Three Sisters

This is a commissioned work of three sisters, Rena, Mary and Susie. It's oil on 18x24 stretched canvas.

The original photo was taken earlier this year at a family wedding in London. As the three sisters had been living in different parts of the world (Australia and Asia), it was truely a joyous occasion when all three of them were photographed together, relaxed and happy. After looking at some of my previous paintings, Rena asked me to try to capture the essence of that moment.

It took me a while looking at the photograph trying visualize in my head what the end painting might look like. (I have the habit of needing to visualize the end product in my head before I can pick up the brushes.) There were a number of technical difficulties associated with working from a candid photograph.

First of all, because of the flash light, all of the skins in the photo were a bit over exposed and too white and flat. So when I was painting, I had to deepen the shadows, and also make the skin color warmer than those in the photo while keeping the general brightness.

Also, I had to decide how much of the bodies to include. The original photo included almost the full bodies. I had to work backward to determine the amount of body to include on canvas. I wanted to place the heads above the middle line of the canvas and the faces to be big enough to be the main focus of the painting. So as I was sketching it out, the upper torsos were all I could include. Futhermore, I had to squeeze the sisters closer together due to the limited canvas width.

The original background was the banquet hall, with the wedding guests standing around, purplish lighting and round paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling. At first I thought I would just make it simple and keep the background black. However, I thought it would be too serious of a portrait background, especially with the big smiles and relatively relaxed postures. So I decided to keep the party feel, using a toned down purple and faint suggestions of round laterns with fuzzy edges so that the background would not overwhelm the portraits.

To begin painting, I first prepared the canvas with an acrylic black, including the four edges of the canvas. Once dried, I sketched in the rough outline of each person, and I painted the faces first using black and white underpainting. This is the Flemish technique I had also used before (see the Magdalena painting). I thought doing a black and white underpainting for the faces would give me a chance to fix any facial feature inaccuracies in my sketch, and also would enhance the brightness of the faces for the final product.

Getting the facial features right for one person was already hard enough, I had to make sure all three of them were accurate in terms of features and relative porportions of all three sisters. Moreover, I had to make sure also there were enough similarities among the three to convince people these were sisters. This definitely was not easy.

Once the black and white underpainting was done, I put in colors. The skin colors included Rowney flesh tint, viridian, naples yellow, violet grey, permanent rose, madder, and white. Hair included cadmium yellow, yellow orchre, ultramaine blue and violet, burnt sienna, and white. Dresses included colors such as alizarin, verimillion, ultramarine violet, viridian, compose blue, permanent green light, and magenta.

After working on it for about a month and a half, I was at a good stopping point to give the painting to Rena, especially given both of our travel schedules. I was very glad that she was very pleased with the painting. Also, in lieu of paying me anything, Rena is making a generous donation to the UNICEF. This painting is by far one of the most difficult paintings I've done to date, and I'm very glad to have been given the opportunity to do so.

Mountains and Clouds

This painting was done based on a photograph at Anastasia Art House. It's oil on 20x24 stretched canvas.

The original photograph looked a lot like Chinese brush painting, which is an ink and water based technique. I thought it would be interesting trying to use oil paint to achieve a different feel.

First, I started with the mountains, using oil paint diluted with two different mediums: turpentine and varnish. Diluted with turpentine, oil paint became thin and runny, and the runny paint created vertical edges and lines for the mountains. In fact, many of the runniness went all the way down to the bottom of the canvas. Diluted with varnish, oil paint was still runny, but less so than turpentine. So oil paint diluted with varnish was used on top of the turpentine layer, in order to give the mountains more definition, especially to deepen the edges along the top and some of the subtle valleys and rocks. The oil paint I used included sepia, olive green, viridian and cerulean blue.

After the initial mountain layer was dried, clouds were added. The clouds in the sky were warmer in color, using white plus cadmium yellow and coral. The clouds surrounding the mountains were colder and greyer, using white plus blue grey, violet grey, green grey, and grey on grey. Originally I painted the clouds using paint brushes, but I couldn't get the softness I wanted. So I used my fingers to smudge out the paint, giving it a lighter feel.

Moncks Bay Rider - New Zealand

This is for June 2011 Virtual Paintout, New Zealand Challenge. It's oil on 10x12 canvas board.

This month I was again running out of time because of the commission portrait work I was doing, also getting ready to go onto our 15 hour flight. While going through Google Map, I was drawn to yet another bicycle scene: a rider around Moncks Bay near Christ Church. (ref photo) I thought it was interesting because of the sunset light on the bike rider and its Z shape composition, and nice light and dark contrast.

