When I was in Houston, I signed up for an evening Chinese watercolor painting program. The venue was in the instructor's gallery in Chinatown. The instructor was an old Chinese man, probably in the mid 70's, who was also the owner of his gallery and taught in Rice University. Before the class started, he did a painting demonstration for us. It was an amazing black ink landscape painting which he just finished within a few short minutes in front of our eyes. Wow. I was eager to learn to paint like him.
To our astonishment, in our first class, our only assignment for the next 1 hour was to draw straight lines with our brushes. There were 5 of us students. I'm sure we all gave him that look "A 3-year old can do that, why are we paying our hard-earned money to learn it?". The old man explained that Chinese paintings were made of stokes, and strokes started from straight lines. To make an even straight line with a brush, you had to first relax and use Qi principle from start to finish. Making straight lines with a brush on rice paper were really not as easy as it seemed. One hour later, I had a stack paper of straight lines. Ok. I was getting better with the lines. Big deal. Enough of that, what's next?
In our next class, we were each given a nickle to put on top of our hands. Our assignment for the next 1 hour was to draw straight lines and circles with a coin staying on top of our hands. In the beginning, the coin kept dropping with each of my hand movement. Remember we had to hold the brush and in the meanwhile draw lines and circles. The coin forced you to slow down and to focus even you wanted to go faster. But who in the right mind would buy those stack pages of straight lines and circles?
Needless to say I never went back for the 3rd class. There was no refund for rest of my tuitions paid. I didn't think that instructor or his class was a total scam. It was just me. I was not cut out for the slow Chinese learning regiment. I went home and started drawing clouds. I remembered someone once told me that clouds were the easiest things to draw because clouds came with all random shapes and patterns. You couldn't go wrong with painting clouds. It turned out to be so true. I was satisfied at my first try of cloud painting without even having to learn a thing. As long as I stayed away from what the old Chinese man taught me about straight lines and circles, or any symmetric patterns I assume the old Chinese man was about to teach next, my clouds on the paper look just like the clouds in the sky. Boohoo! I felt free like a could, free at last!
I don't know what the morale of this story is but at least I can tell you this. If you don't want to study long and hard to learn how to paint, go paint clouds.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
On Colors
I remember to this date the discussions we had during one of the art classes I attended in my high school years. The topics are : What is your favorite color? What you think is the most beautiful color? What you think is the ugliest color? After the heated debate, this became clear to me:
- Every color is equally beautiful. No color is ugly by itself (Think about yourself) .
- While no color is ugly by itself, some colors become ugly when in combination with other color/colors. There is just ugly color combination. "Ugly" in the sense that they don't go well together (Think about your ex/exes you left behind). The reason why they don't go well together is that they are not presented in the nature so our eyes are not accustomed to (Think that you and your ex/exes are not meant to be in the first place).
- If you don't know how to combine colors, go outside to draw inspiration from the nature. White clouds on blue sky, yellow dandelions on green grass, rainbow... Red and green color combination has been tabooed by Chinese. I knew then that was so biased. Red roses on green leaves. Da?
Then I had better understanding on colors when I worked for a Hong-Kong based printing company. In their printing factory, there are two types of color printing machines: one is three-color printer and the other is four-color printer. All the colors on the color wheel are derived from 3 colors: not counting black, magenta-red, yellow and cyan-blue; or 4 primary color themes: magenta-red, cyan-blue, yellow and black. By changing the color percentage, you get a different color theme in a color wheel (Think about changing your attitude or lowering your standard for more options). From there you can find a whole spandex of color family and color harmony (Think about your family and your 100 closest friends). However, there is a group of stubborn colors that no other colors can mix into. They don't easily match with other colors. If you have one of those colors in your design, the printing company will charge you for a separate film cost (Think about those eccentric people you know). Those are specialty colors such as gold, silver, bronze...(Think about those of your rich relatives who have never lent you a dime.)
Often, colors are described as cold and warm as how we relate to the outside weather, as calm or lively as how we relate to our inner mood, or as soothing or loud as how we relate to music. Being color-blind is considered disability. Oops! Aren't we supposed to be color-blind when it comes to people?!
I read a joke in the Reader's Digest many years ago. A man walks into a bar. After sitting down with the drinking menu, "You have Blue Hawaiian and White Russian. What is the difference?" The man asks. "Da, color?" The bartender says.
Color is so essential to art, and to life for that matter. I won't be a bit surprised if one day this is in our dollar bills: In color, we trust.
- Every color is equally beautiful. No color is ugly by itself (Think about yourself) .
- While no color is ugly by itself, some colors become ugly when in combination with other color/colors. There is just ugly color combination. "Ugly" in the sense that they don't go well together (Think about your ex/exes you left behind). The reason why they don't go well together is that they are not presented in the nature so our eyes are not accustomed to (Think that you and your ex/exes are not meant to be in the first place).
- If you don't know how to combine colors, go outside to draw inspiration from the nature. White clouds on blue sky, yellow dandelions on green grass, rainbow... Red and green color combination has been tabooed by Chinese. I knew then that was so biased. Red roses on green leaves. Da?
Then I had better understanding on colors when I worked for a Hong-Kong based printing company. In their printing factory, there are two types of color printing machines: one is three-color printer and the other is four-color printer. All the colors on the color wheel are derived from 3 colors: not counting black, magenta-red, yellow and cyan-blue; or 4 primary color themes: magenta-red, cyan-blue, yellow and black. By changing the color percentage, you get a different color theme in a color wheel (Think about changing your attitude or lowering your standard for more options). From there you can find a whole spandex of color family and color harmony (Think about your family and your 100 closest friends). However, there is a group of stubborn colors that no other colors can mix into. They don't easily match with other colors. If you have one of those colors in your design, the printing company will charge you for a separate film cost (Think about those eccentric people you know). Those are specialty colors such as gold, silver, bronze...(Think about those of your rich relatives who have never lent you a dime.)
