"Bottle and Grapes" --- Sold

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I am on my way to Sacramento, CA to teach my first workshop of 2010. I usually I go to northern CA every spring attending the Photonics West International Conference and Trade Show at the Silicon Valley, But this trip is purely for art. It feels so different. I will be back to Austin next Tuesday. Any sold paintings will be shipped after I come back. I will also let you know what happening on the west coast.

New Workshop Announcement

Painting by Calvin Liang

My experiences in painting have told me that having good art teachers is crucially important, especially for beginner artists. In order to promote high quality art education in the central Texas area, my wife and I decide to start a new endeavor in art. We will invite artists selectively coming to Austin to give workshops. I am very happy to announce that the well-known California artist Calvin Liang will give our first invitational workshop. He will teach a 5-day plein air landscape painting workshop on October 25 – 29, 2010. If you are interested in learning from Calvin, please check the workshop flyer. This workshop has been limited to 15 students. Please contact Yuehong Song at yuehongsong188@yahoo.com for detailed information and registration. Thanks so much for your attention.

"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.

"Solid Imagination" --- Sold

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Painting color from a non-colored object has been a big challenge to me. I have tried and tried many times painting a white cup, but I don't think I have got it. This one is another try. I stared at this stupid cup for about two hours, and I really did not see much colors from it. But I don't want to do another value painting any more. So you see quite a few colorful grays on the cup. Those are colors in my mind. I will keep trying until I figure out how the color of grays are formed on a neutral color object. If you know the trick or you know some one is good at it, please help me out.

"In a Cool Spot" --- Sold

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Using temperature contrast to enhance the colors at the center of focus is an effective method to make the painting looks more colorful.

"Round and Square" --- Sold

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I love holidays. This long weekend makes it possible for me to paint daily. Many people asked me: how can you do so many things? You work full-time; have a family, and you still have time painting, teaching workshops, and managing an art business. Be honest to you, I CAN'T, but I try my best to use every fragment of time possible. At my day job, I do not go out for lunch, so I have some time to check emails and posting on my blog. I hardly watch any TV, and use my evening as much as possible. Weekends are luxurious. I really enjoy being a full time artist for a day or two. I am not ambitious and let thing happen naturally. Do I recommend my life style to others? Actually, NO. This fast paced modern life is very unhealthy. Life should be more relaxed, having more time for leisure. I am having this fast-food kind of life now in order to have the opposite in the future. So wish me luck.

"Beauty of Simplicity" --- Sold

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Another week without painting passed by solidly. I was rat racing in the labs in Texas and New Jersey. Perhaps my boss has found my negative words in my earlier posts toward corporate culture, and planned to punish me deliberately. I was given a work load so unrealistic that I will fail for sure and look bad. 3000 feet above sea level, among IPhone fumblers and laptop gazers, I opened "The Good Life" by Helen and Scott Nearing. A glare of the Sun was reflected to my eyes from a tiny speck of water surface down there. Maybe it was from the "Walden Pond". Men! the picture I was in was absolutely surreal. People have to be crazy to be normal....... I forced myself and did this small painting late Friday night.

"Orange Crystals" --- Sold

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Can you believe it? I didn't get a chance to touch my brushes for an entire week. Art can be killed just like that. I was so busy tweaking optics in my lab that I even have no time to check my emails during the day. If you are more lucky than I am, please help me to paint more. If you think you could wait till tomorrow to paint, please pick your brush today. We are obligated to make this world more beautiful. Finally on Sunday afternoon, I did this small painting. I am still in the mode of doing low key paintings. I was testing of using translucent light as my center of focus. I think it works well.

"Sweet Mirage"

Now the holiday season is over. I am back to my cubicle babbling technical jargons. This is the last painting I did from my holiday break. It will be sent to a gallery show. I keep the background rough deliberately. Do you like it? My paintings recently are kind of tight. I am going back and forth, looking for my balance point. Sometimes, tight paintings are good, but I prefer looser styles.

