I took an oil workshop from an accomplished artist, Fongwei Liu this month. The focus of this workshop is on people - portrait and figures. Jean was one of the models in our first day. Here is my first live painting of Jean. She is a great model to paint. Fongwei is a great teacher. I've learned a lot of techniques and tips that I can use to improve my paintings of people as well as all other subjects. 
This painting was done a while back. I recently rebrushed it to make the colors more in unity. I like this version better.
The Guadalupe River flows from Canyon Lake to New Braunfels in Texas hill country and continues down to the south to reach the Gulf of Mexico. It is a very popular river for tubing in the summer. Even though the summer gives the most fun time tubing on the river for most of visitors, this river offers unlimited beauty in all seasons. This painting is one scenic spot by the River Road near New Braunfels. 
The River Road is in between New Braunfels and Canyon Lake in Texas hill country. I enjoy driving on this scenic road that has many beautiful spots along the way. This painting is a view from a camping ground with big cypress trees along the river.
We were in Lily Lake of Rocky Mountain National Park one early morning to search for a good spot for our plein air painting. We circled the lake and found this amazing sun ray coming through the pine trees by the lake. This beautiful scene gave me a feeling of heaven on earth. I wanted to paint this picture, but this location was a little too far for me to bring my painting gears over from the parking lot. So I did a mental color study on location and took a few pictures for reference. Here is the painting from my photos and my memory. 
Autumn in Taos is the most beautiful season to see the amazing colors. This painting shows the main road in Arroyo Seco in the northern Taos with the backdrop of Taos Mountain. We had fun to shop in one of the gift shops here and bought a few things to take home. I gave this painting to my dear friend Cheryl as a birthday present. 
I love Karen Vance's paintings. This is a study after one of her paintings. This peaceful winter country road with a warm glow in the distance took my breath away. 
A group of artists (we called ourselves Texas Paint Slingers) had a paint-out at the historical Mission San Jose in San Antonio in October. I chose the dome church as my subject. It was interesting to see each artist rendered a different painting even though several of us standing in the same angle. 
She is leading the way for her dance team. These girls were perfoming in the Asian Festival held during Chinese New Year each year in San Antonio, Texas. Do you feel their dance movement?
Alice sitting in her mom's living room enjoyed a cup of coffee by the window. The warm light coming from the window makes her in half shadow and half light. 
After a long hot summer in Texas this year we are happy to see autumn is here with much cooler temperature and fresh air. To celebrate the season of autumn I painted this one of spider chrysanthermums. Don't you love the turquoise spots to cool down the overwhelming warm colors?
I was standing on a bridge in the River Side Park in Estes Park, Colorodo and did this outdoors painting. The background is an old building for shopping and dinning.
Myra and I are early birds. We went to Lily Lake by Estes Park one early morning. During our walk around the lake the warm morning sun was amazingly beautiful coming through the pine trees. I settled in the picnic area and did this painting of the rocky mountain by the lake. During the chat with some other folks in the picnic area we found out that everyone there came from Texas. We all tried to get away from the heat wave in Texas this summer and hided out in Colorado. 
This is a cute store front in Estes Park, Colorado. I did this painting in memory of the ten years anniversay of 9/11 - a sad history in America and mankind. I tried to post this painting to my blog since 9/10/2011 and got an error message. I tried all different ways and finally got a work around to post it here. A message was sent to Google Picasa help and hope they can fix it. 
Billy, a very nice young fellow, moved into a lovely home recently. He asked me to paint a big oil painting with something about San Antonio to hang on the top of his fire place. What else would be better than the famous San Antonio River Walk. This painting shows the most popular area on the river - the Ameson Theater. Many performance and special programs are held in the Ameson Theater through out the year. It is fun to visit the River Walk in all seasons especially in the Christmas time. Ya'll come to visit. 
He is Ron Watkins. Ron was our model a few weeks ago in our portrait group. Ron, an accomplished artist, does outstanding portrait paintings in oil. It was fun to paint the artist himself. During the break Ron gave me some ideas on mixing colors for skin tones. I surely appreciated his guidance. I think I've captured his likeness in this painting. Ron said that I painted him a little mean looking. It was fun to paint a guy.
It looks like she is waiting for something. I would like to title this painting "Waiting". Ming is a friend of mine, a very nice lady, and also a dancer plus many other talents. Wearing her lovely dance costume Ming was a model for our portrait group a few weeks ago. We get a live model each month and paint our own medium and style. The painting session is 3 hours. I then finished it up in my studio. I hope I've captured her likeness.
My sisters and I visited the International Floral Show in Taipei in November 2010. It was amazing to see so many beautiful flower exhibition with millions of fresh flowers in several parks. We felt in love with variety of orchids in all different colors that took my breath away. This was truly a life time experience with this amazing show. We spent the entire day there and only saw about 2/3 of the exhibitions. I painted this one using the photos I took at the show.
I asked my college friend Jean to look over the paintings in my blog and select one of her choice. She chose this one. I then did some brush up to make it more presentable as you see it over here. Jean and her husband Roy were very happy to see it arrive in their home. I am glad to see this painting found a nice home in California. 
This painting of "Sunflowers - Bright Up Your Day" is for my dear friends Edna and Ping. I've known them for more than 30 years in San Antonio. Last month they decided to move to Dallas to close to their sons. I hope this paint would bring cheers everyday in their new home. 
She is my little sister, Jinyin. Here she was at the beach bathing by the afternoon sun. Six of us siblings and their spouses went to visit Kending National Park in southern Taiwan in the fall of 2010. We stayed in a beautiful beach front hotel named "Chateau". It was a fun and memoriable trip. We enjoyed the ocean breeze and most of all each other's company. 
Painting sunflowers is almost every artist's must-do journey. An artist friend told me about how he judges an artist's art based on how an artist paints sunflowers. He looked at this painting and told me that my sunflowers are definately making the grade. I am glad to hear that. 
The Battle of Flowers Parade was held during the Fiesta Festival in San Antonio every year in April. It was one of the largest parades in US. It has marching bands, horses, dancers, and many fun characters. All floats were decorated with bright colors and flowers. It was fun to enjoy a day or a week in San Antonio during Fiesta. This beautiful Spanish lady on horse was waving to the crowd. Don't you just love her dress and her hat? I surly do.