The main color included compost blue, prussian blue, Paynes grey, yellow orchre, viridian, ultramarine violet, burnt umber, flesh tint, burnt sienna, orange, and cadmium yellow.

Forbidden City

This painting was done at Anastasia Art House. It's oil on 24x36 stretched canvas.

The picture is based a picture we took when we visited the Forbidden City in Beijing, China last fall. The photo was originally from the prospective of us, the tourist, looking up at these awesome buildings. In this painting, to make it less boring, I changed the perspective as being from a bird's point of view, flying towards one of the buildings. The angles of the perspectives are also skewed and a little more severe.

As the roofs took up the majority of the canvas, I created extra interest for the roofs with texture paste. Using a plastic fork, I created grooves on the paste. Texture paste was also used for some of the columns to give them a raised feel as well as some of the windows. That was a painstaking process, and took a few sessions at the Arthouse just on the texture.

Once the texture paste was dried, I painted with oil with the main color being Chinese red, vermilion, cadmium orange, chrome yellow, red brown, ultramarine violet and marine, raw and burnt umber, prussian blue, viridian and compose blue. At the end I added many details into the painting, including these little statues at the corner of the roof unique to ancient Chinese architecture, symbols on the exterior wall just under the roofs (those took a long time), as well as the gold color pattern at the top of the center building using pure gold color in acrylic.

This painting took a total of 4 months worth of sessions at Anastasia Art House. I finally had it framed, and it is hung now in my husband's office at work.

Sunflowers

This is for May 2011 Studio Atelier challenge, Sunflowers. It's oil on 20x24 stretched canvas.

I had always wanted a painting of sunflowers. So when I saw this challenge at Studio Atelier (ref), I thought I had to do the challenge. The single flower against a field of sunflowers with nice bright sunshine and blue sky makes a very nice painting. The yellow-orange colored flower is also a nice contrast to the blue sky.

I first prepared my canvas with a yellow orchre acrylic ground. The main colors included cadmium yellow, chrome yellow, cadmium orange, alizarin, madder, lemon yellow, viridian, sap green, ultramarine violet, burnt umber, yellow orchre, and compose blue for the sky. I also used sharper edges for the foreground flower, while fuzzier edges were used for the background flowers.

Morning Paper at Cap Ferrat

This is for Virtual Paintout May 2011 challenge, Cote d'Azur, France. It's oil on 10x12 canvas board.

We visited the French Riviera a few years ago and were just so charmed by the places we visited: Eze, Cap Ferrat, and Nice. So I started by looking in Eze and Cap Ferrat. I came upon this little cafe in Cap Ferrat and thought the scene reminded me of some of the paintings by Edward Hopper. I could either do mountain and ocean, or this scene, and I chose this scene. (ref photo)

I changed outdoor view to be pure harbor scene, as opposed to harbor behind the parking lot, and I also tried to lighten up the room just a tiny bit. This scene is not the easiest composition-wise especially when deciding what elements to keep and what to change. Hopefully I made this ordinary scene semi interesting.

Princess and the Flower Girl

This is for Calypso Moon Art Movement, May 2011 challenge, Royal Wedding (ref). It's oil on 10x12 canvas board.

I watched the Royal Wedding while I was painting "Beyond The Sea" (Hawaiian Sunset). and had to stop many times to stare at the TV because the wedding was just so beautifully done. So when I saw this challenge, I thought it would be nice to paint something from this wedding. Plus, I have a commissioned work I need to start soon involving some portraits, so I thought I would use this opportunity to practice my portrait skill for this challenge.

The scene I chose was from when the wedding party and the families were waving to the crowd from the balcony at Buckingham Palace. The littlest flower girl seemed to be bothered by the noise and also seemed to be bored or irritated. Kate bent down and tried to comfort her. I thought this show of kindness on Kate's part was so sweet and considerate. So I wanted to capture this "Kodak" moment with my paint and canvas. For composition purpose, I actually took two screen shots from the YouTube Royal Wedding Channel a couple of seconds apart, one with profile of the flower girl looking at Kate, and one with Kate looking at the flower girl, as the timing of the two looking at each other were actually not that perfectly timed on YouTube.

To begin painting, I applied a red oxide acrylic base to my canvas because I wanted the figures to have a warm glow. The oil colors I used included some standard portrait colors, such as Rowney flesh tint, naples yellow, cadmium orange, white, madder, alizarin, permanent rose, terre verde, burnt sienna, ultramarine violet, raw and burnt umber, and ultramarine blue as background (I don't have great photography skill, so this photo has a bit of shine in the dark blue background).