Bailey

Bailey is one of Kellie and Paul's poodles. He's comfortably taking a break on the white carpet, which acts almost as a perfect camouflage!

I did this painting for the Gamblin Torrit Grey 2012 challenge. (ref) I got my free tube of Torrit Grey while shopping at Blicks this past summer. Torrit Grey is recycled paint gathered from Gamblin's air filtration system.  I used basically three colors: Torrit Grey, Titatium White, and Ivory Black. The ground is Torrit Grey with linseed oil. It's oil on 9x12 canvas panel.

The Mermaid

This is my second submission for Virtual Paintout, Sept 2012 Zealand challenge. It's oil on 10x10 canvas panel.

Typically, when I choose scenes for the Virtual Paintout challenges, I avoid common landmarks as I think they are a bit cliché. However, when I saw the Mermaid sculpture in Copenhagen, (ref) I decided to break my own rule since I like the back-lighting effect on the sculpture and the ocean behind.  I kept the composition relatively simple, and first painted the ground a reddish brown tone, some of which is showing through on the sculpture, the rock and the ocean.

Thinking Man Sculpture at the Marble Church

This is for Virtual Paintout September 2012 challenge, Zealand, Denmark, It's oil on 10x10 canvas panel.

The island of Zealand is quite scenic, and Copenhagen appears to be a beautiful city from my virtual travel. At the Marble Church in Copenhagen, there were many sculptures on the outside of the church, and this stone sculpture caught my eyes with his posture, which I interpreted to be a standing-thinking pose. (ref) I again chose a dark background, and painted the sculpture with a limited palette, trying to capture the different shades and tones of stone under the sun.

George at Huashan

We visited Xian, China last year, and my brother George tagged along since he happened to be in Shanghai for business. We visited the famous Terracotta Warriors in Xian, and also went outside of Xian for a scenic visit to Huashan where a famous Chinese Kung Fu novel took place.  

The view was breath taking, but there were so many tourists. I took a picture of George taking pictures, and thought it would make an interesting little painting, minus all the tourists in the background.The background mountains were done using diluted oil color wash, then the person was painted on with solid oil color. I had to shorten George's legs in the painting (sorry, G) since my canvas was limited and his feet would have been at the bottom edge of the 10x14 canvas panel had I kept his proportion.  I also kept the painting rather minimalist to give an airy feel.

Cow on Swiss Alps

This is for A Day Not Wasted, August 2012 challenge. It's oil on 10x14 canvas panel.

When I saw the challenge (ref), I really liked the cow against the Swiss Alps, the orange yellow color cow against the beautiful blue background. I first painted an orange color under-painting, traces of which I purposely left shown at the end. For the cow, I used mostly orange family colors, such as cadmium orange, burnt sienna, mars yellow, Indian yellow etc.