"Warm-n-Cool" Filter

Two engineers and I have developed an image filter called "Warm-n-Cool". It can remove the influence of local colors and show the color temperature relationships of the light and shadow. Basically, it changes a full color image to a two colors (hues) only image. The two hues are orange (warm) and blue (cool). I have used "Warm-n-Cool" to filter my reference photos, and gain much better understanding the specific color temperature distribution across the image. In many cases, I can use orange and blue only to paint an entire painting realistically. The "Warm-n-Cool" filter is free for everybody to use. Please follow this simple instruction: Go to www.qhart.com > Apps > Painter's Guide 3.1 > Load your image > Filter > Warmncool. 

Still Life Painting Workshop

 

I am getting busy again. I will teach a 4-day still life painting workshop at the Scottsdale Artists' School on February 12 - 15, 2024. Although I have taught painting workshop so many times, but I have kept gaining new understanding, and developing new skills. I want to use this opportunity to share my techniques with you. If you are interested in my painting approaches, please visit: https://www.scottsdaleartschool.org/events/130/ ( or go to my website) to sign up.

Digital Squinting

 

Life is short. How can we become good in painting QUICKLY? We all know we need to practice, but to accelerate the progress, my secret is: USING SMART TOOLS. The posted image shows that you can "squint" your ref photo digitally. Here is how to do it: Go to qhart.com(my website) > click "Apps" > click "Painter's Guide 3.0" > load your ref photo > click "Filter" > click "Oilify". Now you have no worry you develop wrinkles because you squint a lot during painting time. I have quite a few apps on my website, which are free for you to use. I want to thank the engineers behind the screen for making these tools available. As a matter of fact, I have a workshop next month at the Scottsdale Artist School (https://www.scottsdaleartschool.org/events/130/). I will show you my techniques. Life is short. If you want to paint goodly (I mean well), I will teach you how to "cheat" correctly.

Cityscape Study

 

Master artist Hsin-Yao Tseng did a cityscape workshop here in Austin last November. I did this painting by using one of his reference photos. Combined what I have learned from Hsin-Yao and the color research I have been doing, I witness this painting gradually revealed itself in front of me. The color scheme is dominated by the warm and cool lights, while the local colors are rather subtle.

Painting Retreat in Sicily

 

At this New Year time, I want to announce a new event in 2024. Artist Suzanne Dougherty and I have organized a Painting Retreat in Sicily, Italy in the fall of 2024. It will refresh your spirit, mind, and body. Participating this retreat will be a great new year's resolution you can have. Please get detailed information at: https://www.qhart.com/sicily-retreat. Since we can only have 14 people to participate this event, please register as soon as possible. Happy New Year!

Step back to good old days

 

This is another painting I did during the holiday down-time. I followed patiently the steps of the painting wanted to take. No matter how slow and how far it goes, I stayed with it, witnessing the painting revealed itself gradually. The experience was amazing. I have heard whispering in my heart, which gave me guidance of what to do.

I wanted to paint the guts of radios for a long time. Making radios was my early year's obsession. I made a crystal radio when I was in 3rd grade. I still remembered the excitement when a voice came out of the headphone the first time. Later on, the magic of radio enticed me into the field of engineering and physics.

Similar to painting my previous still life, all the parts of this old radio do not have much of local color. The warm and cool light sources made the color play. The variations of the color temperature and value created the illusion of 3D forms of tubes, transformers, knobs, and so on. If the color relationships are right, the forms looked solid. Whether a painting works or not, the form solidity plays a very important role.

Albert Handell's Workshops

 

I hope all of you are enjoying this holiday season. Time flies. Soon the brand new 2024 will come. We all try to set up new goals at this New Year time. I really want to improve my art even more in 2024. What about you? If you are like me, I want to share an opportunity with you: The famous artist and teacher Albert Handel will come to Austin and teach two workshops, one in January and one in March. We still have openings for both workshops. If you are interested in learning from the master, please check https://www.qhart.com/albert-handell-workshop1-2024 and https://www.qhart.com/albert-handell-workshop2-2024 for detailed information and sign up.

