Early Spring - Flowers in the Valley

Early Spring - Muir Beach

My 8"x 8" canvas came too late, so I missed Waterhouse Gallery’s Small Gems show :( I will paint something earlier and join them next year. Anyway, I did this small landscape last week, I feel 8"x 8" is an interesting size to paint.

I have good news this week, my painting “Christmas in the Park” has been accepted for 21th Annual National Juried Exhibition of Traditional Oils by OPA, wish me luck! :)

By the way, I was honored to be the judge of Boldbrush Painting Contest for last month, and it was difficult for me to eliminate so many beautiful paintings. Congratulations for all the winners!!

April Workshop at Sunnyvale Art Gallery

I am going to do a 2 day (27^th and 28^th) Workshop at Sunnyvale Art Gallery next month. If you are interested in painting portrait or clothed figure with me, please contact Sunnyvale Art Gallery as soon as possible, the spaces are limited.

By the way, the drawing Workshop in my studio last weekend was very successful, everyone did an excellent job. The only regret was that I did not get enough time to finish my drawing, so could not share it here :(

I fixed the problem on my last painting, I like it a lot now :)

Gregory - SOLD

Gregory is a great model, he never moves once he sits down. I painted him a couple of years ago from the other side because there was no open space in front of him, same thing happened again the day before yesterday, I have to put my canvas on this side of him.

I know many artists like to paint from the 3 quarter view, that’s probably the best angle to create the 3D looking, but I actually enjoy painting from the side view sometimes. I know I lost some value contrast on my canvas by painting from this angle, it will be more difficult to model the forms. But on the other hand, I got more room to play with the subtle colors. Also I need to push more on the brush works to create the interest from the model, that actually helped me to capture the feeling that I got from Gregory.

An artist friend left this question in my last posting

“Its said that edges which appear hard on squinting should be retained the way they are whereas edges taht blur on squinting must be painted soft. Its been my observation that higher the value contrast across an edge, the harder it appears on squinting and vice versa. So is it correct to conclude that edges with higher contrast must be painted as hard edges while those with lower contrast must be made softer?”

I think I agree with that if we are painting what we see, less contrast will look softer, and more contrast will look harder on edges.

But the next thing we should add is what we know to our painting. For example, in this painting, I added a few dark strokes on the top of the canvas to support his white hair; I added some light strokes under his nose and chin, some dark strokes on top of his nose and forehead to support the shapes there. Those values and colors might not be there from what I saw, I used what I needed to create what I wanted…

Furthermore, most important for an artist is expressing our feelings from our artwork, that’s why I think my paintings are my language, no matter what I paint, even just a small object.

Early Spring - Morgan Hill

An artist asked about edges in the comment of my last posting, here is a little bit of my thoughts about the edges, hope it will help.

There are many differences in degree from hard edge to edgeless. The edges are related to values, and we do have a couple of principles for applying the edges when we paint something:

Harder edge for form shadow; softer edge for cast shadow; sometimes no edge between the form shadow and cast shadow.

Apply harder edge if you want to create something closer, apply softer edge if you want to create something further.

Of Course, there are a lot more we can talk in detail about the edges. .. The values and edges are like the notes of the music, bouncing around on your canvas, good artists compose them to a beautiful music.

Leave your question in a comment if you are interested in my thought about the question, I may share in my later posting when I get a chance.

By the way, I did not like the head part of my early painting “Figure Series 12-01” on February 17’s posting, I repainted the head and reloaded the image, I think it looks better than before :)

Figure Series 12-04 - SOLD

The gesture interested me. I used wash technique for the dark part of the painting, and watercolor technique on the light part of the sofa.

Let me know if you are interested in me sharing a little bit of my thoughts about my posting, I can write a little more for the later posting...

In the Garden - SOLD

I was trying to capture the moment that something interested the beautiful girl in this painting. I like the cool reflecting light in the shade against the warm light in the back.

March Workshop at my studio

My Workshop at my studio this month will be on the 10^th and the 11^th, here is what we are going to draw – the beautiful “Giuliano Medici”.

During this two days Workshop, I will do the step by step demo and draw with other artists. Again, I think this is one of the best trainings to learn the technique concepts and improve the modeling skill before drawing or painting from model.

I may have one more spot available this month, if you are interested please contact me by email at fongweiliu@gmail.com as soon as possible.