"Not Bule, it is Cyan" --- Sold

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Here is the other painting I did two days ago. Since I am in blue (as matter of fact, I am a little blue in mood lately), I want to talk more about this color called "cyan".

Many years ago when I was just into oil painting, I learned a little bit about color. I was told the red, yellow, and blue are primary colors; orange, green, and purple and secondary colors; red/green, orange/blue, and yellow/purple are complementary. You get grey if mixing the complementaries together. Now I find out this color model is so WRONG.  I can guarantee you will not get grey if you mix those "complementaries". In Munsell color wheel, there is no color orange. Now I use the computer HSV color system (similar to Munsell), The six base colors are red, yellow, green, cyan (or turquoise), blue, and magenta (or purple). You see orange is dropped, and cyan has been added in. These six colors are evenly distributed on the color wheel. In other words, each of the pizza slide of these six colors are equal in size (60 degrees in angle). If we use the old color system, the orange slide will be very narrow, only 30 degrees, while the blue slide will be very wide (120 degrees) if we think cyan belongs to blue. With the HSV system the complementary pairs are red/cyan, yellow/blue, and green/purple. Now you can make greys, not mud.

"The color of blue 4"

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Yesterday, I did two paintings. Here I just show one to you. I revisit the color blue (turquoise or cyan to be more accurate). Now I understood that I can't tint too much the tube color if I want to keep the chroma high. So this will limit my leverage of value change. Pthalo turquoise is very dark color, but I want to show lighter value, what should I do? With my first painting, I used analogous scheme, and high value background. It didn't work, because I have to tint the turquoise a lot. The color got bleached.  The second painting showing here works I think. I did two things. I made background darker, so the value of blue object does not need to be too high. Secondly, I used complementary color scheme to enhance the color contrast. Even the chroma is not very high (chroma = 79, (100 is the highest)), but the complementary scheme bushes it up.

Because I am concentrating on color scheme and harmony lately, I let the composition go. My painting may be too simple and not exciting artistically. This painting is very modern looking. But I am not crazy. I will win your confidence back.

"The color purple"

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The study is going. With this one I worked on the color purple. This one has some problems. I want the  purple color to be high in chroma, but it didn't happen. If I tint the color, the purple is very quickly lose its chroma (or intensity). I was using quinacridone magenta. Most of the purple colors are dark (low value) if you use them directly out of the tube. If you know a mid or light purple with intense chroma, please let me know. Thanks.

"Clear and Cool"

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My color design study has gained more momentum. In this painting my main color has shifted to ultramarine blue. The color scheme is still analogous. I want to stay with analogous scheme to guarantee the color harmony. I feel it is working. I will exercise more to become more skillful.

"The color of blue 2" --- Sold

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This my second try on doing a color design with blue. The color scheme is still analogous. I minimized the use of yellow. There are two blue I used: on the bottle I used phthalo turquoise, and on the background and the small cup I used ultramarine. My camera has a limitation. The turquoise color is not showing as strongly as the painting showing. I feel much better about this one.

I have to say I am doing a very left-brain dominated research right now. Each of the small painting I do recently is one data point for me. Song (my wife) is very concerned about me. This exercise may hurt my business (it is very scary). I have moved away from my usual style, and put on many restrictions on me deliberately. Many of you might have similar concerns just like Song does. Why are you doing this? Qiang must be crazy now. Well, my explanation is: what I am doing now just like a person want to learn ice skating. I know how to walk, but I deliberately put on those weird shoes with blades underneath. Now I can not walk. I even don't know how to stand. I have to start with baby steps. That is the hard time I am giving to myself now, because I know I will have more freedom in the future.

"The color of blue"

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I think I am giving myself a hard time. I force myself not to use red and orange colors for while, I want to see if I still can paint good paintings. My newly developed color analyzing tool has shown some use for me. The color scheme of the this one is majorly analogous and slightly complementary. The center of focus is obvious. The blue does stand out, but not strong enough. Now I need your help: how can I make this color scheme more exciting? Oh! I just got a thought, I am going to do a Daily Paintworks Challenge, so you can show me a couple of things. See you on DPW.

