Multiple attempt

November 29, 2017 in Principles and Value

This past weekend I was painting a figure painting. Haven't done figure painting for quite a while, it wasn't surprising that my first attempt wasn't up to the standard(my standard). I knew I can do better so I decided to paint it again. The 2nd attempt (the one you are seeing above) turns out much better. I was able to plan my painting and executed it much better than the first one.

I've done this quite a bit. When painting watercolor, a few wrong decisions and solutions can ruin a painting. Since there is no "undo" button in watercolor. Sometime the next best thing you can do is to start over. This can be a mental roadblock for some people. People may think all the time they spent on the unsuccessful painting is all wasted. But there is no wasted time when you did a bad painting. You gain valuable experience and you learned from your mistake! Even a seasoned NBA player cannot expect to score every time when they shoot, so neither shall we.

Yes, it can be frustrated to see your fail attempts and wondering if you can do it better next time. When you set your self up to that dreadful empty white paper again, you may have to conjure up all your courage and faith to start the process over again. However, that's part of the learning process and journey to become a better artist!

Do you have a good subject that you wanted to turn into a painting only end up with a fail attempt? Maybe it's time to give it another go. You might be regretful for not giving it your best shot!

New Painting Demo

If you haven't, go check out my new painting video of one of my favorite painting! This is another longer painting demo video that I haven't done for quite a while. Hope you enjoy it!

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.