Portrait of a man, standing.

This is another Rembrandt's painting that I had copied in late July.

Jo's Birthday!

This is for my best friend whose best friend is Ernie. Happy birthday!

Jack's story follow up

My god, it has been so long after my last post! Here are some small paintings I did before I was busied with my latest project. I decided to do small paintings base on the sketches I did for the story "HOW JACK WENT TO SEEK HIS FORTUNE". I love the composition I had in the dog pic.

How Jack Went To Seek His Fortune

In April I promised my sister, Joey, that I would draw something for my niece to color. I heard she likes drawing and messing with colors a lot so I thought I do should something to encourage her wonderful talent despite the fact that she shows great interest in singing and dancing as well. Anyway, I didn't start on doing the drawings until late June. I found an interesting English Fairy Tales titled "HOW JACK WENT TO SEEK HIS FORTUNE" and I thought it would be a good material for a children's book. My niece and her parents just had a trip to an Australia's farm house early this year and I am hoping the story would remind her of the animals she met there.

I had fun doing the drawings although I didn't spend a lot of time on them. One of the reasons was because I wanted to keep it simple and the other was that I needed to get them done as soon as possible. I drew 10 drawings for the story initially, thinking that the last part of the story was too complicated to draw but my second sis, Kim's asked me to draw the part and so I came out with another 5. Turn out I had more fun doing the last part!

Third Copy - The Grasshopper and the Owl

As you probably noticed by now that I did my master copy in a 5.5" x 8.5" sketch book. It is a Strathmore's heavy weight, watercolor sketch book. All paintings here are done in watercolor acrylic.

I came back to Charles Santore's painting for my third master copy. I was fascinated by the red in the painting. I almost never did a painting in red color scheme and the only one that I did wasn't quite successful. This painting looks so simple with its layout and I only realized how complicated it is when I started my copy. It took me about 3 days to finish this painting in my small sketch book. I readjusted the original layout so that it fit into the sketch book. The painting was done on 6.23.09.

Rembrandt's Flora

This is the second copy I did on June 15th 2009. Ever since I am out of school I haven't been able to paint people from life. I always thought about painting still life at home yet I am never motivated enough to do so. Painting from real life is definitely a good way to improve one's painting technique while training the eyes in observing the painted object or subject.

Since I am not going to set up still life at home now, I thought making a copy of a good realistic painting will help too. This second painting is a copy of Rembrandt's painting titled "Flora". Do note that even making a direct copy from the original, I stylized my painting.

Master copy

About five months after I finished my master program, the time that I painted most intensely in finishing my thesis project, I finally had the motivation to do painting again. I decided to start slow, which is to do master copy first.

This is the first one I did, an illustration by Charles Santore, my favorite children's book painter. This is an illustration for the story "The Ox and the Frog" from Aesop's Fables. I was pretty happy with it when I finished the painting but now looking at it again, it is just ok for a master copy. Still, it is a start.