" At the hillside"

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I have been doing a serious study on color harmony for a week. It is one of most important topic in graphic design. In this painting I used the analogous color scheme. I am trying to develop a tool on my computer to analyze the color design of any arbitrary painting: I run a filter to get a simplified version of the original image (to mimic the effect of squinting). Then I sampled a set of colors and get  their corresponding hue, chroma, value figures. Then I map those colors on the color wheel, and the grey scale. From the distribution of the colors, I can know the painting's main color, color scheme, color dominance, value dominance, and value range. With this method, I can quantitatively understand the design of any artists including myself. Please see an example of my analysis. In the future, I will develop an app, you may put on iPhone or iPad. If you know someone doing the similar thing, please let me know. I might have reinvented the wheel.

"Green Go Red Stop"

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I am painting again. The time between this one and my last painting was about a week, so I am not qualified as an daily painter if I keep doing this. I did a lot of thinking lately. A couple of years ago, I don't think too much when I paint. "JUST DO IT" was my spirit. But nowadays, my art has reach to a bottle neck. I saw problems in my paintings. I can't stand when I see some of my old work. I am learning proactively, and feel overwhelmed. I must control my desire, and reluctantly pause something I really want to do (like figure drawing and painting). Now in still life, I have decided to do high key and colorful small paintings, and my dark background paintings for only large paintings. I also start to put away some of my general principles like "painting the light, not the object", and "use large area muted color to make the color at the focal point sing". I am working more on graphic design concepts, which I don't know enough about. I am trying new approaches, even approaches I don't have strong believe in. My today's painting is not my usual style. Someone may think I am going backward. No matter what, it is just an experiment.

"More thought about teaching art to children"

I did two children's art classes yesterday. This image is a drawing done by my son Jonathan (15 years old). Since my post of last week talking about teaching art to children, I have received many artists friends' comments and emails. Many of them provided me information of website links of art teaching projects. I want to thank all of you for supporting me and help me out. I have been googling and try to find appropriate projects that I can use to beef-up my curriculum. I am sorry to say I have rejected most of them from the Internet and ended up creating most of the projects by myself. Personally, I feel the current art education has over emphasized too much the importance of the Impressionism and the modern trend. So many projects online try to teach kids how Van Gogh and Warhol paints. I have not seen any project teaches how Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Bouguereau, and Sargent paints. For those artists, art education can only talk about them as a part of history lessons. I really believe this kind of representation art is teachable if the teacher arrange the projects properly. Those are the projects I would like to involve into my curriculum. I understood that most of children love to draw during their kindergarten, elementary, and part of the middle school. However most children conclude they can not draw when they are around 12 years or older. The reason is they see more and more around them, but feel frustrated with their art skills. So most people give it up. As a matter of fact, that is exactly the time, art teacher can really help.  I am happy to see many of my young students making progress.

You haven't seen much of my painting lately. Well there are many thing to talk about that. I will get back to you soon.

“Autumn Sweet"

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This week I was called back by my previous engineering company to work on a technical project. So I tried the old routine I had when I was working full time, i.e. working in the day and painting in the evening. So I painted this small painting last night, but I felt very different then before. Instead of concentrating on creating art, I was fighting to myself to keep going. I was so tired. My energy level was significantly lower then before. At many points, I almost gave it up. I just wanted to go to bed. I reluctant to accept that I am no longer a young man any more. To many of you my friends, I have no right complaining about aging. But I understood now that I am confronting the challenge of life itself. Oh boy! Getting old is not for sissies!

"Artists for our future"

I don't have a painting to show you, but I want to share what I am doing for this a couple of days. I have not mentioned much in my blog that I have art classes in my house, most of the students are children from 5 to 16 years old. In order to teach kids art properly, I did a lot of search on the Internet, but I was very disappointed to find out that there is almost nothing I can use to guide children to gain hands-on skills and knowledge about art. I asked some of my young friends in both elementary and high schools if they have art classes in school and what they have learned. They said they do have art, but they hardly learned anything. It is a sad reality that art education, in America as well as in China, schools only teach how to talk about art, not how to do it. I feel sorry to our kids, and I will try my best to help them.

