How it all began?

The main reason for this blog is for me to have a place to share my art work. I have had a website for years, but it's mostly set up as a job searching device, it's my portfolio site. I hope with this blog I can be more personal with the posts. I also like that each post can have its comment section, it'd be great to hear what the viewers have to say about the work.

As the first post, I want to talk a bit about my painting background, how I started and where I am now.

I love oil as a medium. In high school, I tried out acrylics, and I didn't like how it would lose it's saturation and shine after the paint dries. When I was in university, I finally and got myself a set of oil supplies, and I still remember the first stroke I put down on canvas, I was in awe of the tackiness and the textural quality, I almost yelled out loud that this is the kind of texture in Van Gogh's paintings! My first oil paintings, were all examples of my new found love for this texture, and they all resemble some kind of porcupines and would draw blood if you dare to touch them. I was so inspired by Van Gogh and Group of Seven I painted in their styles:

Plein air - 2003

After Tom Thomson - 9" x 12" - 2003

However, I paint more and more, my style in oil tamed a lot. I was much more interested in seeing the texture from thin paint. I gessoed all of my supports in many layers, whether it be canvas or wood board, I sanded them after the gesso dried, to ensure a smooth surface. I loved to apply the first layers, which were usually the darks, heavily diluted in mineral spirits. I was able to create texture not from the thickness of paint but its fluidity.

Three Sparrows - 35" x 30" -  2005

After university, I stopped painting. I went on for more schooling and ended up in the animation indistry, and it is a perfect commercial art industry. My profession is aI Lighting artist. I use lights on the CG characters and enviroments to give it a time, a season, a climate, a mood and to support the story. It's almost like painting, except that it's very technical.  Artistically, I was very satisfied, but every time  I looked at an awesome painting I would wish that I had painted that, the urge to paint just got stronger and stronger, but I still was not motivated enough, there was always some reason. Eventually I landed a great job at a great company who wanted to see their employees grow, I was surrounded by other great artist. There's a pastel artist named Bill Cone in our California headquarter who worked with us on our first project, I got to see some of his work, and I had never seen any pastel painting to his caliber. There were a couple colleague who attended a demo by Bill when he came to our studio for a visit before I started to work there, we decided to give pastel painting a try, and we went to the 4th floor lounge during lunch time and this was my first pastel painting and my first painting in 5 years!

2010 November, first painting in 5 years !

We used the left over pastel sets from Bill's demo. I didn't find out until later they were the very high quality Ludwig hand made pastels. I was very happy to do a painting after a long gap, but pastel didn't blow my away the way oil did, and so I didn't paint again for another 2 years (gasp)

2012 winter. - 7.5" x 9.5"

I have never liked pastel paintings before I saw Bill Cone's work. The pastel paintings I had seen were mostly floral + pets paintings done by hobbyists and I never saw a painting that impressed me, so I kind of put the medium aside as a choice for people who aren't too serious with painting.

2 years later, I don't know what got into me, maybe it's the art supply spending allowance from work, I bought myself a beginner 60 color pastel set, and persuaded the same 2 colleagues and we'd meet up once a week during lunch time to paint and we did that for the next year. Over the next little while I will post the more than 30 paintings I have done during that period, well, maybe I won't post the very bad ones.
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