Bottle Collector

This is for Virtual Paintout, April 2012, Gdansk Poland challenge. It's oil on 10x12 canvas panel.

As I was virtually traveling in Poland this month, in the city of Gdansk, at least from the part I was initially seeing, it seemed all very industrial. I was having a hard time trying to figure out how to tackle all the industrial scenes, and then I came upon this man walking his dog. (ref)

What caught my eyes was not only humor in the scene, with the dog seemingly quite content with his empty water bottle, but I also liked the orange tone of the dog versus the blue tone of water and vegetation around it, plus the bald man holding a leash. Of course there was a strong contrast in light which I'm always drawn to.

I first prepared the whole canvas with ultramarine blue as a complimentary color to the dog, whose color included the orange family such as cadmium orange, burnt sienna, mars yellow etc. The rest of the painting are part of the blue or blue green family, such as cerulean, hookers green, Paynes grey etc. Cadmium yellow and white are added for the highlights.

Tiger

This is for Studio Atelier Feb 2012 tiger challenge. It's oil on 20x30 stretched canvas.

I'm a bit late in this challenge, but I couldn't pass up a good challenge photo. As the challenge said there's no drop dead deadline, I decided to take my time to work on a bigger canvas.

I wanted the tiger look even more fierce than the reference photo (ref), so I made the tiger's head straighter and looking towards the viewer, rather than slight tilting. I dropped everything else around the tiger in the background so that the focus will just be on the tiger. I also want to make the tiger to look like as if it's ready to jump out of the painting, so I made the front part higher in contrast while the back of the tiger is a bit more grey. At the end I used a very small brush to add in whiskers and fine hair detail.

Two Kettles

This is for Rookie Painter, April 2012 challenge. It's oil on 10x10 canvas panel.

This month is back to reflective kettles. The arrangements and lighting I thought were fine, so I did not alter much to the picture this time. So I basically painted as is, keeping the table top a little bit on the violet side while contrasting with the golden tone main kettle.

Young Couple on the Bridge

This is my second submission to March 2012 Virtual Paintout, St Petersburg Russia challenge. It's oil on 10x12 canvas panel.

While browsing in Google Map, I came upon this scene of a young couple on a bridge. What caught my eyes was the violet hue of the scene in contrast with the yellow sunlight hitting the leaves. (ref) I really wanted to do this because of the nice combination of color, having the cute couple there, even though a bit cliché, didn't hurt either in my view.

I first prepared my canvas with a violet acrylic base color, followed by oil color on top. I tried to limit my palette to mostly the violets, greens and yellow. The bright leaves in foreground and mid-ground provided a nice framing effect to the couple.

Lazy Afternoon in the Park

This is for Virtual Paintout, March 2012, St. Petersburg, Russia challenge. It's oil on 10x12 canvas panel.

Not really sure where to begin to search in St. Petersburg Russia, I dropped the Google yellow man on one of the small islands inside the bay, and connected via bridges. It must have been a warm sunny afternoon as there were a lot of people laying around in the park. I saw this person on the hammock, a sunbather on the lawn, and the silhouette of people deep in conversation in the background. (ref) I liked the interesting composition, with people in shade vs sun, and silhouette of people vs more 3D regular looking ones. The sunbather appeared to tanning her bare back on the lawn, and her fair skin color made a nice pop of color in the middle of the sunny green lawn.

Two Red Pears

This is for Rookie Painter, Feb 2012 challenge, Two Red Pears. It's oil on 10x10 canvas panel.

Despite of the crazy week and a half where I traveled to two different countries with one kid on a swim meet and another on a field trip, I had to do this challenge (ref). I like the simple layout and high contrast. I did this in about 3 hours of painting time while blasting Queen (I usually listen something much quieter). I prepared the canvas last night by painting the whole thing black with acrylic paint. Again, I could have tweaked and refined this even more, but I had to leave it as is since the kids came home from school and the deadline is today.

My relatively simple palette included mainly cadmium yellow, cadmium orange, burnt sienna, alizarin, burnt umber, ultramarine blue, ultramarine violet, white, yellow orchre.

Apple Kettle Book and Chain

This is for Feb 2012 Rookie Painter challenge. It's oil on 10x14 canvas panel.

There were two choices for this month's challenge (ref). The one with the blue cloth stood out to me because of the bright color contrast. I also liked the triangular set up of the still life items and the gold chain that broke up the rigidness of the other items. However, I thought the kettle against a light background made the kettle too overpowering compared to the other items. So I made the background to have similar tone and value of the kettle to make it less stand out.

As I had limited time to do this painting, with all the kids and other things I need to attend to, I did this in about four hours. I know there were things I could have tweaked, like the tea kettle handle bar, but I thought the painting as is had already expressed what I was trying to do. So I left it as is: the art of imperfection.