sincere appreciation to Mrs. Karen Wilkerson for organizing this workshop. I want to thank all the new and old artist friends for attending. We surely have had a lot of fun, haven't we? I felt very grateful for my wife Song and my son Jonathan for assisting me. This is my demo painting at the first day. Please enjoy.

"Dark and Light" --- Sold

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This painting has a similar composition of the previous one. I really like the strong light effect behind the dark object. Starting from tomorrow, I will teach a 3-day workshop in Austin. I will share with you my demo paintings soon.

"Out of the Shadow"

I did this painting as a demo at the Wimberley Valley Art League, TX on Monday night. I was so excited seeing quite a few my old artist friends, and met many new friends as well. The composition of this one I used before, but not very often. The foreground darks enhance the light area behind it giving a sharp contrast. This helps the center of focus coming out more. It surely was a fun evening I had.

"My Mom"

Today is the Mother's day. I want share with you a pastel portrait I did of my Mom. She lives in Beijing, China. I am going to visit her in July. Mother's love is the greatest love. I cannot put into words to express it. At this moment, I want to declare to the world: "Mom, I love you!!!"

I did this portrait about nine years ago. It is on the wall of my studio. She watches me and gives me confident to paint all the paintings.

"Small Beauties" --- Sold

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In front of my house, we have many kinds of bushes I don't know their names. At this moment, very colorful flowers are blooming. My wife got a bunch and I put it on my still life stand. I didn't do any adjustment (it was rare), and painted it as the way it was. Everything went smoothly. I started the painting around 6:30 PM. When I finish, it still had daylight. I had been a good day.

"Indian Blanket" --- Sold

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Having not paint small for a while, when I faced this 5"x6" canvas, It seemed so tiny. It took me quite a moment to reset my memory. I had a pretty busy setup as well, so I had to make a few decisions on what and how I should paint. Now in Texas, the bluebonnet season is over, replacing it, we see vibrant red, yellow, and purple out of many kinds of wild flowers. Indian blanket is one of them. I really like its down-to-earth property. It is humble and strong.

"Cast Drawing"

I have something different for you today. I spent two days about 8 hours doing this pencil drawing. This kind of exercise is the most fundamental study for any type of representational art. In serious academic art schools, students do drawing for two years before they start painting. I wish I had been trained that way. Now and then, I often feel that the foundation of my art is not solid enough. I dream some day, I can devote 40 hours or more to do one drawing under the guidance of art master. This drawing is a long way from the quality I want, but I want share it with you and document what I am doing at this time. If you are new in painting, I highly recommend you doing many of this kind of drawings. It will help you big time.

"Under the Coze Light"

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This 12" x 16" Gallery painting took me three days to finish. I usually use value as my design tool to compose, but in this one I was testing decreasing my value contrast. The brass and the background value are rather similar. I use edge treatment and local value contrast to define the shape of the brass. I also did not use white drapery for my foreground as I use to. I have not done small paintings for a while, but I will come back to it.

"Demo at Cincinnati 3" --- Sold

This is my third demo at Cincinnati. Different from the previous two, I did this one for general public. For various kinds of reasons many people are not able to attend my workshops. This demo only event serves as an alternative. As a matter of fact, I have another demo coming up on May 11, 7:00 PM at Wimberley, TX. Please contact Wimberley Valley Art League for the detailed information.

"Demo at Cincinnati 2"

This is the second demo I did at my Cincinnati workshop.

"Demo at Cincinnati 1" --- Sold

It is ironic, but it is true. When the painting business is getting busier, the first thing having to be sacrificed is the painting itself. Last 10 days or so, I was so busy and my regular painting schedule had to be replaced by other things, then I went to Cincinnati, OH and taught a workshop since last Wednesday. I did three demos there. This is the first one.

"Green and Red Balance" --- Sold

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This painting didn't get a good start. I was almost collapsed in the middle of the painting and had to nap for a while. I thought I might not finish it, but it turned out OK. Life needs to be balanced. I am not good at that. I am learning.

"Learning from Hongnian"

Yesterday I was at Magnolia TX again attending a figure painting workshop taught by a great artist Hongnian Zhang. I felt so good of learning again. Hongnian paints gigantic historical paintings, size up to 72” x 120”. I was shocked to know that I had seen his huge paintings about 30 years ago. The tremendous power of his art inspired me when I was a teenager. I am so honored to meet him in person. His approach is very different from mine, but I really enjoyed his ways managing color. I need some time to digest what I have learned and I will use some of his techniques in my future paintings.

"Now and Then"

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I got more demands from galleries now, so I paint more larger paintings when i have more control on time, like weekends. Larger canvases offer more potential to compose richer art content. It is overwhelming at the beginning, but i feel more and more comfortable after practice.

"Portrait Study 1"

This is my second try of painting human this year. When I did the "little girl in red" I was struggling with colors for the skin tone. I worked on this matter more this time. This portrait is done by copying one of Zhaoming Wu's paintings. His is the master of painting figures and portraits. If you are not familiar with his work, please check his art on the Internet. I really want to learn his ways of painting. Copying masters' work is a great way to study.

"Hacked Ikebana" --- Sold

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Ikebana is the Japanese way of flower arrangement. It is very disciplined and sophisticated. My wife is pretty good at that. Hacking (not about breaking into computers) is the quick-n-dirty way of doing things emphasizing only on functioning and practicality. I am pretty good at that. Modern life makes us more and more become hackers, but I am long for the opposite.

"Vase from China" --- Sold

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I got a new gallery representation last week by InSight Gallery at Fredericksburg, TX. This is a very new gallery, but it will show wonderful paintings from great artists I admire: Scott Burdick, Dan Gerhartz, Carolyn Anderson, John Austin Hanna, C. W. Mundy, and Joan Potter, to name a few. I am very happy and honored to be in. I did this 16x20 last weekend and it will be sent to this gallery.