Portrait of Richard - SOLD

I am teaching a graduate school online painting class this semester, here is a "exercise" I did for the class over the weekend.

I have not done this for long time, and this is the first time I paint the "exercise" from a photo reference. A little too tight, but not too bad for a demo :)

Summer head study 7

I did this study on Monday and just no time to upload it because I was busy in paint my house. Yes, my house, not my canvas. My wife wanted to find guys to paint it, but I bravely said: (I hope I didn’t say that) “I can do this because I can paint on the canvas so the wall.” Then I spent 3 days to finish this job, no idea needed here but lot of labor.

Today, I want to talk a little bit about my painting philosophy, hope it’s not too boring.

I never talked to anybody before but I find that my painting philosophy is from Chinese philosophy Dao. I don’t want to talk about Dao here, but it dose apply to everything in this world.

When I paint a painting, I will think about the shape (big and small), the value (dark and light), the color temperature (warm and cool), the texture (thin and thick), and the edge (hard and soft). That’s all come from nature, all belong to “Yin and Yang” which is Dao’s theory.

Dao talked about keep the balance of Yin and Yang. A good artist knows how to balance the Yin Yang too. I heard a chef said that add a little salt if you want your food sweeter. Same thing when I paint something, I may need something small if I want to paint something big; I will use dark if I want to show something very light; I may need to use some purple around if I feel my yellow looks not yellow enough; I may need to paint some part just by wash if I want to represent some thick texture. So in a painting, big supports small, small supports big, warm supports cool, cool supports warm and so on… this is nature.

Dao also talked about the nature, and I believe that too. I think my idea should from the nature; my paint technique should follow the nature because everything is from the nature. Two years ago, my friend Qiang Huang visited me when I just restarted paint, and we talked about need the power for our painting and we couldn’t get the answer, but now I think I found the answer – learn from the nature.

Impression of Shuhe old town

This is the only painting I did from my trip to China, more expressive than the painting I posted before.

Girl

Available at Silvana Gallery.

I was try to catch some thing form her eyes…

White beard - White Beard

by Silvana Gallery.

A little one I did this week, from live, hope you like it.

Young girl