"Quiet Festivity"

Happy 2010! I opened my mailbox this morning and very excited to see a certificate from the Oil Painters of America. It is my OPA signature membership. Now I am allowed to put OPA after my name. What a wonderful new year gift I received. This is an import milestone. I did this gallery painting on the first day of the new year. I might send this one to this year's OPA national show.

"Color Cascade"

I am in the process of generating several larger paintings for gallery shows. This is the first one. It is rather an abstract one. I was trying to create a flow of light and color. It is always fun painting flowers. After you have managed the anatomy of the flowers, you will feel much of freedom and creativity. Let's put all the hard times of 2009 behind us. Let this cascade of beauty make your New Year more exciting. 2010 is coming. I wish all of you good luck. Thank all of you for being with me and supporting me.

"Flute and Roses" --- Sold

This one took me three days to paint. I feel happy that the painting does not show much of over work. This year went by so fast. Now we are at the end of it. As a painter, I feel very lucky, because painting helped me "freeze" the time. Every painting I did is a milestone. It reminds me what I was thinking at the moment I was creating that image. When we are getting old, our physical memory does not work as well as we were young. We hardly remember what we did yesterday. However, if you are a painter, you can archive your life so vividly. I am really blessed.

"Being in the Dark" --- Sold

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Darkness is full of mystery. We often feel insecure in it. However, the darkness implies potential. We have more room to grow. I put the background of this painting is completely darkness. It gives the vastest contrast for the center of focus to stand out. By the way, I didn't use any blacks. The background was done with Phthalo blue and Alizarin Crimson.

"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.

"Everyday Christmas"

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I should have been painting in my evening hours, but I didn’t get chance to do that lately. Instead, I have been learning QuickBooks and trying to get some bookkeeping going. Nowadays, people like me don’t have the luxury to concentrate on the art development. We have to take care of everything. Too bad we have only 24 hours and I spend the best part of it onto the boring stuff to make a living (a very interesting phase). The art projects always are the first bunch falling into cracks. Life is hard, and more and more complicated, but I am still optimistic. I can’t develop my art at the pace I wanted it to be, but it is at least progressing day by day. I felt the year went by so fast, and the holiday season is here again. I am satisfied. I have achieved a lot in my art with the meager time and energy I have.
In my today’s painting, I am still experimenting with what I learned from Sherrie. I will let the future decide weather or not I would keep this approach. The painting is a little larger (8” x 8”) and I put greens and reds on my setup. I hope our regular days will be as merry as Christmas. Happy holidays.

"Yellow Roses Under Cool Light" --- Sold

I did this painting for a friend. I am not going to talk too much today. Please enjoy.

"Orange Spiral" --- Sold

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After my previous post, I received many comments, and most of people disagreed with me this time. How big the object is too big is a very subjective matter. Since I was attending Sherrie’s (and David’s) workshop, I did not want to do what I usually do. I really want to sense their way of judgment. Painting objects relatively small is part of the secrecy of the David Leffel style. David is painting the void. Using the subtle and smooth background and less occupied foreground, he sets up the boundary of the void to generate the effect of spaciousness. That is why David’s and Sherrie’s paintings have impacted us so strongly. So I don’t mind to create similar effect on my painting as well. Now, since we are talking about learning from the masters, I want to share some my experiences. At the class, I hardly taking any notes, but I pay a real attention to their demos. The masters communicate with you using visual language. So you need to listen with your eyes instead of your ears. The verbal part of their teaching is quite secondary to me. I hardly remember any their words. However, if you get a good result or some light bulbs start to blinking, make sure you document it verbally so you can remember better and organize the good effects into your own system. Moreover, if I may say some words to our beloved master artists who teach as well, I will say: Teaching is very left-brain process. To help the students to grow and also not mislead them, the teacher needs to do massive amount of work to translate the visual language into a verbal one, and present it in a systematic way. If there is a short of vocabulary, please create some. I heard Eskimos could identify many more kinds of snows than most of us. We artists should be able to describe many different kinds of grays verbally and pass them on to our students.

