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| 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.
