"Fresh" --- Sold

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In this painting, I applied what I have learned from my recent leaf studies into more finished work. It is sort of worked, but not significant enough. Life is still going and research will keep going too. My recent posts are very left-brain-ish. I think it is necessary. At the earlier stage of the this painting, I really like it a lot. But I had to stop and went to work. I continued last night after I came back from work. The painting was semi-dry. I got out of control. Anyhow, this one is not bad. I like the color effect a lot.

"May in Manor" --- Sold

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"I try to depict the lush foliage by delineating only three leaves". Did I use the two "D" words correctly? Thanks to so many of you helping me by explaining the difference between "depicting" and "delineating". In the company I work. there used to be an engineer friend, Al. He helped me in English and American culture. We call every Friday: Qiang's culture day. I learned a lot from him. Now he has retired. I really miss Al and the culture days. Now I have expanded my culture days on the Internet. Wow! "I said to myself, what a wonderful world!!!"

My today's painting is a plein air piece. I did this with the "Plein Air Austin" group at Manor (east of Austin). It was done mainly with my newly obtained flexible palette knife. I was very clumsy with it at this moment, and some of the effect I want did not come out. But it is all right. I am happy to see "rooms" in my painting I can "reserve" for the knife work. Wow! "I said to myself, what a wonderful world!!!"

"Sisters" --- Donated to Japanese "Aid for Bed" Directly Helping by Providing Shelter for theDisplaced

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On March 10, I was packing for my trip to Florida. Because I was in a rush, I pushed a small table and one of the Japanese dolls displayed on it fell off. Knocked on the floor tiles, her head was shattered into pieces. I felt pity about the accident, but didn't think too much and continuing on my rush. Less than 24 hours later I was on my way and stopped by a McDonald’s on I-10 between Pensacola and Tallahassee. I opened my Mac. Oh!! my goodness, I saw that horrible images of Tsunami and Earthquake of Japan. I was frozen by the terrible scenes the devastation, felt the world was ending. I am not really superstitious, but the shadow of my crashed Japanese doll was floating on gloomy images of the tremendous disaster.

I was back to Austin late last night, and felt obligated to do something. I did this painting this morning and hope to do a little help to the people in Japan. Now the Daily Paintworks website has posted a new challenge to all daily painters call "the Help Japan Challenge". I want to submit this painting to this challenge. I hope all my artist friends can join me to donate a painting to raise a help fund. If you are interested in join me, please check "the DPW Help Japan Challenge" for the detailed information. This is one way we artists can help. Thank you.

"Turquoise Stripe" --- Sold

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You know I use a lot red and oranges in my paintings. This one is the same. The reason is obvious. Hot color capture viewer's attention easily. However, if I over use it, it starts to get boring. So I have been searching other colors that gives strong impact to people. This painting is one my tests. The color I am testing is turquoise. It is actually the opposite of the orange and red, but its crisp coolness can work as an eye catcher. I will definitely use it more.

"A Red Cup" --- Sold

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After I visited Richard Schmid a month ago. I had been thinking about his approaches a lot. I like the way he uses the transparent wish that gives the painting a spontaneous look. The balance between unfinished seeing-throughs and layered detail depiction, and the contrast of sharp/soft edges really makes his style outstanding. I want to learn this approach and convert it into part of mine. My today’s painting is Schmidish I think. How do you like it? I don’t have much of leaves in the design. I start to working on the white drape. You will see more my drapery studies in the coming days.

"Painter's Gadgets" --- Sold

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I continue working on my grays. I have a long way to go.

"A New Drink" --- Sold

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With one tomato, three quarters of an orange, and a bottle of beer, can we make a good drink out of those? Maybe, maybe not. My life is kind of like this. I am doing several things, which are completely unrelated to each other. I draw myself pretty thin now. My eBay store is very empty; I am behind on gallery paintings. I am flying all over the places. Some time I woke up in the morning, and couldn’t figure out where I was. On our company meetings, I felt really odd that I still blurted out gobbledygook that sounded technical. Many people told me that I have a wonderful problem. Well it is a problem for sure. I am learning really hard to manage my life. At this moment, I am still a lousy manager. It might take me while to go through the learn curve. My art will definitely suffer during this period, but please hang in there with me. In my technical career, I have learned the hard way. I have understood now that I must be an entrepreneur to survive in this money driven culture. Being talented can be a curse if you are not careful.

"Texas Country" --- Sold

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I did this plein air painting the afternoon in the Texas Hill Country. I felt great painting outdoors, but the painting was very challenge to me. Since I have not painted much plein air. The scene was overwhelming, the colors were different. I was out my comfort zone completely. I can't use my still life approaches here. This is my first time painting cactus. I really don't know what I was doing. I let my intuition take the lead. My colors were undefined, and my composition was accidental. I just simply paint. So if you feel you don't know how to paint something, you just simply paint.