I have some workshop openings

Finally the Texas heat is coming down. The cool autumn is coming. I will be busy teaching in this beautiful season. I have arranged quite a few workshops. some of them are quite full, but I still have a few opening for two workshops. One will be in Wethersfield Connecticut organized by Wethersfield Academy of Arts on October 24 -26. If you are in New England, or want to go there in this colorful foliage season, please contact Betty Standish to register. Another workshop will be at Magnolia near Houston Texas organized by ARLC on November 9 - 11. Please contact Marty Hatcher to sign up. I am looking forward to sharing my art with you. The photo I posted here was at Newport Rhode Island. I was doing my demo painting. My workshops do fill quickly. I wish you good luck.

"Demo at Jacksonville 2012 2" --- Sold

The workshop at Jacksonville is over now, and I am on my way back to Austin. I feel so blessed, and very grateful to so many people supporting my art. I hope I did not wear out too much of my workshop artists those three days. The information was overwhelming. Please make sure you review the notes and practice regularly. You will see the progress for sure.

"Demo at Jacksonville 2012 1" --- Sold

I am in Jacksonville FL now. This is what I did yesterday on my workshop. I want to thank Eileen Corse for putting this workshop together, and thank all artists from all over. This is my second trip to Florida this year. Travel has become a normal part of my life now. Hurricane Isaac is still pour down a lot of rain here. Yesterday was a busy day for me. Besides the workshop during the day, I did also a quick portrait for one of the artists. Now I am forming this quick blog post before my class starts for the second day.

"Peaceful"

It looks that my calligraphy/stilllife painting works well in small format (5x7). Now I want paint a little larger. I did this 9x12 yesterday. The character in this painting means "peaceful". Many Chinese characters can be decomposed into simpler characters, just like some English words have "prefix and suffix". For this one, the upper part means "a house" and the lower part means "woman". So "a woman in a house" means "peaceful". I guess the better interpretation should be: if you are in a family, you will have a peaceful life. In our modern life, traditional family life is out of fashion. We emphasize more on individuals. Maybe that is the reason we don't have much peace nowadays.

"On My Kitchen Counter" --- Sold

After my last post, I have received quite a few friends' comments and emails. Thank you so much. Your words warm my heart. AAU and figurative painting are dreams coming true to me. I had wonderful times, and gained useful skills and knowledges. However, I have also realized that I can't solve some of the problems in two hours, putting something down maybe harder than picking something up. But I need to be rational and practical. I really need to have my left brain cells kick in, and treat each of my paintings as a scientific project.

I have a workshop coming up soon. So I did this 9"x12" to warm up. I feel a little rusty and need some force to get the momentum going. I didn't give too much composition thought on this one. After my breakfast yesterday, I simply move our family fruit plate to my studio. I have vague ideas in my mind. From my still life with Chinese characters studies, I know I want to work on depicting abundance of things. I am going decrease the gap between still life and landscape paintings.

"Head Study 4 at AAU"

I have not painted for several days. To keep my blog going, I post a painting I did before. This head study I did at AAU. All my AAU paintings are 12" x 16" or larger. I can't sell them as my small still life studies. I really don't know how to market them. If you are interested in them, please contact me.

I didn't paint is because I am having a mental problem. I was like a drug addict with an obsession, I was so into figure drawing and couldn't stop doing it. You may have noticed if you read my previous post. It was not that I was so indulged into what I did, but I just couldn't stand the problems I had seen in my figure work. I thought I could fix that problem in two hours. However, the hours turned into days, and days became weeks, ... I was like a desperate gambler in front a slot machine, hoping the next quarter I put in it will bring me a good fortune. I was so frustrated. I ignore painting, ignore I have a business to run, ignore my family and I need to eat.  I need a life coach or a rehab to fix me up. Boy! I never thought that learning can be so harmful.

Now I force myself putting down my pencils (similar to a smoker putting down the cigarette). I understood (at least theoretically) that craving is a universal disease. It is the source of all suffering.

"Writing the Flower" --- Sold

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The character in my today's painting means "flower". It is in the "Cao" style of the calligraphy. This kind of writing has became a pure art form and it is so much deviated from everyday writing. I painted a rose to go with it.

These a couple of weeks after I came back from San Francisco, I spent most of my time trying to improve my figure work. On the foundation I established at AAU I worked on anatomy and human structure seriously, practiced with oil and charcoal. I am really trying to bring my figure work into a level so I can feel comfortable to show my figure paintings to the public. However, I have not reached the goal I want. The only conclusion I got so far is that the learning curve of the figure painting is MUCH longer than I thought. Keep improving is my only choice. Many people wrote to me: "Qiang, you are too hard on yourself, and you figure work is good enough". Well, to be honest with you, I don't think so.

