Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Complete

Finally completely finished with this piece. Spent 2 days building the frame and I am pretty satisfied with it. Few nooks and crannies that I'm not quite satisfied with but that's just me, always trying to be perfect. Learn through experience and hopefully it wont happen again in the future.
This piece was commissioned by a lovely lady that comes to the restaurant about once a week and I'm always her server. She asked me to do a piece that she wanted to give to her son and his partner. She gave me lots of freedom in terms of style and what I wanted to do. She only asked me that it's something asian and not the typical traditional chinese art. She also gave me a few pictures of her son's house and I was blown away by how pretty it was and how much artworks decorate his walls. And I feel at ease and easier to let go of this painting knowing that my art will be hung at a home that appreciates art.
After a few weeks of communication, everything was a go and lead to this result.








There were three main categories that I had to consider in coming up with this piece. Subject matter, color, and symbolism.
Since this piece is intended to be given to a son by his mother, I thought it was very appropriate to have the Chinese lioness and her cub as my subject matter. The pair literally represent mother and child but it also represent affection and life. It seems like the client's son means the whole world to her and she loves him dearly.
As for the color, the client told me she loves green/teal/aqua color range and that gave me the idea to represent the lions as jade. For the background, I wanted to do something that's very reddish/earth tone because the house that will be hanging this art is pretty dark, earthy, and some red to it. Pretty much very earth tone so it was too obvious for me to do it in that color scheme and it helps to pop out the green since it's on the opposite side of the spectrum.
For the symbolism, I decided to do water lily. At first, I knew I needed something to balance everything together. And in the early stage, I imagined my lions walking on water and the water lily automatically came to my head. And lucky me, half way through the painting, the client asked me to throw in some floral because her son's partner is a florist and she wanted the partner to enjoy this painting as well. To me, water lily represents overcoming obstacles, emerging of life and beauty. I'm not saying it was a burden for the client to raise her kid, but I'm sure there was a great obstacle for her to raise him to what he is today. Water lilies starts from the very bottom of the pond where nasty mud is the main ingredient. Through time, the sprout slowly swims through the water and eventually reaches to the surface of the water and bloom a beautiful blossom. What's ironic is that, something that starts from mud can eventually turn into something so beautiful. It's like the story of the ugly duckling turning into a beautiful swan.

Enjoy!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Commissioned Work

14"x21" Acrylic and Ink on paper

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Framing

So I am finished with the painting and I spent the day making a frame and here are some pics I want to share with you all.

Here's my ghetto saw table. Constructed a somewhat stable table and bolted an electric hand saw underneath the table. And I am scared of this thing.

Used shoe strings to grip the trigger "on." The saw is plugged up to a socket with a switch, this way, I can just switch it on and off.

Finished sawing the pieces.

This is what the frame will look like in profile view (pretend the piece of wood sticking out is the glass panel.) And I used a "3 piece" design instead of a "one piece" design. One piece is MUCH sturdier but takes forever to saw (consider i'm using a ghetto, non-adjustable saw table). 3 piece is easier to construct but not as sturdy as one piece b/c I'll have to use glue and screws.

Corner clamping.


And this is what it loos like when it's done clamping. I also put screws on the corner of the frame to screw them into each other. Next step, fill holes and cracks with wood putty and sand them smooth.

Here's a completed corner. Filled with wood putty and sanded down smooooooth. Perfect corner.

And it's done! I got it primed and will be spray painting tomorrow.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Progress


Almost done. Just have to finishing inking and punch out values and highlights and we'll see what else from there.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Side work

A piece I am currently working on. Don't know how much I've completed but I think I still have a long way to go. So far, I'm just letting the paint brush doing the thinking and my hand following trough.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Happy Birthday, Mom.

A little present I did for my Mom's birthday.




Monday, September 14, 2009

Finally...

I believe I am finally finished with this piece.

Without You I'd Be Lost
22"x30" Acrylic and Ink on Paper

Thursday, September 3, 2009

w00t!

As you all know (And I'm referring to the 3 followers I have) that I work at a fairly nice Chinese fusion restaurant. Well, about a month ago, a food critique from Charlotte Weekly came to review our restaurant. This was his second visit and I had the pleasure to serve him both visits. To cut the story short, I did one hell of a job taking care of him and he wrote a nice little article on the restaurant (5 out of five stars!) and I was very surprised he mentioned my name a few times...more than my manager AND the restaurant itself, hahaha. Anyways, you can read the article here.
BUT!!! The most important thing. When the photographer came to take pictures of our food, I was making some small chat with the photographer and got him to take a few pics of the bull stencil artwork that I have hanging in the restaurant and the editor end up using it as the background. w00t w00t!!!

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Day 5 & 6