"White Study"

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Another paintingless week has passed solidly. I finally got some time because today is a holiday. I am continuing my research on colors of white objects. I have two lights for this still life: one warm and one cool. I think I am getting a little closer now to my goal. The table cloth still needs some work, but objects are not bad. Compared with my usual way using high chroma colors for the center of focus. This type of painting definitely makes a change. I will do more "white" paintings to achieve the ability of controlling the subtle changes in colors.

"Blue Monday" --- Sold

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I got so many feedbacks on my white cup painting. I wish I could reply all your kind emails and comments personally. Thank you all very very much. I will practice what I learned from you and report to you in the near future. At this moment, I just want to share one thing that I have learned. The major reason I did not see much colors on my white cup was my light. I am using a color corrected spot light. The light was so concentrated on the object and environment surrounding it was in dark, so I did not have different colored light reflected into the cup. This friend suggested I should look at my object under daylight, and I did. It was strikingly difference. Now I got some idea to improve my illumination, and I will demonstrate to you later.

I named my today's painting "Blue Monday" maybe not very relevant. It reflects more my mood today rather than the painting. I am a little blue today, but it is all right. Life goes on and more paintings will come out.

"Echo of the Void" --- Sold

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The painting is so typical of David Leffel's style. I am learning how to paint space. Although the size of the painting is only 8" x 10", do you feel the painting is quite large? I really like this one. I think I got what Sherrie and David told me finally.

Now is the morning of the Christmas day. I haven't unwrapped my presents yet, but I have felt blessed already, because I have got the most precious gift --- TIME today. This is my first time posting a painting so early in the morning. Please accept it as my present to you all. I wish all of you have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Thanks to all of you for your constant support. Now I will go to our small Christmas tree, and I will have a lot of fun with my family today.

"Shimmery" --- Sold

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This is a delicious one. I had so much fun painting it. I was working on shape variation. You may have heard "dots, lines, and areas". They are three basic shapes in a design. In most of my paintings I don't have enough "dots" and "lines". So those paintings are kind of plain. In this one, I deliberately placed some branches in the setup. I am glad I did.

Demo at Granbury 1 - "Orange and Lemons" --- Sold

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This is my first demo painting at my Granbury workshop. I’d like to thank my new and old artists friends coming from all over to attend this workshop. Especially I would like to thank Theresa, the owner of the Iron Horse Inn, for organizing this event. After my previous post, she commented on my blog and retold the story about the house in the following I would like share with you:

“Briefly, this is a historic home and the original family had 8 children. The youngest was Josephine Cogdell who was quite a wild young lady - she ran away from home with a traveling salesman in 1913 when she was just 16 years old! After a few years living in California as a dancer, writer and artist, she moved to New York where she met and married an important writer and publisher of the day - George Schuyler. Sadly the family cut Josephine out of their lives after this marriage as this was a 1920's Texas family and George Schuyler was black. Despite a deputation of her older sisters to persuade her to come home, Josephine lived the rest of her life in Harlem with George where they had a daughter Phillipa who turned out to be a musical genius. She started composing at aged 5 and played Carnegie hall at age 13. She had a renowned career as a concert pianist, composer and writer, but sadly died in a helicopter crash on assignment in Vietnam in 1967. The film rights for her biography have been purchased by Hallie Berry and Alicia Keys has a contract to play Phillipa in the movie.”
Isn’t that fascinating? Please check Theresa’s site to see what is going on now at house:http://www.theironhorseinn.com/retreat.htm

"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.

"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.

"Demo at Magnolia 2" --- Sold

My workshop at Magnolia was a big success. I want thank all the attendees. At this workshop I involved an art business session officially. I was amazed so many people are interested in blogging and online marketing. The discussion was so active.

Now the workshop is over. I am going to go camping for a several days. I might not able access to the Internet for a while.

This is my second demo I did at the workshop. Hope you enjoy another my rose painting.

"Demo at Magnolia 1" --- Sold

This is my first demo painting at my Magnolia TX workshop. I am so excited to come back here again. I want express my sincere gratitude to Ms. Marty Hatcher for organizing this wonder workshop. I met many new friends and am having a wonderful time. This workshop is very special to me and to my current and future students, because it will be documented and promoted by American Artist Magazine. You will be able to read about this workshop and my style of teaching on the April's issue of the "Workshop" Magazine. It is a significant milestone in my art career. I am very very happy about it.

"Apache Shores"

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It was about 85 degrees F today in Austin. I decided taking the morning off and went to paint landscape with a group plein air painters. I am so glad I did. We were at a place called Apache Shores. It was so beautiful. It was cloudy. I really like the odd shape trees there.

BTW, I was lucky to get in the OPA National Show again.

"Demo at Salado 2" --- Sold

This is my second demo at Salado. I am demonstrating art blogging and marketing in front of my students. Everybody is having a great time.

"Demo at Salado 1" --- Sold

This is my first demo I did at the workshop. I am having a wonderful time here: making new friends, enjoy the great weather, and the beauty of this very artsy town. I feel everything slows down here in contrast with my life in Austin. I love it.