Saturday, September 17, 2011

"Pink Rose Bush" (oil on linen; 8" x 10") sold


sold

Reference photo


Since I mentioned the rose in the previous entry, I thought I would share a little painting of roses.  As you can see, I haven't changed much from the photo, other than editing out the clutter on the upper right corner.  Does this mean that all I do is to copy a picture?  No, not really.  I take a great care when I take pictures in the first place.  As a matter of fact, I do the composing with my camera, and I believe that composition is the half of the game in art.

By the way, copying a photograph sounds like a bad thing, but it itself is a great deal of work.  A photo is not a painting, no matter how good it may be; much thinking and brush handling go into a painting to make a piece of canvas look like a piece of art.  After I was finished with "Pink Rose Bush", I had so much eye strain, my eyes hurt terribly.  I was behind the schedule (I try to do a painting a day and I was one or two paintings behind for the week), so I worked in the evening.  Perhaps, I am getting old (gasp!).  I used to paint in evenings all the time when my daughter was little because the evening was the only time when I could paint.

There is a Chinese American painter, called Qiang Huang (his blog link is included in my favorite blogs and websites).  He is a physicist with a PhD degree, and literally moonlights as an artist by painting at night.  He is quite successful as his paintings are in high demand; he conducts workshops and sells his daily still life paintings on eBay.  Frankly, I don't know how he manages it at all with a demanding full-time job and keeping up with his nightly art career!  Does he have more passion than I do?  I doubt that.  He must have more stamina.  I should load up on ginseng or something.

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