Color of Achromats

 

I have been enjoying my holiday down-time for about a month now. I have done 4 paintings so far. I used to paint alla prima and try not to overwork, but this time is different. I allow the painting take the lead. I just follow my heart and simply provide whatever the painting needs. I did not set any time limit. On and off, this painting took weeks to this stage. I have posted it last time, but I have noticed afterward the perspective and color were still having issues. If a painting allows you keep on working without showing a down-turn, it is a good sign. Knowing your heart and sincerely following it. That is a holy moment. Through this moment, you touch the eternity. 

Color Sophistication

 

Having done the "white on white" and "black on black" still lives, I decided to combine white, black and gray objects together into a single setup. I minimized the local colors so all the colors were generated only by the light sources, one warm and one cool. I vaguely knew, but realized strongly this time, we are practically colorblind when we just start to block-in colors on the painting. The reason is very simple: we make our color judgement by comparison with other colors, but we just did our composition drawing or wash we do have the reference we can tell the color. Developed artists have their experiences or formula, but I want to be accurate as much as possible. That is why measuring color numerically, and developing a color mixing mechanism to obtain the matched color will be helpful to demystify all the color mix gimmicks. I am working on a few methods to overcome the color ambiguity at early painting stages, and my recent paintings are my experiments to find a scientific approach. The problem is so gooey, it will takes me a while to get a sound solution. I will keep on trying, and share with you in my future teachings.

Is the camera black?

 

I have shown my "white object on white background" experiment two days ago, and this image is my "black object on black background" experiment. Now the question is: what makes us believe that the camera in this painting is black? The value range is not the answer, because I can zap the camera object with a super bright light and paint a very high key painting. Let me know your thought.

Warm/Cool Still Life

 

I like this holiday season. I finally can paint without any business motivations. I submerged myself into the color study again. The image shows my "paint a white object on a white background" project. I used two light sources, one warm and one cool to generate schemes of "warm light cool shadow" and "cool light warm shadow". I am experimenting a color mixing method, which I may call "numerical color matching". With this method, I can accurately achieve a good color solidity, and reduce the color muddiness.  I hope someday artists can use science and mathematics to go beyond their experiences to obtain unambiguous understanding and control in their creative processes.

2024 Painting Calendar

 

It is the holiday season now. As usual, I have made a desk calendar for the coming 2024. Please visit my website: www.qhart.com then click the "Store" tab, you may see the 13 painting images I have selected for this calendar. I know quite many my artist friends collect my painting calendars. At this Thanksgiving time, I want to express my sincere gratitude to all of you. Thank you so much for your generosity that makes my art possible. 

Colors in the Water

 

For this year's EPAT, I set a theme for myself: I want to paint nonstructural organic forms. This is a way of saving time because I don't need manage proportions. I can concentrate on designs, colors, and texture. I am glad this strategy works well for plein air painting events.

Blooming Colors

 

Another plein air piece during EPAT. It was raining and windy, but I had a blast.

Goat Trap Brush Pile

 

The judge for this year's EPAT is an art historian. He made a comment I really like. I don't remember exactly his words, but it was something like: You artists are not the source of the art. You are just the conduit through which the art comes through. I agree 100% and believe the beauty is one of God's properties.  The biggest barrier to stagnate our art conduit is the ego.

The Rain Comes Finally

 

EPAT has ended. I did 9 paintings. Texas has been dry, buy when we set up our easels, the rain comes right away. 

Small Beauty

 

What is my motivation of doing art? At the beginning, I just think about myself. Having found that I have the above average ability to create images. I told myself: I would use this ability to tell the world that I am so great...I want to be a great artist. Oh boy. I was so wrong. If you think, or someone told you, you are talented. Have you wondered where your talent really comes from?

Life is eternal

 

I bought some pink roses from a local grocery store. They looked OK when I got them, but they all wilted within 24 hours. I managed to do this painting in this life/death situation. I was amazed how quickly life can change right in front of our eyes. Recently, I reviewed my own life, as a scientist and artist, as a Chinese and American. It is felt like a TV show, episode after episode. They entice us to continue watching. However when the show reaches its end, we often feel a little disappointed. Is that it? Can it be a little better? Nevertheless, we usually wake up from the story rather quickly, knowing it is just a show, not real. My art show is still playing, but it is just a show as well. It has more episodes to continue, but I know I should not take it that seriously. 

