"Wuzhen Street 1 (Day 2)"

The second day went well. Now the painting look like this. I am not far from finishing it. On the foundation of yesterday's value design, I added more color. I put more designs on opacity and temperature. The warm and cool are very similar to what I did with the dual light source still lives before this project. In addition I want parts of the painting remain transparent and other parts I painted opaque. After establishing all those painting elements. I went further for more geometric design, which is balance of 2D shapes, lines, and dots. I did not add much details to make the painting more realistic. The only realistic part of the this painting is that I want to make sure the perspective is correct. That is it. Other part of the painting, I want to leave it to the viewers to figure out what is going on. I am not very sure what I should do tomorrow. Maybe enhance the color a little more.

"Wuzhen Street 1 (Day 1)"

This could have been an old news that my painting "Morning in Zhouzhuang" had won the "Impressionist Honorable Mention Award" from this year's Oil Painters of America National Juried Exhibition. I felt very fortunate and honored of receiving awards from last 3 consecutive years' OPA Nationals. I felt specially happy that I am no longer confined to the "still life" genre. I want to explore more on cityscapes, and figurative paintings. Today I have started three 12" x 16" paintings simultaneously. The image showing here is the value design of one of them. I am going to spend a few days working on these paintings. So please ride on and see how they go.

"Shining in Warm and Cool 2"

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I did another two-light-source painting. How we light the still life setup is a very important part of the design. It has happened so many times in my workshops during still life setting up time, students only pay attention on how to group objects together, but completely ignore how the illumination should be. This painting and the previous one are typical examples showing how the light becomes the major player of a still life painting.

"Shining in Warm and Cool"

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Back to Austin for three days, my art keeps on going. I did this painting yesterday as a demo for my Austin mentoring group showing how I paint metal. There were two light sources: one warm source from a halogen spot light on the right, and natural light from the left. I think I did the light distribution "correctly" on the pewter pot, but I can't explain why I did the light on the bottle "incorrectly". I used so called "artistic license" for that.

"Great Smoky Mountains"

After visiting Biltmore and Asheville, I followed the Blue Ridge Parkway all the way to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It was an amazingly beautiful drive. On and off, I drove through the clouds. I felt so blessed traveling to such wonderful place.

“Biltmore"

After my Waynesville workshop. I visited Asheville for a day. In this incredible place called "Biltmore" I saw six John Singer Sargent's portraits, one Andrew Zorn's painting, and many more great art works. I was so amazed by how the super rich live their lives. Facing to such unbelievable luxury, what do you think?

"Demo at Waynesville 3" --- Sold

The third demo was high key with vibrant colors. I love that green colored wine glass. It was made by hand, and it has a very asymmetric shape. Although my high key approaches are still in the experimental stage, but I understand a little better now.

My Waynesville workshop has come to the end now. I had a fantastic time in the Smoky Mountains. I specially want to thank Margaret and her lovely family for providing a very comfortable place to stay.  We had such a wonderful time together.

"Demo at Waynesville 2" --- Sold

Having not done completely black background painting for a while, I really enjoyed doing this demo. The flower in the back I painted very abstractly. I like the texture and color.

It is very cool in the Smoky Mountains. Temperature is around 70 F. It is second place I stayed having cool summers and relatively mild winters. The first one was San Francisco.

"Demo at Waynesville 1" --- Sold

This is the first demo on my Waynesville workshop. I want to thank Margaret Roberts and Ann Todd for putting this workshop together. Thanks to all the Smoky Mountain artists for attending. I really enjoy the southern hospitality here. I enjoy the wonderful food everyday and beautiful cool summer in the woods. I feel I am very fortunate.

"Demo in Atlanta 3" --- Sold

This one is a little crazy. It is one of my experimental high key demos. The vibrant red orange colors make my heart beats faster. My hand wasn't steady, so I got some crazy edges. My high key painting has not formed a style yet. It will happen naturally. My job is simply keeping the experiment going.

My Atlanta workshop ended yesterday. Today I have driven to Waynesville NC.  I am now in the great Smoky Mountains. Another workshop starts tomorrow.

"Demo in Atlanta 2" --- Sold

As usual, I involve flowers in my second demo. Silver and glass are the objects I really enjoy painting as well. I didn't spent much time on the leaves. They are just whole bunch of abstract shapes.

"Demo in Atlanta 1" --- Sold

I am in Atlanta now. I want to thank Donna Thomas for organize my workshop here. Thanks to all the artists for coming and painting with me. This is the first demo.

"Gold Apple on Blue" --- Sold

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I want to thank all the friends who commented my recent serious painting "Evening Tea". In that painting, I have pushed many envelops, but there are still many envelops I didn't push, or not push enough. One of them was color. Now I come back to the study of my high key color schemes. I mention to my students that high key is not my cup of tea. It is much easier for me to deal with value and do low key paintings. I have been aware of my weakness a long time ago, and have put a significant effort to understand color. My practice in high key is not very consistent, like a blind try to find my way. I hope my today's color scheme can touch you in a positive psychological way.

"Evening Tea" --- Sold

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I think I have finished this painting project. I have changed the title to "Evening Tea", reminding me the time I was in my retreat. We had no dinners during that period of time. We only drank tea in the evenings. Tasting the subtle flavor of a simple cup of tea with a calmed mind, watching the cool breeze rattling the wild flowers under the warm dusk sun light. Everything was so peaceful and sensational.

This painting is one of my most involved ones. I have put utmost of my effort to push the limit. I know I am no Richard Schmid, nor David Leffel, but I have being trying my best to bring the quality as high as possible. It is very significant in my career in fine art. I want to hear your comments. Thank you for helping to grow.

“Color of Light" --- Sold

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Today is my Austin mentoring day again. I did this small one as the demo. I feel my sense of color is getting better, and more interested the colors on objects with no obvious local color. In other words, I am more interested in presenting the colors of lights. Similar to my demo last week. I have two light sources for this painting: a very strong artificial light producing very warm light, and a relative weak natural light giving me the cool. It is more dramatic of using colors to show white, and using darks to show light. Contradictory? but works.

"My 2015 Workshop Schedule"

Time goes by pretty fast. A half of the year is almost gone. At this time I want to announce my 2015 workshop schedule. 2015 will be another very exciting year. I plan to travel many beautiful places such as: The Bahamas, San Miguel Mexico, Montreal Canada, Napa Valley California, Durango Colorado, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and many other exciting locations. If you are interested in my techniques of oil painting, please check the schedule or click the "Qiang's Workshops"widget on the right. I know many friends are trying to sign up my workshop for this year, but found out the workshop gets full so quickly, and the waiting list can be long as well. So in order to secure your seat, please contact the workshop organizers as soon as possible. At this moment, some of the workshops are not finalized yet. I will modify this schedule often such that it will be up to date. I am looking forward to meeting you and having several days great painting experience with you.

For both 2014 and 2015, I scheduled more than 20 workshops per year. The jobs of communication and coordinations with all the workshop organizers are tedious and time consuming. I feel very fortunate that I have a very kind and efficient helper: Jane Frederick. Jane has been managing my workshop activities since this January. She is very professional, quickly and effectively coordinates so many my art activities. I really want to thank her for the wonderful job she did. Without her help, I will be running around like a chicken with the head cut off. If you have communicate with her, please drop her an email to thank her. We all should give her a big applause.

Let's work together and create more good paintings.