I painted this awhile back but forgot to post it here. Acrylic on a leaf I picked up in Florida in 2007.

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.

36×42 oil on canvas

We met artist La Ba Quan while visiting Hanoi, Viet Nam during the Fall of 2008. We fell in love with this painting and bought it from his studio. We lugged the painting back in a giant tube across half the world. Finally, it's stretched on a frame  and hung up in our foyer. 
 

We're enjoying him immensely.

My friend Crystal and I share the same spirit, determination, and sternness; each with our own admiration and respect for the other’s mind.

She is one of the strongest women I’ve ever known; one of the kindest, compassionate, patient, selfless and open-minded. Her cool confidence is an inspiration of self-empowerment. Together, we can climb the highest of mountains, face the worst fears and look cool in the process.

The first moment I met her, I knew she will change my life, and it’s been true. My life have been touched, impacted and will never be the same.

We will achieve many great things together. I believe some meetings are not accidental.

Today is my friend Sarah’s birthday.

She’s this wonderfully weird person.  She has beautiful and expressive eyes and I love the way they look at people, full of judgment and emotion and humor.

I started drawing her eyes and thought about that time we played in the pouring rain and made leaf-boats. We ran around the neighborhood with our work clothes still on and jumped in puddles. I thought about her wet daring hair and went crazy with the watercolor.

Happy Birthday Sarah!

I’m starting a new portrait series. check back soon :)

My drawing class at the Smithsonian started last Sunday. Hungover and exhausted from a Girlsquad weekend, Sarah and I dragged our tired butts to class last Sunday afternoon. The lesson of the day was to draw “accurately” from observation. The model posed in the same position with a break every 20 minutes.

It’s been a while since I draw from a live model. The biggest challenge for me is “drawing accurately” as oppose to what looks right. There is a difference. What looks right to my eyes, translating the 3D into two dimensional figure on a page is vastly different than drawing “accurately.” Drawing accurately is stiff and uncreative, IMHO. However, in order to draws what looks right, it’s important to learn how to draw accurately first, which is more technical. I’ve been doing the former for so long that dissecting my process of drawing now is like walking backward. It’s just awkward and I’m afraid of falling backward on my ass.

And who actually enjoy falling on their asses on the first day of class? Nobody. This fear makes you want to rebel and cling to what you know and trust. It’s quite funny to see the older ladies interrupt with questions after questions full of doubt. The age gap between the class and Sarah and myself is about 40 years difference.

I was exhausted. The goal is to draw/placing the whole figure on the page, before putting in muscle shapes, light and shadows etc. By, guessing, gridding, plane-ing, we use no other tools of measurement but our eyes to translate parts of the body on the page. This is the stage that allows one to design a painting/drawing. It is much easier to move shapes around than to move a chiseled torso. This is hard because I’m lazy. This takes so much time and patience and fear of my figure looking disfigured is a matter of pride. And this is just no fun. I wanted to give up and start over again every time a shoulder part is misplaced, or the hip is too high.

After a certain point though, when most of your page consisted more of charcoal smears and lines and shapes than an actual figure, you’ve officially reached “fuck it” stage and just have fun. OK it wasn’t as easy as it sounds, but I did finally remember to take 5 steps back, look at my drawing, then look at the model, make a change, and repeat the process until the three hour class ended.

In the end, did I fall on my ass? While it would have been funny, who the fuck cares? I had fun and this is what I did in three hours. It is no masterpiece but it’s a stage all artists go through, including all the masters. This is an example of Leonardo‘s for one of the ceilings. See, see? I’m not really trying to compare myself to a master, but it makes me feel better that they too, do sketches and spend years studying a hand.

Baby steps. This week, we’ll learn foreshortening. Yay!

Some people mistaken its egg-like nature, until the little tree started growing. You know that little tree is going to grow up big and pink right, right? I believe in the giant pink seed! ;-)