Often, colors are described as cold and warm as how we relate to the outside weather, as calm or lively as how we relate to our inner mood, or as soothing or loud as how we relate to music. Being color-blind is considered disability. Oops! Aren't we supposed to be color-blind when it comes to people?!
I read a joke in the Reader's Digest many years ago. A man walks into a bar. After sitting down with the drinking menu, "You have Blue Hawaiian and White Russian. What is the difference?" The man asks. "Da, color?" The bartender says.
Color is so essential to art, and to life for that matter. I won't be a bit surprised if one day this is in our dollar bills: In color, we trust.
Friday, August 7, 2009
pingyima website is launched!
I've been glued to my chair in front of the computer for the past two days. Alas, the new website is almost done! I have not assigned a domain name to it yet but for new it's linked to my real estate website http://www.pingsun.com/. Here is the URL to the site directly: http://www.pingsun.com/pingyima. Before settling at the name pingyima which means Aunti Ping in Chinese (my American name as called by my two world's best nephews aged between 2-4 years old), I thought about keeping the same name as Ping Art Loft or Ping Loft I used before. But pingyima sounds more interesting as with yo yo ma, not that we are faintly related or whatever. So far, I'm happy with the design I came up with. It's colorful and playful, not zen as I originally intended to do. I still have to find space somewhere on the site to put the following mission statement:
We can not guarantee our things are the cheapest but we guarantee every one of them is original, one and only, and worth every penny of it. If our "things" appear a little inexpensive to some people, get over it. Suck it up. You only live once. We are responsible for any missing shipments but we are not responsible for your medical bills from banging against the wall if you miss out your buying opportunity. As all the pieces exhibited at pingyima site are the one and only originals, they are sold on the first come and first serve basis.
The goal of pingyima is..nothing, zero, nada. The paintings exhibited at pingyima site are either produced by myself or purchased from the artists directly by me for own satisfaction. The site is launched for the same purpose or the purposeless. Rather than a caricature, the Asian paintings presented at pingyima often leave some elements to the viewers' imagination. In fact, professional painters who produce realistic versions of their subject are not always as highly regarded as the scholar painters (or literati) who paint for their own satisfaction in a more "spiritual" style. Especially, in today's widely available photo technology era, this oriental art form is more and more appreciated. Yeah, I've done just about enough self-promoting by now. As you can see, that self-promoting effort is also evident in the twitter and facebook link on pingyima site. The twitter link is not working because I have not signed up on twitter, but I will, someday. The facebook link has the upcoming event announcement so far, but there will be more to come. I'm not exactly in the twitter and facebook generation. Remember the good old days when we used to try so hard hiding that little book we call diary that records every little happenings in our daily life, so hard as to sometimes draw symbols and create our own language so that in case the diary was found, it would not be understood by others. Now you publicize your diary. Go twitter. Remember the good old days we used to collect stamps. Now we collect friends. Go facebook. Sorry my twitter and facebook members, I don't mean to sound sarcastic because I'm one of you - the facebook and twitter people myself. It's just that life itself becomes an open book with the shift of the changing culture and technology. We follow the next thing like sunflowers turning towards the sun: no exposure is over exposure for individuals as well as businesses. Monks no longer need to seek solitude in the high mountains meditating for years. They get people pay to sit with them in group power meditation. Time has definitely changed. If you want to go with the time, and if it's for the good-spirited sharing and connecting, and best of all making a few bucks while doing it, why not. With that, pingyima website is launched.
We can not guarantee our things are the cheapest but we guarantee every one of them is original, one and only, and worth every penny of it. If our "things" appear a little inexpensive to some people, get over it. Suck it up. You only live once. We are responsible for any missing shipments but we are not responsible for your medical bills from banging against the wall if you miss out your buying opportunity. As all the pieces exhibited at pingyima site are the one and only originals, they are sold on the first come and first serve basis.
The goal of pingyima is..nothing, zero, nada. The paintings exhibited at pingyima site are either produced by myself or purchased from the artists directly by me for own satisfaction. The site is launched for the same purpose or the purposeless. Rather than a caricature, the Asian paintings presented at pingyima often leave some elements to the viewers' imagination. In fact, professional painters who produce realistic versions of their subject are not always as highly regarded as the scholar painters (or literati) who paint for their own satisfaction in a more "spiritual" style. Especially, in today's widely available photo technology era, this oriental art form is more and more appreciated. Yeah, I've done just about enough self-promoting by now. As you can see, that self-promoting effort is also evident in the twitter and facebook link on pingyima site. The twitter link is not working because I have not signed up on twitter, but I will, someday. The facebook link has the upcoming event announcement so far, but there will be more to come. I'm not exactly in the twitter and facebook generation. Remember the good old days when we used to try so hard hiding that little book we call diary that records every little happenings in our daily life, so hard as to sometimes draw symbols and create our own language so that in case the diary was found, it would not be understood by others. Now you publicize your diary. Go twitter. Remember the good old days we used to collect stamps. Now we collect friends. Go facebook. Sorry my twitter and facebook members, I don't mean to sound sarcastic because I'm one of you - the facebook and twitter people myself. It's just that life itself becomes an open book with the shift of the changing culture and technology. We follow the next thing like sunflowers turning towards the sun: no exposure is over exposure for individuals as well as businesses. Monks no longer need to seek solitude in the high mountains meditating for years. They get people pay to sit with them in group power meditation. Time has definitely changed. If you want to go with the time, and if it's for the good-spirited sharing and connecting, and best of all making a few bucks while doing it, why not. With that, pingyima website is launched.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
