My artist friend Leslie took this photo when I was trying to do a quick watercolor sketch of the street on which our restaurant is located. We were waiting outside the restaurant which opens for dinner at 7:30pm. You can tell that I was standing painting it with my little palette in my hand.... My other artist friend Bill is watching me from behind.
One of our painting locations was Fiesole - a Florence hill town suburb. We took Bus #7 up from Piazza San Marco. At this location, I painted 3 paintings, a watercolor and an oil of the famous Two Horse Men statue in a town square, and this little painting when it was almost completely dark. A great time painting with fellow artists! Also great was the delicious dinner at the nearby restaurant afterward. Time flies by when you have a great time! By the time we got back to the hotel, it was midnight.
Here is my unfinished egg tempera painting. The subject is based on one of the sketches I did at the Getty Museum before the trip. It was painted on a board which is gessoed twice. We sanded it after first layer of gesso was applied and dried. I feel painting in egg tempera is similar to painting in watercolor although the brush can be move very smoothly on the board because of the egg tempera. However, the texture is different... and no 'bleeding' (no colors mingling) occurs than that of watercolor. It even allows you to paint thicker than watercolor but you would sacrifice the transparency for doing that..
It was so much fun but exhausting non-stop 3 weeks in Florence, Italy. We covered every square inch by foot or via bus/foot. Besides all the site trips with Dominic Cretara - a fine art professor from Calif. State University Long Beach, we had studied figure drawing and egg tempera painting including how to prepare gesso from scratch from the two Italian teachers. In addition to that, we had a some en plein air watercolor paintings at various sites in Florence. I am proud of what I have accomplished again (I was in the program in 2004.) A few pictures to share here.
After he used lines to quickly establish his horizon line, and the foregroud elements, Mr. Yim laid down his color blocks, from the darkest first, until the panel is completely covered with color blocks. Then he went in to adjust the colors, create interest, touched up the a few details.
He is using his 5x7 inch paint box and completed this painting in about an hour.
Here is the almost finished version of this painting.
If you squint your eyes to look at this painting, you know how great this little study is!
Not sure if you have heard about this book "A Tale of Small Paintings" by Mau-kun Yim. I did and have been inspired by it so much. That's why I made a trip to Taipei, Taiwan to get lectures from Mr. Yim. What a fun and fulfilling trip! Mr. Yim is the most kind person, a great painter and a very good teacher. I hope I shall remember what I have heard and seen and apply it to my painting!
Mr. Yim at location wearing my hat. It was very windy.
Just got back from my painting trip or camping trip to the central coast. We visited, Santa Barbara, Solvang, Morro Bay and Cambria. Those are beautiful places to paint. Here is a painting from this trip.I painted this from the patio of Inn at the Morro Bay.
My plein air week in Borrego Springs turned out to be fun and successful! Even though the weather was on its warmer side, all of us had painted a storm of great paintings with so many of them sold! The color of the mountains and flowers are so beautiful, expecially in early morning and during sun set. I wish I could manage to paint more. To see a few of what I painted in this event, go to my Borrego Springs Plein Air Paintings collection under Art Works on this website.
The Anza-Borrego Desert Park camp ground is a beautiful place to camp which made my stay very pleasant! I even painted a few just from where I camped.
The other fun part of this event is meeting other artists. I found this very rewarding! Here are my two artist Amigos David on the left and Paul on the right! We had so much fun painting in the canyon and driving around scouting the area. The experience is like what Paul said " A Blast!!"
After he used lines to quickly establish his horizon line, and the foregroud elements, Mr. Yim laid down his color blocks, from the darkest first, until the panel is completely covered with color blocks. Then he went in to adjust the colors, create interest, touched up the a few details.
Not sure if you have heard about this book "A Tale of Small Paintings" by Mau-kun Yim. I did and have been inspired by it so much. That's why I made a trip to Taipei, Taiwan to get lectures from Mr. Yim. What a fun and fulfilling trip! Mr. Yim is the most kind person, a great painter and a very good teacher. I hope I shall remember what I have heard and seen and apply it to my painting!