"Cherry Blossoms Cascading" (oil on stretched linen; 30" x 20")

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Before

Reference photo

I painted "Cherry Blossoms Cascading" in Diane Tesler's class last year.  Diane is one of my favorite art teachers who taught me many things from how to stretch canvas to how to paint practically everything.  She would come to the four-and-a-half-hour class before it stated, stayed through the lunch break (she didn't eat lunch herself to find more time for students), and never left until everybody cleared out.  I must say that she was the most dedicated teacher at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA.  Alas, she decided to retire and moved to Indiana this summer.  I will miss her.

Diane (in the center) at reception for her solo show in June

Diane is the kind of artists who see beauty in beat-up trucks and abandoned houses.  She paints soulful, gritty stuff, not fluffy pretty things like cherry blossoms.  I had to wait for another teacher to show me how to paint cherry blossoms.  It was Bobbi Pratte who told me to find darks to bring out lights in cherry blossoms.  "Cherry Blossom Festival at Tidal Basin" was done without her help, but the idea of keeping dark the blossoms in the shadow at the top of the picture was straight from her lesson.  The painting got sold right away at a gallery, so I must have done something right.

"Cherry Blossom Festival at Tidal Basin"
(oil, 14 "x 11")
sold

This week I brought down "Cherry Blossoms Cascading" that had been languishing in my office upstairs to give it a major makeover.  Can you tell what I did?  I strengthened the sky first, then went to work to make cherry blossoms come to life.  Now the painting hangs in the family room so that all who come to my house can see it!

I am grateful to all my art teachers.  They may have different painting styles and teaching methods, but I learn valuable lessons from every single one of them.

"Cherry Blossom Festival at Tidal Basin" (oil on linen; 14" x 11") sold

"Cherry Blossom Festival at Tidal Basin"
sold

"Cherry Blossoms Cascading"
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I succumbed to the crass commercialism and painted "Cherry Blossom Festival at Tidal Basin" to make some money off tourists who will be pouring to Washington, DC to see the National Cherry Blossom Festival later this month.  Do you know that this year marks the 100th anniversary of the planting of over 3.000 cherry trees, which arrived here as a goodwill gesture from the people of Japan?  The majority of the trees were planted around the Tidal Basin; that is what you see in my painting.

In defence of my commercialism, I want to emphasize that it is not easy to paint cherry blossoms.  They are so flurry, dainty, and pretty that it is easy to end up with the saccharine-sweet pink fest of paint blobs.  Believe me.  I've tried to paint them many times.  "Cascading Cherry Blossoms" was painted last spring with the help of a former teacher of mine, Diane Tesler.  This weeping cherry caught my eye last year during the festival.  Here the subject is not the landscape around the Tidal Basin, but the cascading "waterfall" of pink flowers against the crisp blue sky.

Bobbi Pratte, another teacher, insists that one should never paint cherry blossoms too light.  Bobbi is absolutely right.  Just before "Cherry Blossom Festival," I worked on another painting of the same theme, featuring the Jefferson Memorial.  As much as I hated quitting, I had to give up on it, for it was a vulgar pink thing. 

In "Cherry Blossom Festival at Tidal Basin," with the Washington Monument as the focal point, I made sure that the backlit, overhanging branches with cherry florets were dark and warm enough.  Why warm?  It was an overcast day with cool blues of the sky dominating, although there was sun, so that the shadows were warm-toned.  This is definitely a feminine painting; but I hope it has an artistic merit.  What do you think?

"Mount Rushmore" (oil on stretched linen, 28" x 32")

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"Mount Rushmore" is the most ambitious and largest oil painting I have ever painted.  A celebration piece, actually, on my becoming American citizen last month.  I even learned how to stretch canvas by watching my teacher Diane Tesler, who did the actual work.  With a teacher like that, one can go far indeed.  Thank you, Diane. 

I had done a miniature painting (6 x 8") of the same subject, which simply did not do justice to the grandeur of Mount Rushmore.  The sculptor Gutzon Borglum had an awe-inspiring vision to carve the likenesses of four great presidents into the mountain itself.  I had the photo of the usual view of this American icon, but chose this view for two reasons.  From this vantage point, one can see only George Washington and Abraham Lincoln--my two heros--fully; Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt can be just glimpsed.  And I wanted to be present a different picture not too many people have seen.