Xiamen and Keelung

 I just came back for a one month visit of Taiwan and the mainland China. The upper image is the city of Xiamen in Fujian Province and the one below is Keelung in Taiwan. Both places are located on either side of the Taiwan Strait. Peaceful and beautiful. I have wonderful times in both places. If you want to know the truth, go there and see.

Hsin-Yao Tseng workshop reminder

 

Dear Artist Friends, I just want to remind you that Master artist Hsin-Yao Tseng will come to Austin and conduct a 4-day cityscape painting workshop. We have only 3 seats left. If you are interested in learning from Hsin-Yao. Please visit: https://www.qhart.com/hsin-yao-tsengs-workshop-2023. Thanks.

Metals and Tea

 

I did this one in 2014, and it makes me feel nostalgic of the time when my art was young. We are surviving through the super hot summer in Texas. Thank God I have teaching opportunities and escaped the heat for a few days.

I have been slowing down and I have not posting on social media as often as before. There are so many fake short videos overwriting meaningful information. I long for the good old days.

Figure Demo

 

This is my demo on my figure painting workshop in Cloudcroft NM. This was my very first teaching figurative art. You know I don't do figure very often. This demo turned out better than I thought. Maybe I should do more.

The rain is coming

 

This is another rainy plein air painting at PAE.

Morning Light

This is my quick draw painting at PAE. It earned me the 3rd place award. It seems I felt the energy of photons bombarded on the morning flowers and generated electric charges and turned into dazzling  colors. Do you know Albert Einstein got the Nobel Prize was not for his theory of Relativity, but he discovered the law of photo-electric effect.

Ready to Sail

 

This is another plein air painting I did at PAE. 

Color of Water

 

Plein air Easton has just ended. This is one of paintings I did. Painting in the rain was fun.

Demo 3 at SLC: Morro Beach

 

The last demo on my SLC workshop. Again, I had a quite amount of touch-ups on it. I have painted this painting before, a few times, but I still see room for improvement. This experience of refurbishing old paintings really gives me confidence that I still can get better. I am happy to see that I did not overwork the painting. I think a lot when I re-work on a painting. I did see the refurbished painting get tighter. I hope my future work can get looser. So please wish me luck.

Workshop in Huntsville AL

 

I will teach a 3-day figurative painting workshop at the Fine Art Museum of Huntsville, Alabama. I will share with you my approaches to suggest human forms within a landscape setting. Figurative painting is exciting but relatively difficult to manage, especially for beginner artists. On this workshop, I want to show how to paint figures when we haven't had enough training in drawing and lack of knowledge of human anatomy, I will share computer tools which help us to manage proportion and color. We still have openings for this workshop. If you are interested in learning my painting techniques, please check the workshop webpage and sign up.

Demo 2 at SLC

 

The 2nd demo at SLC. I have worked more on it. I only have about 2 hours of demo time each day on a workshop. It is rather difficult to take care of all the issues. I am glad I have time to work on old paintings to give them a new look. Recently, I often ask myself: what will make a landscape painting look better. Working on old paintings really has advantages than starting a painting from scratch. All the elements have been established. I have more time and energy to re-think and re-do the composition, color, and mark making. I have a big inventory of semi finished paintings generated from passed plein air competitions. So I have a great potential.  It is different from refurbishing a cell phone or computer, re-touch a painting will make the quality and value of the painting exponentially. I am wondering why I have not thought about this method before. 

Demo 1 in Salt Lake City

 

I just came back from teaching a workshop at Salt Lake City. This was my 1st demo. I have touched up some today to bring the demo painting to a finish look. I have been painting landscape for a while, but I know in my bones that I am not a good landscape painter intuitively. To improve my landscape paintings, I have to rely on my left brain to analyze what is going on. I have told my students during the workshop: we are not gifted enough to be good in art naturally. If you want to be good, you will do 3 things. 1. practice a lot. 2. use whatever tools you can access to. 3. Go quantitative instead of qualitative.