For the first 75 days, see
Click on the thumbnails to see a bigger image:
For the first 50 days, see 100 Day Art Challenge (1) – Day 1 to Day 25, and 100 Day Art Challenge (2) – Day 26 to Day 50.
Click on the thumbnails to see a bigger image:
My site zhisu.art just grows a bit with a new “Gallery” page. Please take a look and click on each image to see more.
I also updated the “About” page, now “Meet the Artist” to expose a little more about me.
Putting oneself out there is not easy, and I will do it one step a time. 🙂
Amedeo Modigliani is an Italian artist famous for his uniquely stylized portraits. I always like his paintings and attempted a study years before. Somehow Modigliani’s Madame Amédée reminded me of my neighbor’s cat, and my original plan was to use the composition of the original painting, and replace the head with that of a cat’s. It didn’t work out and I switched back to the lady. The result wasn’t much of a copy, and you can still see the trace of my deviation.
Original
My copy:
This is another try. This time it was not a copy, but I tried to stylize a self-portrait. I meant to focus on the inner world of subject, but somehow it was all spilled over into the background. As a result I went way beyond his typical palette, which is quite muted.
After learning drawing and painting humans for a while, I find myself even more fascinated by Modigliani’s ability to go beyond realist forms while stay true to the spirit and character of his subjects. I probably will do more studies of Modigliani in future.
For the first 25 days, see 100 Day Art Challenge (1) – Day 1 to Day 25
Click on the thumbnails to see bigger images:
Elegant Writer is a special type of water-soluble marker that bleeds in various colors. They have chiseled nibs and are probably made for calligraphy. I couldn’t remember when I bought my set, but somehow for many years, rarely used them. It’s time to give these markers a chance before they completely dry out.
Black Elegant Writer on paper:
Add water to the above drawing:
Blue and black:
Testing other colors:
A few notes:
I did a watercolor painting on pre-matted rice paper (xuan paper) before, and I tried it again recently with different paints:
A few notes:
I’ve been doing the 100 Day Art Challenge at New Masters Academy for a while. I chose to focus on the figures and portraits for this challenge. Here are the first 25 days of the paintings and drawings I’ve done.
Take a look (click on the thumbnail to see a bigger image) :
The first one is sumi ink, and the second one is ink resist with gouache. Both are on watercolor paper and they are separately composed.
A few notes:
Now a few more words about old paintings. Good watercolor papers are expensive, so I never throw away old paintings, no matter how ugly they are. There are always ways to reuse them:
Found a beautiful book, The Art of Movement by Ken Brewer and Deborah Ory. It’s a collection of dance photography. It’s a great book to study figures and motions. I did some sketches and drawings from it:
The last one is a strange pose. It has an enclosed and squarish quality and a lot of symmetry. The lighting is mainly top-down, making it more grounded and static. It’s not a composition that I would normally choose to work on. On the other hand, there’s a nice contrast between the infinity loop formed by the arm, and zig-zag pattern formed by heads, torso and the legs in the middle. There’s tension and connection between the two dancers at the same time and that’s what I was aiming for when starting the piece. However, as I worked on, and as always, I was distracted by the details, and lost my focus. I think the zigzagging is there, but the details of the hands cut in the flow of the loop. I also think the value contrast is not enough and shapeless. I think this is mainly because I am still copying what I see instead of using it as a reference to create. I hope when I have a better grasp of human figure, I could look beyond the photo and draw my interpretation.
