Sunrise at Dorgali Nuroro Cafe

This is for Virtual Paintout Oct 2011 challenge, Sardinia. It's oil on 12x16 canvas panel.

This is my second submission to the challenge, and this one is definitely not the easiest to do. At first, I was attracted to the morning light at this reference photo (ref). I wanted to try to paint the cool morning light, with the sun ray spilling over from the top of the mountain. I thought it would be a nice atmospheric theme to do.

Sunlight and the ocean were the easiest part. The hardest part was to decide what to actually include on the bottom right hand side of the painting. Not the easiest in terms of the composition. In fact I had sat on this for over a week going back and forth on what to include what not to. I was gonna include the lady, but at the end I just couldn't get her to look right or put her in the right place in the painting, so I painted her out. Now this is the last day for the submission, and I'm running out of time, so I've just included a hint of a table of morning diners, couple of man holes to break up the boring road. I'm sure if I keep staring at this painting, the composition will change yet again, but I have to stop somewhere and it might as well be now, and to move on to other paintings. The main colors are lemon yellow, white, Paynes grey, cobalt blue, ultramarine violet, van Dyke brown, etc.

Cliff at Dorgali Nuoro

This is for October 2011 Virtual Paintout, Sardinia Italy challenge. It's oil on 12x16 canvas panel.

Sardinia is a beautiful place from traveling virtually via Google Maps. This reference photo caught my eyes (ref) because of its contrast between light and shadow, and it also reminded me of some of Monet's cliff paintings, such as his Cliffs at Etretat and Cliff near Fecamp. I really admired Monet's use of color, so brilliant, and all the colors work so perfectly together. So I decided I would give this photo a try, using (well, at least my attempt at) Monet like style and color for this particular scene.

The sunny portions were based on cadmium yellow and orange, while the shadow portion is a combination of ultramarine violet, cobalt, violet grey. There were many other colors in there, such as yellow orchre, sap green, terra rosa, etc. At the end I painted in a sail boat in the far distance to give more interest on the right hand side of the canvas and also some sense of scale to the cliff.

A Bowl of Candies

This is for Rookie Painter, October 2011 challenge. It's oil on 10x10 canvas panel.

These candies with candy wrappers are actually pretty hard to paint. (ref) It calls for lots of simplification as it is impossible to capture every single crinkle and crease of the candies wrappers. The colors I've used are relatively bright: vermilion, cadmium orange, Indian yellow, cadmium yellow, Gamblin's radiant red, burnt umber, burnt sienna, alizarin, ultramarine violet, cobalt blue, and white.

French Waitress

This is for A Day Not Wasted Sept 2011 challenge, French Waitress. It's oil on 6x8 canvas panel.

When I saw the original photo (ref) , I thought there were two ways to approach this painting. One is a pure portrait of the girl, minus everything else, while the other option is to take the whole scene but selecting elements in the pictures to come up with an over composition. I chose the latter since there were elements in the reference picture that were interesting.

I first got rid of all the noise on the wall - magazines and magazine racks - too busy, and instead I painted a solid wall. The woman on the left I thought was interesting since she helped to show there was a secondary light source, also her curve broke up with the wall's straight lines. I also got rid of the bricks outside the front window, again too busy I thought. I kept a letter and a hint of people outside. Originally I was going to stop there. However, the painting looked flat and lacking in depth. So at the end, I decided to add in the blurry foreground outline of a person and the two water goblets. At this point, I had to stop since there were plenty of details for this little 6x8 painting!

Once Upon a Time

This is for September 2011 Daily Paintworks, The Fall's challenge. It's oil on 12x16 canvas panel.

This DPW challenge suggested to first tone the canvas with a bright color, and then to let peeps of this bright color show through a fall themed painting. This DPW challenge was again something new I really wanted to try. So I looked through my old photos since Hong Kong, where we live now, doesn't really offer any fall colors like those back in the northeastern US. I found this picture when we visited the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park New York along the Hudson Valley. My older son was only a little baby then and was fascinated by the brightly colored dried leaves on the lawn at the Mansion.

To tone the canvas, I used a mixture of red oxide and yellow orchre acrylic paint. Once the acrylic dried, I used oil paint and a size 10 brush to block in basic color blocks for the trees, sky and lawn, leaving holes with the underlying color showing through. Then I went in with smaller brushes to paint in the baby and added in more bright highlights. The main colors included sap green, cadmium yellow, cadmium orange, cadmium red, mars yellow, ultramarine violet and yellow orchre.

Paris Road Bridge - New Orleans

This is my second submission to the Sept 2011 Virtual Paintout New Orleans challenge. It's oil on 12x16 canvas panel.

I have been doing some research on Ralston Crawford paintings lately since a commissioned work I'm working on is of Precisionist style with deep perspective, and Ralston Crawford is one of the better known artists of that style.

While I was virtually traveling New Orleans in Google Maps, I came upon this bridge at Paris Road. There's one view (ref) that reminded me so much of Ralston Crawford's White Stone Bridge and with the same type of lighting from the right. So even though I've already submitted to this month's VP, I decided I had to try to paint this Paris Road Bridge Precisionist style.

I used the long deep perspective that was also used in the White Stone Bridge painting. The bridge structure was no easy feat, and I had to simplify the bridge a lot. I found painting long straight lines with oil very hard to do. I sketched in the basic shapes with a ruler, and then painted all the lines in oil basically free handed, and boy was this more tedious than painting the peonies petal by petal earlier this month! Color scheme was very simple, blue, white and grey plus a touch cadmium yellow and orange. Finally I added some wispy clouds with a fan brush to help draw the eyes up even more.

Three Onions on Chopping Block

This is for Rookie Painter Sept 2011 challenge, Three Onions. It's oil on 10x12 canvas panel.

I thought the original reference photo was fine, so I didn't alter too much from the original. (ref) I kept the color mostly in the same family. For the onions, they were mainly cadmium orange, burnt sienna, mars yellow, cadmium yellow, raw sienna, raw umber, ultramarine violet, cadmium red, coral, and white. Chopping block was white plus raw sienna, plus all the left over colors from the onions, while the background is Gamblin's radiant violet plus white.