The past Saturday was my wife's birthday. Being an artist gives me the privilege to express my feeling for her by painting her. I still remember painting her for the first time in oil back in 2004 when we were still dating. I never get tire of painting her. It gets easier since I am very familiar with the structure of her face and what makes her face. However I do find myself venture out to a new territory when it comes to painting a very familiar subject such as my wife. The confidence I have when painting her helps me to be a bit more bold and give her more character and paint her with less information.
Read MoreIf you fail to plan, you are planning to fail
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.
Read MoreLarge scale landscape painting demo
This week I am just going to share my new painting video. This video shows the process of how I paint a large scale landscape. One of the key is to focus on deliver the scale and the depth. What you want to do is to re-create this vast view that you get when you are on the top of a mountain. You simply can't see every detail in it nor do you need to. I hope you enjoy the video =)
Read MoreUnderstand why before learning how
There's a lot of "know how" in today's world. We are fortunate to be in a society that so much information are available for us! You can learn so much by just spending an hour on YouTube if you know where to look. And the reason for so many "how to" videos on the internet is because people want to get the result. When I am in a restaurant and just ate something tasty. I usually start wondering how did they cook it. Same thing as painting. When people see a beautiful painting, one of the first few question will usually be "how does he/she paint that?" It is important to learn how, the how is the action and process that can yield the result that you are looking for. But that's not the whole story. To ask and wonder about "why" is equal, if not more important than "how".
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