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.

Lobster co-op in Stonington

I am very excited to be back in Stonington to paint for a week.   It is always a challenge at the beginning of the week, for one can easily get distracted from picturesque sceneries in every corner.  On the first day, I decided to go back to a familiar lobster co-op building which I have painted a few times over the years.  Since every painting of this building in the past has been an iconic painting, I wanted to change the composition this time.  Therefore,  I decided to introduce other surrounding elements into the composition.



The pier is fascinating to me, since the pillars underneath and the light that comes from behind create an abstract space.  I extended the rocky wall in the foreground to get away from the past iconic composition.   However, it became the most problematic area as I did not wanted it to be another vertical band just like the pier.  It ended up becoming a L shaped wall leaving some space between it and the pier.  At the end of the day, I was pretty happy with the painting.  There are a few minor changes necessary to bring it close to complete but that is for another day.

June Trial and Error

Quiet and cloudy Saturday afternoon was a perfect setting to rework on this painting from 2 months ago.  The composition still seemed unresolved so I decided to make the building smaller and change some of the perspective to create more surrounding space.

Although I still paint on site, I am no longer faithfully copying what I see.  This creates its own set of challenges which I don't always have answers for.  It's a process of trial and error.  Looking at the progression from April and June side by side, there has been quite a few minor changes in effort to make it more interesting.

[gallery size="large" ids="761,742"]

In April's painting, the yellow building on the right hand corner seemed like a dead space.  Although I have tried changing it to a few different shades of yellow and gray, it seemed too bland.  Finally, it ended up with a shade of red brick color which compliments other dark and earthy colored buildings.

I also moved my painting easel's position a few feet to the right which showed a narrower and an angular perspective of the alley.   It also inspired me to change the left hand side building into a slightly angled perspective to echo the subtle angles of the alleyway.  This created a new dynamic in the painting.  However it also raised other questions on the surrounding shapes for eg. shape for the shadow on the ground.  I ended up extending the angle of the building to the shadow.  These are minor choices but the choice you must make as those answers are not in a plain sight.  Ultimately more decision making in the process lead to more identity of the artist in the work.

I am very happy with this direction for my work and I am looking forward to revisiting Northampton to complete this work.

Day before Easter

After painting for a few hours in the morning, I realize this painting  is not getting anymore interesting.  It is still missing something.  However, cloud and sun in the mid afternoon created a very interesting contrast of light and dark between the buildings.  It is moody and different from the morning light.  I am getting inspired.

For the past few years, I have been more focused on artist like Stuart Davis, Egon Schiele, Georges Braque, Piet Mondrian to get inspiration to simplify and to break down space and lines which comes easily to architectural work.   However today it seems I needed to add something else.    I have always admired moody and poetic work from Albert Pinkham Ryder and El Greco.  Their work seem to be very fitting for what I need to learn today.  I looked into "View of Toledo"  from El Greco for more inspiration.  It was done more than 500 years ago, it contains the power to evoke a certain mood and atmosphere.

I still struggle a bit to create the dark mood, the color became muddy and brownish but it is on the right track.  I plan to revisit this soon.

Spring is here - 2015

This little alley in Northampton used to be my favorite place for painting and yet I realized have not painted it for a little while. I decided to revisit the place yesterday. Although it was raining and snowing, I spend some time drawing. Today's weather is the perfect spring day I have seen since last few weekends. It was warm enough to paint from the car. Here is the progress I have made so far.

The Stonington Pier through the years

I have been painting this pier from the ledge since 2009. There is something about this place that I crave to visit and paint every year when I am in Stonington, Maine.

As I sit down on the ledge; I would turn around and notice in every corner an inspiration for painting - lobster boats float quietly, little islands and piers break the horizon and the houses in a distant hills would stand tall. The sound of the water's rise-and-fall and the cries of seagulls are rhythmic and musical, while the view the ledge's covering and uncovering from the water and the hill's appearing and disappearing through the fog are mysterious and magical. It's poetic.

Designing the postcard for my upcoming show made me realize that I have painted this pier a few times since 2009. Looking back at these works, I noticed that each time the pier in my painting looks a little different. I decided to reflect on the changes in these paintings.

[caption id="attachment_716" align="alignnone" width="500"] Under the Pier - 2009[/caption]

This earliest work in 2009 is quieter, colors are harmonious. It is a more realistic view of the pier compared to my recent work. The painting has influence from my watercolor experience. The range of colors and their values are much narrower. The drawing is very close to the real pier as I used to meticulously draw what I see.

[caption id="attachment_717" align="alignnone" width="500"] Under the Pier, 2011[/caption]

Instead of faithfully copying from observation, I started to edit my work with more analysis. For instance, the right side of the pier ended up with fewer pillars and the buoys were added from somewhere else. Colors became bolder and richer in 2011. I started to use more black. Values were also fuller. Even though colors were still harmonious but brush strokes became more noticeable and substantial.

[caption id="attachment_718" align="alignnone" width="476"] Stonington House on the Ledge - 2014[/caption]

Last year I went back to the same ledge and painted the pier again. Since I have been painting a lot of townscapes for the past few years in Northampton and other places in Massachusetts, the architectural elements became the focus in the composition of the painting. I have become much more comfortable with adding my own voice to the painting. For instance, in the painting the green lawn became a mysterious geometric shape, and the water and the wall would blend in seamlessly to surround the pier. Besides playing with architectural designs, colors have also gotten bolder and more personal.

Looking at these three paintings, I noticed that I have taken more liberty with my own work now. I no longer need to faithfully copy what's out there.

New Work - Upcoming Show at Galatea Fine Arts

I have an upcoming solo show this May at Galatea Fine Art in Boston, from May 1 to May 31. The opening reception is scheduled for Friday May 1, 6-8 pm.