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! ;-)

This illustration in on sale on ImageKind here.

7″ x 10″ watercolor on 100% cotton arch

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island in the midst of black seas of infinity and it was not meant that we should voyage far. Some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the relevation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents.” –H.P Lovecraft, “Call of Cthulhu”

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This piece is a present for Doug’s birthday, as well as Illustration Friday’s topic “wrinkles.” It is The Great Old One, based on H.P Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos .

You can read more about why he loves this genre here

It’s really a reminder that everyone gets old, even the Great Old One, and that eventually when he wakes, the world will end, everyone will go mad, so we may as well enjoy life before the night comes.

How existentialistic are we? heheh

Friends are coming to save her from the trap of being sheltered in a cage. But then the question becomes, can they save her from the mysterious creatures lurking in the dark woods?

Details:

This illustration is on sale at ImageKind here.

We went sailing on the Eastern Shore and stayed at a Bed & Breakfast. This is the view from our balcony

Alfons Mucha is one of my favorite illustrators from the Art Nouveau genre. While researching for inspiration for this week’s topic, I came across a Camel (cigarettes) print advertisement in my vogue magazine using a similar illustrative style as Mucha’s. It struck me how much of an influence he has in the commercial illustration world.