"Frontyard Harvest" --- Sold

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We have an orange tree in the front yard. My son, Jonathan, picked one with leaves on it. I did many orange paintings, but I really like this one because the leaves provide more shape variation. After I talked in my blog about studying with Sherrie McGraw. I received quite a few emails and comments asking about what I really learned from her. Very simple, she said I painted my objects too big. This painting is good start for improvement. I made the orange relatively small and gave more space to the background, so the painting appears larger. When Sherrie mentioned that I painted my objects too big, I suddenly realized that David Leffel told me the same thing. Many years ago I took workshop with David. I was concentrated in painting and suddenly I heard several Chinese words: "Qiang Tai Da"(meaning: Qiang, it is too big). It was David. He knows quite many Chinese words. This time Sherrie pointed out same problem again. I realized that a problem can be so persistent. It is amazing that it takes so many years for me to understand a simple instruction like "too big", even it was in my native language.

"A Yellow Rose of Texas" --- Sold

Although I came to America more than twenty years ago, but I still do not know the culture well enough. I did this painting a couple of days ago and wanted to find a good name for it. I heard the term "yellow rose of Texas", but I did not know exactly what it meant. So I "googled" it. The "Wikipedia" says it is the title of a song. I clicked a video link and listened to it. Actually I heard this tune before, but just didn't know its title. I am learning everyday. Just at that moment, suddenly, my computer crashed. I couldn't get the screen to move. Coincidentally, our company IT person was passing my cube, I stopped him to asked him to check my machine. He stared at my screen and said: "You knew that "Yellow Rose of Texas" is a gentleman's club in Austin, didn't you?" .......Oh! ..........

"Enchant in Subtlety"

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At Sherrie's workshop, I only did two paintings. the one I posted previously took me relatively shorter time. However, this one took me almost two days. Remember I was talking about learning from her how to create drama. This one is my experiment. The setup was done completely by Sherrie. When I started to paint, I felt I was powerlessly disarmed. You know I like to use high chroma colors, high contrast value range, and expressive bush works. I had none of those with this project. The color and value of the pot is almost the same as those of the background. The shapes of the arrangement were complicated and irregular. The roses were dying (they withered and died completely on the second day). I almost ran away from it. Well, I am glad I did not. I suffered through. And I started to appreciate the subtlety of the setup. It gives more potential for me to express, and the painting quality will be elevated to the next level. It is so great to see the opportunities. Did I show more "drama" in this one?

"InSight Gallery Celebration"

Sherrie and I in the InSight Gallery

Sherrie scrutinizing my paintings in the show

Last Saturday night, the InSight Gallery has its Celebration Show. I had a great time there, enjoying wonderful images, chatting with old friends and meeting new friends. The high-light for me was that I had Sherrie McGraw looked at my gallery level paintings and listening her critiques. Her comment was enlightening. I started to realize some common issues in my art. She really showed me a new path for improving my work. I think the significance of taking workshops from masters is not mimicking their approaches, but getting your mind in tune with the teacher. Otherwise you would not able to understand what the teacher talking about even you know all the words.

"Quiet Whispering" --- Sold

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Hello World! I am back. It has been a wonderful break. Now I am recharged and ready to work again. As a matter of fact, I have resumed my busy life several days ago. Three days ago. I went to Fredericksburg, TX again attending a workshop by one of my most admired master artists: Sherrie McGraw. Without seeing her and David Leffel's masterpieces of still life paintings, I can't imagine I paint still life today. I am so excited that I can study with Sherrie again. My posting for today is one of paintings I did at her workshop. Can you see some of Sherrie's influence in it? I have a well defined intention when I attended her workshop: I want to know how she sets up and creates such a dramatic effect in her paintings. Here is what I have learned (I think): CONTRAST. Please contemplate on this word, your painting will be improved dramatically.

Coincidentally, This Sherrie's workshop has been documented by American Artist's Workshop Magazine. I don't know exactly when the article will be out, but you will see it in the near future.

Happy Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is the Thanksgiving. At this moment, I am so grateful to all of you who followed my blog, subscribed my painting email, supported my art, and gave me the opportunity to share. May all of you have an exceptionally happy time with your family and friends.

