If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail

June 21, 2017 in Fundamental, Principles and Value

The more I paint, the more I understand the importance of planning. I argue that's probably the main difference between a successful and an unsuccessful painting. When people ask me questions like: Why does my painting looking muddy? How do I paint a loose painting? Why does the painting never turns out the way I want? I can tell the lack of planning is the major contributor of these issues.

Sometime the best thing you can do is to leave it alone

March 28, 2017 in Principles and Value, Technique

I had more than one person told me "I have no patient for watercolor". And I always find it odd because I thought that watercolor is one of the fastest medium out there. I can usually finish a painting with one sitting (about 2~3 hours). While with oil and acrylic it usually requires more time for one painting. But now I think I can understand what do people mean when they say they don't have the patient for watercolor - It's not the about the time it takes to finish the painting, it's about the time you get to work on it. Because acrylic dry very fast, you can pretty much paint right on top. And even though oil paint dry very slow, you can always lay thicker paint on top without waiting. But when you put down a wash in watercolor, you need to wait for it to dry completely in order to paint the second layer on top.

Painting speed is not a skill, it's aquired by experience

March 01, 2017 in Fundamental, Principles and Value

Quite similar to the loose style that I got quite a few emails about, painting fast is not a style nor a skill. We live in such a hurry today, and quite often we want things fast: Email over a hand written letter, people read the headline and come to conclusion instead of study deeper, we stream videos online instead of physically go to a Blockbuster and pick up a movie. Granted, many of these changes are for the better, we are able free up more time for things are more important. But many people in this generation started to weight speed more than quality.

What are we sending out to the world today?

January 18, 2017 in Principles and Value

If Love is an universal language, then art is an written form of that language. Being an artist, we have the privilege to send that language out. Everyday on the social media, people are sending out hateful, judgmental and depressing messages. It is not my position to be political, but we'd kid ourselves if we pretend this world is in peace and harmony. There are artists out there producing works that are provocative, offending, and shocking. While I do think everyone has their freedom of speech, and every artist has their right to produce the type of work they want, I want to encourage you to create works that sending out a positive message.