Monastery Zhongdian

"Monastery Zhongian", 10 x 12 In, Oil, 2018

Painted from an image from my journey to Yunnan Province in China.

NFS

Chinese Girl - NFS

"Chinese Girl", 24 x 18 In, Oil on Museum Board
This is an older painting done in 2009 and I think it must have been done from a photo from my trip to China, but I don't remember. It is interesting comparing the old with the new--I often use more paint now, but the brushwork that I like is apparent. I always think I will remember everything, but so many things are forgotten. I am sometimes just lucky there is an actual memory right there on the canvas.

Old Man with Pipe - NFS

"Old Man with Pipe", 14 x 11, Oil on Museum Board

I posted this painting a long while back, but I'm posting it again because it was selected for the December 2014 FAV 15% Bold Brush Painting Contest. I entered on a whim and promptly forgot about it--then got the notification. This painting brings so many memories of my painting trips to China.

Yuhu Village Woman - NFS

"Yuhu Village Woman", 10 x 8 In, Oil on Panel
This lovely woman was one of the proprietors of the Inn we stayed at in Yuhu Village, Yunnan Province, China in 2009. She fixed us three meals a day. She would bring out the meal, sometimes a huge one-pot dish, we would look at it and think that the three of us could never eat all of that. And yet every meal, we did just that. It was amazingly delicious!

Waiting on the Road

"Waiting on the Road", 12 x 8 In, Oil on Panel
Back from my trip driving half way across the country with my daughter, I finally got into the studio today after not painting for a week! It is strange that even as I sometimes yearn for days off, I don't feel complete if I haven't smushed paint around at least part of the day. I think its time to put together a little water color kit for these off days. So I approached this painting almost strictly as an exercise, with few and simple brushstrokes.

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Mongolian Woman - NFS

"Mongolian Woman", 6 x 6 In, Oil on Panel
This is another small portrait from my China photos. It seems like an excellent idea to practice small portraits because in a bigger painting, the face could be small. I'm trying to learn how to do it with just a few brushstrokes.

Chinese Village Girl - NFS

"Chinese Village Girl", 6 x 6 In, Oil on Panel NFS
This little girl attached herself to our small group of painters when we were taken to a nearby village from our studio out in the countryside near Jilin in 2005. It was early October and the villagers were cutting the corn. It was a very beautiful time of year in that area of China.

NFS

Mongolian Boy

"Mongolian Boy", 10 x 8 In, Oil on Panel
When our small group went to Inner Mongolia (part of China) in 2005 with Jove Wang, we didn't go to remote areas but we did drive out into areas where there were sheep herders both on horseback and on the ground. This boy was one of them. At that time where we were in China sometimes we would be on a new super highway and the next minute find ourselves on a dirt road. I wonder what its like now nearly six years later.

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Loading Rocks

"Loading Rocks", 12 x 8 In, Oil on Panel
This painting was from my figure series about a week ago. I was up in Edmonds today, about an hour and a half drive from here, at the Plein Air Washington Paint-in, but it was too dark to take photos once I got home and I'm not sure how the paintings turned out anyway! This figure painting was another one where I used a photo I've had for years of a worker in Northeast China, deciding that it was interesting enough to try to make something of it. It's definitely a study and I had fun doing it--a guy and some rocks--not something I would ordinarily think about painting.

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On the Bike - NFS

"On the Bike", 6 x 6 In, Oil on Museum Board NFS
Back to the small paintings, this is from a photograph I took in a rural farming area of Northeastern China--a photo that I've looked at for a long time and wondered if I could make anything of it. So it was fun just going at it.

NFS

Mongolian Herder

"Mongolian Herder", 6 x 6 In, Oil on Museum Board
Its a good exercise to do these small portraits because even if the painting itself is larger, the head of a figure is often small. This is from a photo taken in 2005 when a small group of us took an excursion from Jove Wang's studio near Jilin, China, to Inner Mongolia--a province of China.

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Naxi Girl

"Naxi Girl", 16 x 12 In, Oil on Panel
While doing the series of small panels it is interesting to do a larger one for perspective. This is from a photo from my trip to Yunnan Province--an area in China with many ethic minorities.

