Inspired by Cherry Blossom and DC architecture

Seeing cherry blossom in DC was a joyful experience.  Additionally visiting museums and art collections was utterly satisfying.  This was my first visit to Philip's collection and was happy to see some of the work by my favorite artists:  Stuart Davis, Nicolas De Stael, George Braque, Gustav Klimt, Mardsen Hartley and many others.  I was also pleasantly inspired by the architecture near Philip's collection in Dupont Circle.

This drawing was composed using combination of architectures from a photo taken in DC and a site in Northampton.  I still enjoy painting on site, therefore this drawing will be evolving through observation at different times. However, I am hoping to keep some of the reminiscence of inspiration from DC.  This is also a beginning of a new chapter to be comfortable using alternative resources instead of always relying on observation on site.

While painting this work, for inspirations I have kept a close eye on two paintings I saw in the Philip's collection: Blue Cafe by Stuart Davis and Composition by Nicolas de Stael.  Although I have seen the reproduction of these paintings, it is amazing to see it in person.   As flat as the Blue Cafe appears in reproduction, the paint is thick and there are surprising textures in various places.  The abstract architectural planes, personalized colors, beautiful crisp lines and curves always captured my attention in Davis's paintings.  The musical note in the sky is a brilliant mark in my mind; without it the sky will look void and detached from the rest of the planes.  Similarly, in de Stael's Composition, I enjoy the blocks made of subtle variation of shades of gray next to the richer darker colors.  Although his paintings can be non-representational, there is an illusion of light and space.

Stuart Davis's work are my inspiration in composing architectural planes to divide space and in using personalized colors. Nicolas De Stael's work gives me inspiration for rich neutral colors.  I also enjoy looking at the different ways of creating lines by these artists.  Davis's work have crisp lines by painting the line.  However, Stael's line are implicitly made by laying down various shapes and colors on the top of one another.

Close Up then Zoom Out

There is something very attractive about the vent, the balcony, the stairs, the pipes, the wires and all the structures tangled on a yellow wall. I was painting it close up looking up at the vent as I could see the wall as many abstract shaped puzzle.



After working for two days last weekend, the painting still looked very flat, two dimensional and uninteresting. I decided to take a step back yesterday and moved 30 feet away from the building. The view looked more interesting with a bigger surrounding and it felt like a fresh breath of air after being so up close to the wall. I decided to take this as an inspiration and start over. I learned that the view you fall in love at first sight does not always translate well into a painting. You still need to take a step back, think and edit.



I sanded the painting, especially the darker shapes but left some evidence of the past. The yellow wall is transformed into a smaller scaled yellow building and a white building. I added surrounding space for both buildings to breath. The size and the perspective of the vent was the main element of this work. Therefore, even though I was painting from a different perspective, I left it as is. A balcony and a stair was added and was extended to the white building to create interaction between the two buildings. As the day progressed, the left hand side of the building looked vacant but adding a window there will be a balancing act and seemed too predictable. However, around 5pm, a sight of a angled shadow on the building fits my need. I borrowed the staircase shape from another building and incorporated into the shadow.

This painting is a juxtaposition of different perspectives and different timelines. Although the painting is still not complete, I hope this experience will open more doors for my future work.

One Parking Meter

The green wall looked vacant.  As I was looking for other structures to add, I found two choices nearby; a parking meter or a street lamp.  As I drew the parking meter corresponding to its life size, it looked insignificant.  I decided to double the size of the parking meter and made it as tall as the wall.  Additionally, I borrowed interesting pipes from the next building and I changed the dark brown ladder into lighter green to introduce more contrast to the green wall.  At the end of the day, I was satisfied with the painting and also amazed that it took me a whole day to think and to make these choices.

Hot summer days

I have been painting on this spot for a few years but I have never painted this white building.  The contrast between the white building and its dark large windows is attractive to me.  I decided to put the white house as a central theme and simplified the surrounding by carefully choosing shapes.  The space is cluttered with many diagonals from other buildings, I selected only a few diagonals to counteract with horizontal and vertical lines.  I worked on the drawing for a few hours yesterday and lay down basic color scheme.

Today I realized morning's light is exactly the opposite from the afternoon light.  I enjoyed the morning light better so the painting is adjusted accordingly.  However, I was not able to paint for more than a few hours today, the sun is brutal.   I am planning to revisit this painting soon, this one has some potential.

Inspired by Green and Blue

I have been keeping an eye on this view of the green house on the pier for many years in hopes that I will get to paint it someday.  However there was no safe public area to setup to paint this view.  Luckily, this week it was accessible from one of my friend's porch; I was thrilled.


When composing this painting, I took liberty to change the size of the buildings and the pier to avoid large negative space.  The ladder was enlarged, the green house and the pier were shortened and the pillars were simplified.  As I was painting this, I realized the green color of the house was very hard to work with.  I had to change it to different shades of green multiple times to work with the surrounding.   Introducing a much darker color for one of the buildings also helped to balance the green building.  I was very happy with the end result, Thursday was a good day.

Friday was the last day for painting this week in Maine.  It arrived early.  I had done some sketches of the rocks from the ledge on Tuesday and thought it will be a good way to depart from architectural painting for a day.  I placed two big rocks first then the surrounding edges were carefully composed to bring in the negative space.  Other smaller rocks were naturally formed while painting and there were plenty of variety of rocks lying around for inspiration.


Choosing the right shape of the house took me some time.  There were many houses in sight, but to balance the busy and curvy rocks, I thought it needed the simplest house.  I ended up using the closest blue house and using windows and its colors from other houses around.  A single house seemed too quiet and lonely.  I thought of adding a fence, however a utility pole seemed more fitting and whimsical.   This painting turned out to be one of my favorite paintings from this week.  It was a great way to end a wonderful painting journey in Maine.


Here are all my work from a week of painting trip in Stonington this year.  I am already looking forward to my next trip.

Family Portrait of Houses

It was quite an interesting day for painting.  The weather forecast predicted it was going to rain.  However,  morning was very foggy then it turned into scattered light showers and strong wind.  By the late afternoon, bright sun was shining and it looked like it was another day.


I set up my easel in the morning close to my car looking at the Stonington downtown view.  It was a complex architectural structure with mansard houses and ledges.  There were many repeated structures, similar roof tops, similar style windows.  For example, the red building has at least 15 windows, thats way too many to even count.  I tried to simplify as much as possible, moving the buildings around, removing repeating windows and borrowing structures from near by buildings to vary the shapes of each building.  It was much harder to decide which structures to keep and which ones to leave out.

Egon Schiele's landscapes, specially his architecture drawings and paintings has been my inspiration for a long time.  He is a master of manipulating line and space.  His buildings are never completely closed, he always finds a way to leave open lines so that the surrounding space can flow seamlessly into the buildings.   I looked for one of his drawing  Alte Häuser in Krumau, 1914 which helped me quite a bit today to simplify my drawing.  Using the same inspiration, I decided to use the same color for all the buildings to avoid blocks of multiple colors.   However, there was a need to introduce another color to counteract with many horizontal white shapes, so I decided to paint the vertical right hand side building to a darker blue shape.  I kept my color palette limited with just enough variation to keep the painting interesting.

Greenhead in the fog

There was a dense fog Tuesday morning.   I went back to my favorite ledge.  After drawing a few sketches, I decided to paint the same pier from last year since its the only thing I could see clearly in the fog.