The concept of ma through Lao Tse’s poems:

Thirty spokes meet in the hub,
but the empty space between them
is the essence of the wheel.

Pots are formed from clay,
but the empty space between it
is the essence of the pot.

Walls with windows and doors form the house,
but the empty space within it
is the essence of the house.

Stained glass is one of those things for me. It’s an art medium I know nothing about. In fact, I don’t often think about it, until I am in a space that’s been transformed by stained glass windows. I am in awe when soaking in the prisms of colors reflected throughout a space, wanting to stay in that light for as long as I can. Have I mentioned I love sunlight? and colors and shadows? Well, I do – being around light and colors is like swimming in optimism. But beside the light and colors, my eyes and mind are always drawn to the lead came lines that had been carefully worked into the design of a piece of stained glass. Clearly, it’s an art form that requires design skills to conceive a workable design as well as engineering skills to assemble the pieces together, both are totally up my creative alley. So, I’ve always wanted to learn how stained glass is done.

A Tiffany stained glass design

Luckily for me, my adopted (long story) uncle Howard, a local award-wining stained glass artist, contacted me (out of the blue) and asked if I’d like to collaborate on a project. He knows I know nothing about stained glass, and thought it’d be a good opportunity to learn. It will be a paid project but we will be donating the money to local charities. How can I resist? A chance to learn something new with an expert? I don’t even have to buy my own tools or materials? AND doing something good for charities? I was so floored and excited and honored that of course I agreed! BAM! Two birds with one stone. I am more happy than standing in stained glass light!

The project will be for an elementary school’s library window, a horizontal panel of about 15in. high and 70in. long above the main door. I started sketching and designing right away, thinking about all the literary references I wanted to include. Uncle Howard was kind and warned me not to be so attached to my design, little does he know I survived critique sessions in art school that prepared me for a career in web design, designing for a specific audience, not me.

So, understanding the audience is critically important for us, as well as the location of panel. We have to think about the elementary school kids, who will be looking at our creation, the PTA who are paying for it and the context of the space that the panel will be living in.

Anyway, I’d like to share a couple of initial sketches.

Sketch #1 – I was really inspired by Susan Jeffers’s book All The Pretty Horses that I found in our library, dated 1974 (clearly this book is older than me! My partner Doug has an amazing collection of children’s books growing up). The illustrations are stunning, and the little girl in me was transported to a HUGE sunflower field. You see that big sunflower on the right, there? I had a little girl laying on it reading a book but she was too small and got kinda lost so I took her out.

Sketch #2 – From sketch #1 I really liked the little girl reading on the sunflower so I decided to push that concept further here. Then, I have this entire landscape to fill up with anything I wanted so I started thinking about all my favorite children’s books, from Oliver Jeffers’s Lost and Found, Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland, Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (a stunning must-read picture book) to Helen Ward’s Unwitting Wisdom, an anthology of Aesop’s Fables (fabulous illustrations too).

Sketch #3 – Since this panel is above the library’s main entrance, I thought it could be a portal, taking one’s imagination from one place to the next. This concept was inspired by The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, one of my favorite illustrated books. I was really inspired by the art on the cover as well as the architecture of the train station, an art nouveau style with lots of light and glass. This design is a bit more abstract and graphical.

 There you have them. Between the three sketches, #2 is our favorite and we think that children can easily relate from a distance. So we decided to continue to push the design and marry fantasy with dreams and professions. Revise, revise, revise (I can hear my English teacher in my head) until it’s perfect and workable as a stained glass design. I will share the final version once we get client approval, and will try to document my learning process here, so stay tuned.

Color study with gray.

I love that the accent colors in this room are derived from the paintings.

What a wonderful way to bring out a big painting!

Touches of deep purple! Yum!

Wow, the print illustrations make one salivate…nice to repeat the patterns in the pillows.

A Sketch: It’s always a good start. It doesn’t have to be anything complicated. Just something may be fun to capture. Sometimes I scour pictures on Flickr of a pretty scenery and use it for reference. Scenery allows for a multitude of different watercolor techniques from wet-on-wet washes to dry brush.