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Worker - NFS

"Worker", 6 x 6 In, Oil on Museum Board
This is another small painting in my 6 x 6 inch series. Its still a challenge for me to paint on such a small surface, but I'm starting to get the hang of it. I have two painting friends here with me for a few days and we had a great time today painting Zangle Cove as the light changed every five minutes with the weather coming in and we also set up a still life. Painting can be so solitary, especially in the winter, that it is wonderful to paint with friends.

NFS

In the Field

"In the Field", 10 x 12 In, Oil on Panel
I was in China in 2005 for a month in the fall. The last two weeks we stayed out at the studio about an hour and a half from Jilin, northeast of Beijing. By the end of the time, the villagers were taking in the harvest--if I remember correctly it was mostly corn. This painting is of one of the village women.

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Water from the Pond

"Water from the Pond", 12 x 8 In, Oil on Panel
This is another painting I did from a photo from my first trip to China with Jove Wang in 2005. His studio was way out in the country side, a beautiful area with fields of corn, villages, and the most friendly people, some of whom worked at the studio fixing meals for us and modeling. This is not my favorite painting of my series this week, but it goes to the mission, which is to study proportions of the figure.

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Boy with a Cow

"Boy with a Cow", 12 x 8 In, Oil on Panel
Continuing with the theme of figure proportion, a child's proportions are different from an adult and obviously more so the younger he or she is. I'm finding that doing these figure paintings is a really nice relief from still lifes.

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Woman of Ollantaytambo

"Woman of Ollantaytambo", 16 x 12 In, Oil on Panel
This is from a photo of a Peruvian woman from a trip I took a few years ago to Peru and wonderfully, to Machu Picchu. I never painted it before because though the figure is interesting, there was little drama in the photo. But because the basis of this series is the practice of figure proportion, it gave me a reason to paint it. Proportion of figures obviously varies depending on height and I tried to take that into consideration.

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Old Woman In Dali

"Old Woman in Dali", 12 x 8 In, Oil on Panel
Dali is a city on Lake Erhai in Yunnan Province, China. I stayed there a couple of years ago with two painting friends on our way north to Lijiang and Zhongdian, a Tibetan town in Northern Yunnan now called Shangrila by the Chinese.

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Old Naxi Woman

"Old Naxi Woman", 12 x 8 In, Oil on Museum Board
This is the first figure study I did after watching Peggi's DVD on "simplified figure proportions" and it is obviously a very quick study. I don't have easy access to models so I've been pulling out photos from past trips. I have a few more still lifes from the past week, but honestly I'm so tired of still lifes maybe I'll wait until I go on a trip to post those. I'm ready for different subject matter!

Someone asked yesterday where I purchase museum board. I purchase the 100% cotton rag museum board in 32 x 40 4-ply sheets, getting the Risings brand from Talas. I buy the 25 sheet pack, and then I'm good for quite a long time. From one sheet I can get sixteen 8" x 10" panels. I usually prepare 5-8 sheets at a time. Its a good idea to have a mat cutter--I bought a Logan several years ago and it was probably the 650 Logan though I can't find a number on it.

I added more information about priming the museum boards to the last post--so if you had questions, there is more detail now on that post.

Purchase this unframed painting.
Contact me if you would like to purchase a plein air frame.

Yuhu Village Dog - SOLD

"Yuhu Village Dog", 8 x 10, Oil on Museum Board
Carol suggested today that I paint a puppy. I was away most of the day and when I came back late in the afternoon I thought, what the heck! Why not? So I dug out my photos of the two dogs owned by the proprietors of the Yuhu Guest House near Lijiang in Yunnan Province, China, where I traveled two years ago with Barry Raybould and Timothy Tien. We spent nearly a week in this wonderful little village beneath the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain painting the countryside and anyone we could convince to sit for us as a model. I painted the other resident dog from a photo a few months ago. The photo I took of this current painting is not great because I had to use studio lighting rather than the daylight from my skylights so I may try to take a better photo tomorrow. The dog was really small and probably really old--definitely not a puppy!