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What a weekend! I just wrapped up the Bemis Art Show. I have met some really interesting artists during the show. I learnd so much from them.
I am absolutely exhausted from the whole show. Finally, I can share my show! I am really looking forward to my July show!
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Life is so very very busy for me right now. Bemis Art Show is finally around the corner. It is happening this weekend 4/28 and 4/29. I am scheduled to hang at 6pm today at the building. It feels like a sleepless week for me.
There are so much involved in a show, I cannot hardly believe it. For those of you that are curious in how much there is all involved, here is a list of things you should be thinking about. And take last 1-2 day off just to prepare for the show.
1. Get your website up and running.
2. Think about advertising about your event. Design flyers (sometimes group show has flyer printed for you.)
3. Get your contact card ready, if you don't have it ready.
4. Get on the social media to spread your words.
5. Prepare artist Bio and Statement
6. Measure your pieces and get frames for them. If you decide to frame it yourself, budget at least 2 days to do it. And order ahead of time, like at least 1 week.
7. Look at the place for visual layout and decide how you are going to hang them. There are policy for each place about hanging and damage you do to the wall, make sure you find it out first.
8. Get your pieces photographed. Some of your piece will sell during the show and you would want to preserve the digital image of it for portfolio purpose.
9. Get foam board to cut description for each piece you are going to show.
10. Get hanging hardware that fits your piece size. And you need another 3 hours to assemble them or more depending how many pieces you have.
Lots to do still. And looking forward to the show.
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I am taking today off work to go to SAM's Monday Member day. The Gauguin show is on SAM until April 29th. I wanted to go to Museum and copy master copies for ages. Due to busy schedule at work, it is nearly impossible to make it there on weekdays. The Monday Member day suppose has less visitors. I have been to SAM 5 times already to look at the show. Each time I wish I could come on weekday and draw. This is my last chance to do it. So I just did it today.
I spend 4 hours drawing with Carbothelo Pastel pencils as SAM only allow dry media such as pastel, color pencil or charcoal. I blocked in the shapes and color in a very light fashion, then work in layers to re-emphasize each component. I don't use pastel very often, but everytime I do, I loved it. I mixed and cross cut the lines to mix the color I like. I also observed so much from Gauguin. His use of color and edges are awesome, and by copying that, I really learned a lot today.
Here is the copy. Enjoy!
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I started my weekend classes with Michael Lane, an instructor at Gage Academy currently. I signed up for two classes back to back on Saturdays for 9 weeks. The first class is designed for all levels and focuses on quick sketches. I am not going to post much of the pictures here as they are likely not worth sharing right now from that class. We did 20 mins sketches in the class both from the sculpture head as well as from the model during the class. This is my first time doing direct painting on canvas from live model. It was somewhat liberating and challenging. Michael's teach emphasis on shape of values and midtone rendering with shadow ascend and lights. He is an impressive portrait artist. His edges are very soft in his sketch paintings.
Second class is what I am going to go into more details about here. If you remembered, I have attended Juliette Artistides workshop in Gage earlier this year on drawing. To be fair I have never attended her painting class. Her method really emphasis on taking your time geting the measuring, and use triangulation and angles to get your likeness of the figure down. A typical student in her Atelier will take possibly 70 hours on a drawing. Her method starts with line drawing to get the figure likeness and movement, then it is about defining core shadow shapes, then rendering. A very traditional method used by Rafael and Leonardo Da Vinci.
I then went to a reserved studio and spend 15 hours rendering a piece of drawing to really practice what I learnd in Juliette's workshop. Following is steps that I took to finish the drawing in that manner. (Each session is about 3 hours.)
Session 1: Block in general form and core shadow. At this stage, the emphasis on measuring and sighting. (2.5 hours) It should be very light to allow corrections.
Session 2: Start working on Core shadow. I have worked on rendering the core shadow near her hip because I decided that is my focal point.
Session 3: Blocking the face and work on the core shadow more. I filled in some more details on face but they are not final. I worked more to render the focal point and I did some rendering on the arm and her hair.
Session 4: Working on the face more. I was a bit frustrated in this session, as I worked very hard on her face, but had a difficult time.
Session 5: Finish. I finished rendering her feet, corrected her face and blocked in the background. I had to rush a bit, since I wanted to leave the rest 5 out of 10 sessions to paint.
Then I transfered the drawing on my canvas and painted for another 20 hours. You can see the finished painting at my Bemis Art show coming up on April 28/29th. I will be posting more process on my painting later on this one.
In second class of Michael, we are going to work on one pose of model for 9 weeks to essentially finish what I have done for the above reserved studio. I will be posting on my progress in that class here. Michael's way of drawing is a tonist approach. He emphases on using value to block in the major shapes then model the value more precisely as you go. I found this method to be very fast to achieve something which is useful for painting. As you draw, you are constantly thinking about shapes and how you blocking in when you paint.
I was really excited as the model posed. Richard, the model, wore all black outfit. T-shirt, jeans and boots. He had his hair tucked back in a bun. His face is very structured. His look from first glance is a hard look, however, his mannerism gives away a touch of softness and kind. As soon as he strike a pose, he reminds of Steven Assael's painting of gothic figures. Hard yet has a tenderness. I am really excited to work on this project. From where I stand, he looks like he is directly staring at me. I think the approach I want to take is a hard gaze directly looking at the viewer.