I added  a lot of sky, more than a quarter of the painting, which made the huge sculptures look way up and grand.  Although it is a close-up picture, I wanted the viewer to feel the air between her and the subject.  So I kept the values of the subject light (high-keyed) and introduced the blues of the sky into the rocks.  The V-shaped chasm was painted warmer than the rest of the painting as sort of a divider between Lincoln and the other three presidents.  Originally, he looked so deathly ill that I had to give him more life, so to speak.  I am proud of my endeavors and thankful to the great presidents who created and kept together this country.

"Misty Morning Lake" (oil on linen, 12" x 12") sold

After
sold

Before

I painted "Misty Morning Lake" three weeks ago.  I got a lot of positive feedback from my Facebook fans and was feeling pretty good about it until I showed it to my teacher, Diane Tesler.  She said the peachy foreground line was awkwardly handled and would like to see the photo reference I had used.  As a matter of fact, I had brought five paintings and not a single one came out unscathed by her critique.  Boy, I felt deflated. 

There were two options for me at that point.  The option 1: hell with your critique and I like my paintings as they are.  The option 2: swallow my pride and get to work to "fix" the problem areas.  I took the high road of humility--the option 2.  Yesterday I worked on the above painting.  I lessened the incline of the offending line and softened it with dark texture.  I enriched the middle-ground trees on the left as well, so that they look more natural.  A big improvement, I think.  (By the way, if the two paintings' colors look different, it's because I took the photos at different times of the day.  The blue of the sky, that affects the color temperature of a photograph, seems to change during the course of a day.)

You know the moral of today's entry.  A painting is not done until your teacher says so?  NO.  That's not it.  Then we have to take classes for the rest of our lives and will never be artistically independent.  What a scary thought!  The moral is this: we should cultivate humility, honesty, and a capacity to accept criticism as a path to growth.  Feel free to leave comments.  Thank you.

"Music from Heart" (oil on stretched canvas, 16" x 20") sold

sold

The flutist's beautiful regal face and braided hair caught my eye during a Christmas concert at the Mormon Temple.  There were actually hundred other young musicians playing the flute, as the Suzuki flute teachers in the Washington metropolitan area show off their students' accomplishments with holiday melodies every December.  It was this poised college senior, however, who inspired me to paint the flute and the hands.

There are artists who can paint reflective surfaces with their eyes closed.  I am not one of them.  The hands were as tricky.  I had them so big (did you notice when you obsess with something, it tends to become magnified?) that, but for my teacher, Diane Tesler, the girl would have ended up with a giantess' hands!  Someone in the class asked if she were my daughter.  I told her that I didn't have an African-American child, but I would be proud to have a daughter like her.

"Walk in the Redwoods" (oil on stretched canvas, 18" x 14") sold

sold

I struggled with this painting, largely because the photo I worked with was so washed out by the blinding light.  My teacher, Diane Tester, suggested that I should restore the darks with Photoshop.  Today I brought to her class the original photo that shows the glowing ground where the figure--my then-seven-year-old daughter--is standing, along with the adjusted photo.

My intention was to darken the background trees with dark greens.  No, Diane said, you already have enough greens.  She recommended that I glaze them with purples, which I did promptly.  Wow!  Suddenly there was a differentiated background, middle ground, and foreground.  I redrew the figure (the head was too big!), tidied up things here and there, and you are now looking at the result.  I was so close to the finish but didn't know it.

"At the Aquarium" (oil on linen, 8" x 10") sold

sold

My daughter, then 9 years of age, was fascinated by the sea anemones and was staring at them for a long time at Monterey Bay Aquarium in California.  I took her picture from the other side of the tank.  In the picture, she looks like she is in the water, as if she were a mermaid.

I was intrigued by the concept of three planes--the dark plane in which my daughter was situated, the middle plane of the water tank with all those glowing, myriad of sea creatures, and finally, the front plane where I was standing--painted on a flat surface.  The painting was to be full of mystery, pre-Raphaelite, or bizarre.  It was difficult to execute and took four Wednesdays, with the help of my new teacher, Diane Tesler.

Happy Thanksgiving!