You may have this kind of experience: you joined a local life drawing group, drawing (or painting) figure every week. Many years have passed, but you still doing almost the same, Hardly can tell the difference of the work of yesterday and of two years ago. One of the artist in the same group comes to you and told you that he has been drawing with the group for 35 years, but you look at his work. You see immediately what is wrong. The hand is too large, and the shoulder is not right. Even a 3-year old can see that. Then you take workshops from top notch artists, but very soon after, you will draw or paint the same way as before.... What I want to say here is: there is big problem of art practice, and there is a big problem of art learning. I also want to say: all of those problems are solvable, and it does not do anything with if we are talented or not.

“Sweet Moment" --- Sold

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I keep exploring the ways to involve the Chinese characters into my still life more naturally. Using a plate is not a bad idea.  The character in my today's painting means "sweet". So I painted whole bunch of grapes with it. As a matter of fact, painting abundance of something has been one of my goals in painting, which I have not fully achieved yet. I worked on leaves before, but I think I am not there yet. That is why I don't paint much landscapes. I can't handle so many leaves, rocks, clouds, and so on. I  really admire artists who can paint warehouses, libraries, and cityscapes. I can paint grapes in clusters ok, so I will be there after more practices.

"Simply Sweet" --- Sold

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Today I am working on a figurative project, one of those requires many days to finish. I think Zhaoming at AAU has opened a can of worms. He made me aware that so many things I don't know. He told us: when you paint a figure, you painting 80% from what you KNOW, and 20% from what you SEE. Human form is so subtle, underneath the smooth skin there is so much going on. For a still life painter like me, I paint almost 100% from what I SEE. That is why I am so slow when I paint a figure. I can get the job done from meticulously measuring and comparing without knowing enough human structure. That is a very inefficient way. Now I am work really hard to KNOW the bones and muscles.

Having talked about figure, Let's come back to still lives. The painting I posted today was done when I was at AAU. One day I was very tired of figure painting, I grabbed some props in the storage, and did this small painting. The calligraphy on the sake bottle gives me the idea of involving Chinese characters  into my paintings.

“Pictorial Presentation" --- Sold

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You have witnessed the evolution of my still life painting with Chinese characters. I feel satisfied with my today's painting. The character and the still life setup are combined more naturally. The character in this painting means "a picture". So I put it in a format of a painting scroll. I feel happy about the subtle value and color changes in the background. Even this painting is only 5" x 7", but it gives the impression of a large painting. As a matter of fact, I will do some large paintings with this scheme. With my recent painting practice, I feel I have gained more freedom. Now I can go beyond alla prima, and I am not restricted by the physical setups in my shadow box. I like to create a mood. I like David Leffel's work. Every one of his painting shows a mood. I want to be there too.

"Rhythm of the Shadow" --- Sold

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The character in my today's painting means "Shadow". I enjoyed painting the circular shadow casted on the apple. I have been thinking about this new approach of still life painting. There are many possibilities waiting for me to explore. Currently, I keep the design simple, so I can concentrate on the effect of background colors. The background of the today's painting is color I use very often: ultramarine blue plus cadmium orange.

"Let it be Color" --- Sold

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I kind of like my recent still life by adding a Chinese character. So I want to explore this approach even more. The character in my today's painting means "color". A plateful of peppers with various colors matches this meaning. This new approach makes me pay more attentions to the execution methodology  of a painting, which I don't know much about. When I did my "light" painting, I really had a hard time painting wet-on-wet for the character and background. The character needs high accuracy to maintain its calligraphic beauty and the background needs to be uniform. So wet-on-wet is not a good way to do it. For today's painting, I used acrylic for the background. It dried about 30 minutes, then I painted the character on top. I also learned from doing this painting that dark colors needs a relatively large area to show its value. I used burnt umber plus a touch of white for the background. Its value is around "3" in a 10 scale value range. When I started, it looks black to me in contrast to the white painting board. After I covered the board and wrote the character on it. The background looked significantly lighter. It seemed I got my pupils dilated. On this background, my colors for the peppers are so bright. I used almost all out-of-tube colors for them. This painting is an eye opener for me, literally.