Wet on wet wash: What I love most about watercolor is the control chaos with a splash of spontaneity. Part of that requires trusting one’s instinct. I feel I’m losing some of that when I go thru hiatus. At this point, I feel I messed it up already because the edges aren’t perfect and the color bleeds too much.

Wet-on-wet technique consist of laying down a layer of clean water across the page before laying on a thin wash of colors to create the background. It’s very important to let each layer dry before apply more or else colors will become muddy.

I keep reminding myself it’s OK to make mistakes. Working with negative space can be challenging but also refreshing. When in doubt, take a step back, evaluate and keep glazing with a thin layer of color over the negative space until the feel is almost there.
 

Glazing: Glazing uses a thin, transparent pigment applied over dry existing washes. Its purpose is to adjust the color and tone of the underlying wash.

Foreground: Moving on to the positive space, filling in the warm bark of the trees. Tomorrow, I will add more texture. And each day I will add more until the painting is complete. It’s important to allow each layer of paint to dry completely before adding another layer to avoid muddy colors. Watercolor is transparent so each layer should adds depth.

Another layer of glaze: Building more texture and adding some branches to the foreground. It looks like a mess up close, but I’m working from the background to foreground so I’m saving all the finer details last. 

Details: Added another layer of texture to bring the foreground up a bit. At this point, I’m not sure if I want to continue or moving on. Since this is an exercise, I feel comfortable enough to stop here. Next time, I’d like to add another blue color to the palette and tighten up the brush work a lot.

Colors: Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine, Raw Sienna

I had an urge to paint something, but some days instead of having writer’s block, I have artistic brain farts.

So I cooked instead, hard-boiling eggs to be exact. I remembered a passage Doug read aloud to me a while ago from Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook, “How to Hard-boiled a freaking egg.” I reached for the book, hard-boiled some eggs and painted them.

It was dark outside by now, and I had completely wasted the morning light. My eggs are not perfectly rounded as the light and shadows came from my head but I had fun, and the eggs were used for caramel catfish.

The End.

It’s based on an image I saw a while back but I can’t remember where. I’ve been painted this image slowly for the past 3 months – 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there. I know I know, it’s nothing even big or complicated. It’s just that I’ve been really busy working on my other websites, but winter is coming and I’m excited – it’s my most productive time of the year…you know, how artists are. So I’m looking forward to going on some neat adventure with painting soon. And maybe even a revamp of this blog. In the mean time, this little guy needs some love!

Her liveliness is addictive and a joy. A cotton candy social butterfly, always in transformation and never takes life too seriously.

Her sunny disposition and sense of humor is a comfort and weapon to overcome the unexpected and outlasting the unbearable. She is such happiness alight on my shoulder; a constant reminder that no matter how contraditory life is, the only wrinkles worth having are the laugh lines.

Rhiannon is my dear friend whose warm laugther and funny stories fill my daily life with morsels of inspirations.

Kim is my oldest friend, my un-related sister, and my best mirror. She is my fickle faery; my constant inspiration.

She is a part of my roots as I am hers. We grow higher and wilder when we grow together.

I can’t imagine what life would be like without her.

We are two of a kind! Partners! Through thick or thin! Night or day! Right or wrong!

When other friendships have been forgot
Ours will still be hot!

The Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults – Design For A Difference – chair design challenge

Humans enter a dance with time from the moment we are born. The time we measure with clocks and calendars can be perceived and spent quite differently through personal choice. One may choose to kill time while waiting or to dream of new ideas and possibilities. “Quality Time” was born out of the choice of two close friends to share their time with one another and to share with those young adults facing cancer. Challenging times are when we most greatly need love, support, motivation, inspiration and humor. Alone time, however, becomes just as valuable as time with friends and family and seemingly inconsequential moments can be used for reflection and meditation. It is our hope that the time you take to explore and appreciate “Quality Time” is a lively jive, with unexpected flips and a smile at the end.

Chair was auctioned and sold for $150. Money is donated to the Ulman Cancer Fund For Young Adults Scholarship.

This project was a collaboration between Kim T. Ha and myself.