3rd lesson

3rd class with Fongwei. This time is the study of focus point (lemon vs. plum flowers), and dark backfround with dark vase.

2nd lesson

2nd class with Fongwei, very challenging. Fongwei asked me to focued on the dark, grey, and light values, and paid attention to my drawing.

First lesson

I had my first class with Fongwei last night. He explained to me the 3 value fundamental: dark, middle, and light values. He also showed me how artists arrange the 3 values in their paintings to make the paintings more interesting. Since it was only him and me, we painted together. It was a very valuable experience as I could see how he worked on each subject as well as overall on the painting. I learned a lot.

New teacher

I got to call Fongwei Liu today and asked him to teach me. This is great!
I will be meeting him tomorrow night to discuss what to do next.

Back home

I'm back home from 3-day intensive learning and painting at Qiang Huang's workshop. I'm tired physiclly but energetic mentally. I visited Fongwei Liu's blog and saw those beautiful paintings he painted there, I'm totally immersed into his art. Great artist!

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.