"Santa in August"

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My AAU training is over, but I don't want my painting figure and portrait to cool down. I got my first opportunity last night. I went to our local Gemini Art School and painted this wonderful model. He came with his shining bike. His white beard made him an ideal Santa Claus. I was so happy seeing several my old painting buddies and meet a couple of new friends.

“Let it be Light" --- Sold

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I have been back to Austin for several days. Two months of AAU and life in San Francisco have enriched my artistic ideas. I have been thinking constantly what I should do next. Should I continue on figurative and portraiture, or keep doing my still lives? Should I do large or go small? .... and many more questions. I felt I have arrived on a top of one mountain. Now I see whole range of mountains in front of me. I am in ow with the grand view in front of me, and also lost the track where I should go next.

Today I decided to do a still life, but it is deviated from that I used to do. I want to include a Chinese character into my painting so both East and West culture can go together. The character in my today's painting means "Light", written in the "Kai" style of Chinese calligraphy. Light is the only thing I paint. Light is also my research field when I was an engineer. Many people wonder how come I like both art and physics, which are totally opposite. But the fact is that I only work on Light, it doesn't matter the light is presented with oil pigments or mathematic equations.  In the Bible, Light is the first thing God created. So let it be Light. Hope the Light is showing in my paintings, and yours too.

"Almost Academically Trained"

Today I want share a photo of me painting at the Fine Art Studio of AAU, and document this extremely significant summer. The photo was taken by an AAU professor Oliver Sin. I almost look like an academically trained artist. I really like this studio. Many years ago, this place was a parking garage. It is very spacious with large north light windows. I like its primitive and industrial look. The floor is full of paint stains. We throw our dirty paper towels directly on the floor, and we don't use trash cans or bags. The air is full of oder of turps and other media. However, Zhaoming has created most of his marvelous figuratives here with dramatic lighting and delicate skin tones. The location was two blocks away from the famous Fisherman's Wharf. The cable cars are passing right under those large windows, full of tourists enjoying the beauty of SF been done many many years ago. I feel I am also a tourist, but the difference is that I am inside the building, enjoying the beauty being created right at this very moment.

"AAU Figure Painting Final Project (Day 5)"

Today is my last day at AAU. The summer semester is over. I have learned a lot from Zhaoming in this short seven and half weeks. I really enjoyed this short semester. I made quite a few new friends. I start to miss them already. Now my dream have come true. You will will see more of my figure and portrait work in the future. My today's image is my final project after 5 days of hard work. I don't know if I call it finished, but it is a major milestone on my art journey. Now I can include figure painting in my portfolio. I  have enjoyed San Francisco very much I wish I had more time blogging what I experienced and saw in this beautiful city. I will be back to Texas this Friday. I can't wait to see Song and Jonathan. Thank you for monitoring my art learning process, and I will keep you posted for my future activities.

"AAU Figure Painting 5 (Day 4)"

It was Day 4 on this painting. I did the hand pretty much from my imagination, and spent sometime on the background and the drapery. I don't think I will do the face so to keep the painting semi abstract. I have exhausted what I can do on this painting. I will see what Zhaoming wants me to do on Day  5.

"AAU Figure Painting Final Project (Day 3)"

I never thought that painting a large painting takes so much time and energy. I am still moving but very tired. I want to apologize to many people who expecting my emails dealing with future workshop arrangement and other art business issues. Please give me some time and I will write to you. I want to thank all the friend commented on my recent figure work.

This image is my final project on day 3. I have learned a hard lesson. It is very hard to add a head after you have painted the body first. I have to re-do the face a least three time trying to match the body. I have measured the face with very very very high precision. If you draw or paint figures, you may have the experience that if you do the head first and body second, very often you will find that the location of the feet vary in a very large range. If you are not careful, the feet can go off the page very easily. On the other hand if you painted body first, you will see that a tiny movement on the eyes or nose will cause figure going out of proportion. Anyway, the painting is progressing ok so far. I will try my best to finish it this weekend.

"AAU Figure Painting 5 (Day 3)"

This is my 3rd day on this figure painting from life. I did more colors and details, but I don't see much of progress. I have two more days to go on this project. To be honest with you, I don't feel very enthusiastic about the model. I wish I were Lucian Freud. But I am not. I still try to find beauty and share it with you. Well this one is really a challenge to me. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.