2nd day at Qiang Huang's workshop

It's much better today. First of all, we don't need to worry about the parking. I packed my lunch so that saved me some time too. Qiang demostrated roses and that was absolutely beautiful. I did some value study first before I started the painting. It's a good strategy and the final painting is more predictable. Now I saw how Qiang painted the roses, I'll need to paint more roses for better results. Qiang's presentation in the morning was another knock out. I totally enjoy it.

First day at Qiang Huang's workshop

I am exhausted! Qiang did a great presentation about the composition, he used the paintings of David Laffel and Sherrie McGraw to explain how these masters convey the ideas to the audience, light direction, speed, rhythms, and subject matter,.... it was absolutely great. And his demo was wonderful too. Just like the rest of his paintings, the demo painting was simple, elegant, and distinctive.
But I didn't painted well, I felt like I was putting too much pressure on myself, plus the distractions on the scene (video taping, parking ticket, too many participants, setting up the still life, etc.). Tomorrow I'll have to focus on the painting and ignore the rest of the distraction.

Ready to Sacramento

I'm ready to take off to Sacramento for Qiang Huang's workshop. Very excited!
I didn't paint anything last night because I was loading up the "stuff" for the workshop, but here is the copy of Huang's pears. It was done quickly without many details and I found that pears are harder to paint than apples, as people said.

Orange

Last night I did a quick study of the orange, which is one of my favorite paintings from Qiang Huang.

Still life study

Over the weekend I did another still life study from Qiang's painting (oil: right, pastel: left). Tried to learn his style as much as I can before the workshop in this weekend.

Rose

I painted the rose from Qiang's blog. It turned out pretty nice and it's not that hard to paint roses.

Qiang Huang: still life study 2

A stormy day, can't do anything but paint in my garage. Painted the oil of Qiang's still life (left), compare with the pastel did in Sharon's house the past Sunday(lower).

Qiang Huang: still life study 1

I painted the oil of Qiang Huang's still life. Very lovely (left). It seems easy after all the pastel practice at Sharon's house (lover right). Or it's easier to copy, by nature :) The point is to learn from copying Qiang's painting and hope I can carry his style to my own paintings eventually.

Juried in FALC

Yesterday I found out from my email that the Fine Art League of Cupertino has juried me into the league. This is encouraging, it means the 3 oil paintings I did in Nov and Dec are "something" :)
At night I sent out the entry form for the league's member show "From the Heart" at the Main Street Cafe, Los Altos in February. This will be my first art show, display my work in the public place. How exciting!!!