Here is what I got after first session which is about 2 hours. I blocked in shape first in mid tone, then work on the shadow, then took erasel and finger to achieve the light. There are still some anatomy issues (not happy with the eyes), which I didn't have time to correct. I will do that next session.
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I am reviving this site. I have been terribly busy pursuing my art since I last posted a year ago. I think I am going to try to keep this as much updated as possible. I read about Sadie Valeri's blog. It inspired me so much so that I decided to pick up my blogging again. I have been so mentally blocked by creating a website that is good looking enough. I finally realized it is the content that is interesting and I should just do it.
Couple of good news for me over the past year. I felt that I have grew a lot in my art quest. Of course, somedays I wake up and still feel sad that I cannot devote my full time on my art and am not progressing as fast as I want to. I think every artist can relate to me on that.
First, I have attended Juliette Aristides' 1 week drawing workshop at Gage Academy. I will dig more deep into what I learnd in a later post. In summary, it transformed my drawing from good to almost great. Juliette is such a calm and patient teacher. Her approach is realism and acadamic. I used to draw for 3 hours and be done with my drawings. While others looked at my drawing and saying woo and ahh, I was always not too happy with it. I felt there are so much more details I can render, but the drawing speak to me as done, and I don't know how. After her class, I can now work on drawings for 15-30 hours. Again, I will go into more details about her workshop in a upcoming post, as I am right now literately sitting on the bed and typing. (ready for bed)
I recently am plannig for a show in Edmonds, WA with Diane Reincke, my teacher. I have been informed by her about the oppotunity for a showing for Third Thursday Edmonds art walk. It is at a place across from a gallery. I have been really busy trying to come up with pieces for that show ever since December. My progress is very slow. But I wanted to paint a different style for each of the piece that I show there. I planned 5 pieces, but I still have two more pieces that I want. I think I have enough pieces to fill the wall, but I wanted to show more. Each piece is done in a different style ranging from mordern to impressionistic to classical. I am not going to let out too much detail yet until after the show. Come and check it out.
I have also won a place in a local juried show called Bemis Art Spring show which will be showing on April 28/29 weekend at Bemis Building in Seattle. Bemis is an art community and space share. They also host local shows. I just submitted phone picture of couple of my pieces that I have been planning for my Edmond's show, and they informed me that I was selected to show among other many artists! This is soo exciting! My first group juried show. Last week Diane stopped by and helped me laid out all the paintings and layouts for the show. I think I am ready for the show minus some details on framing etc, which is not trivial.
Things are looking good for me, but I know that I am long way from being a mature artist.
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This is the first time I worked with tri-color charcoals. I like it as a media. I can get the work very soft by blend it with a piece of paper stubble. At areas that I want to show the lines, I can just leave it as it is. I can lay color together in a cross cutting manner. This allows me to put the cool and warm color on the lady’s face.
The concept is light here. The way that the light reflects off the body in this drawing is very realistic. By adding highlights with my white charcoal, I was made very conscious about how light hits the body. It really makes me think about bone structure on human face/body, and how it contours causing light reflections.
I started by sketching in the rough composition in general shapes, then slowly fine tone the shape of the face. I then add in large block of color, then render more carefully with different colors and rubber to lighting up certain areas.
The necklace in the beginning looks very tight on the lady’s neck. This was because I used sharp lines around the pearls and very dark color for the shadow. To correct this, I removed lines around the necklaces, instead using color blocks to show the highlight on the pearl and lowlight on the shadow between the pearl. I also softened and lightened the pearl shadow. This made the pearl looks much looser on the lady’s neck and more realistic.
Here is a look at the finished picture.
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I am an artist, who is currently trying to focus on becoming more serious about my art. This is a long journey I would like to share with you for the next several years.
Let me introduce myself a bit here first. I always liked drawing when I was a kid. Growing up in China, under the strict academy studies, I was unable to explore my artistic interests fully. However, through my childhood, I did have regular art classes twice a week in middle school. On my spare time, I would copy or create animation drawings. I worked mainly in ink, pencil and watercolor.
Fast forward, 2 years ago, I rediscovered my passion through attending an oil painting class in experimental college. There I met my current oil painting teacher, Diane. I have been going to her on and off once a week since then. I really loved oil as a media. Recently, I started to sale my work to friends and through art shops.
Meanwhile, I have grown more and more unsatisfied with the amount of time I spent on my art development. I have a strong desire to find my style and become a better artist. Remaining a hobbyist is no longer satisfying my artistic desire. I find myself etching to spend more time painting and drawing. This is when I had a serious talk with Diane, who happens to be a self-taught professional artist that masters multiple media.
She has suggested that I took my artist growth to a new level, to develop a professional portfolio, going back to the beginning and seriously invest in learning my basic skills before leap into finding my own styles. She suggested that I should expand my media and form of fine arts to 5 different categories at least. The 5 categories that I am interested in are so far:
1. watercolor
2. painting (oil or acrylic)
3. drawing
4. pastel
5. digital arts (photography included)
I am currently looking for people who can help me building knowledge around watercolor, pastel and digital arts.
This is my first week into my program. I have finished a charcoal copy of Neufforge's drawing, and started a painting copy of Frans Hals’ work.
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