I am sorry I don’t have a painting for you to view today. I am sending this message to let you know that I will take a break and go away for a week. I will spend my Thanksgiving long weekend and several my personal off days to go to a retreat. In contrast to my complicated and fast paced daily routines, I will spend some time in complete silence, contemplating about life, future, and spirituality. There are many things we consider important in life: success, wealth, and good health. However, there is something more important than all those. I am sure you know what I am talking about. So, follow your heart. Follow your faith. Follow your path.

I will be back to my studio on December 3. All the paintings sold during the break time will be shipped after I return.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

"Ikebana in a Cup" --- Sold

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Ikebana is Japanese for "the Tao of flower arrangement". My wife Song is very good at it. Japanese culture emphasizes on the "Tao" of doing things. From drinking tea (chado) to sward fighting (kendo), almost everything has a "Do" of "Tao" to follow. "Tao" is usually translated as "the Way", but I prefer to translate it as "the Art". The state of art is the highest level of doing or performing.

"A Green Thingy" --- Sold

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I haven't done any small paintings for a while. So I did one last night. When I started the setup, my mind was completely blank. Our life is so complicated nowadays. We constantly jump from one project to another, which have no relationship what so ever in between. After I shoveled my engineering stuff away and pick up my art thingy, I felt really odd and empty. "You must have an art concept before you paint". That was what I learned and taught. But sometime, I really don't have any idea. I just paint.

"Old Tea Kettle"

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It surely was fun doing portrait for a change. Now I am back to my still life again. I did this one last weekend and it will be shown in the InSight Gallery at Fredericksburg, TX. The holiday season is coming. My eBay store is quite empty. I got a lot of catching up to do.

I got many feed backs on my cynical illustration of the corporation world. Oh boy, I shouldn't have "disturbed the sound of silence." Thank God that my boss has not seen my post. He could have cracked my skull open with that plastic trophy he just received.

"Study with Carolyn Anderson 3"

After I posted my portrait studies with Carolyn Anderson, I have received many great comments and encouragement. I am sorry I can't reply to all of you, but I really appreciate your support. Thank you very very much. This is my final one I did in her class. It is kind of mediocre I wish I could have the luxury of taking her class entirely, but unfortunately, I only stayed in the workshop for two days. I have to rush back to Austin to take care of my engineering job.

In my blog, I hardly mention anything about my daily engineering work. But I want to say something today. The company I worked with has developed very fast in spite of the current economic down-turn. Recently, it has been rewarded as one of the 50 fastest growing companies in Austin. At the ceremony night, I dressed up like a penguin, trying very hard to mingle with other penguins and peacocks. Wine glasses clanking, diamonds shimmering, people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening. I am humbled and mutated into a wallflower, watching the almighty Dollar dance fervently.

"Study with Carolyn Anderson 2"

This is the second portrait I did at the Carolyn Anderson's workshop. I think I like this one even better. This one is more accurate and solid. It is not as loose as the previous one, but the accuracy is more important. Don't you agree?

"Study with Carolyn Anderson 1"

Hello from Fredericksburg, TX. I am here taking Carolyn Anderson's portrait painting workshop. I like her style a lot. This is my first painting I did under her guidance. You have seen I painted many still lifes, but if you ask me what I like to paint the most, I will say portrait and figure. The reason I don't paint much human subjects is that I know it is too risky if I do that completely by myself at my current level. figurative painting has so many pitfalls if doing it incorrectly. Following the right teacher is crucially important. Carolyn is one of the best artists I want to follow. I have not decided if I will sell this painting. I will think about it.

"Seesaw" --- Sold

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Today is our anniversary. I took a half day off. My wife and I went to the Oasis, a beautiful restaurant on the side of Lake Travis at the west of Austin. I feel sooooo good, Man!!! (I try to sound like "Cheech and Chong"). You know what, I feel weird too, man. Today is Wednesday, but I am not at my cubicle typing technical gibberish. It surly feels strange, but it was a wonderful day.

Similar to the previous post, I put linear shapes and dots to give the composition more taste. I hope you like it.