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September 11, 2008

I haven't come in to update for a while but I have been busy cranking the paintings out. Although this is a bit of short notice, I am going to be in the Queen West Art Crawl this weekend. I am very excited about this as this is my first time showing at this venue and also I will be showing a new body of oil painting works.

Date:      Saturday September 13th & Sunday September 14th
Location: Trinity Bellwoods Park (790 Queen St. West @ Strachan               Ave.)
Time:      11:00 am - 6:00 pm
Booth #:  C09

If you are around the neighbourhood, come out and enjoy the weekend! Oh, the below picture on right is a map of the park; it indicates where I will be. Cheers!

   



I suppose while I am updating this, I should really show you some other stuff... my studio pics, for example.

 




Over the past two years I have been thinking about how colours have such an important role in painting, as opposed to lines with drawing. I really try my best to hone my colour sense and work on my colour range. Here is a shot of my work table set up for oil paintingon the left, and on the right it is my so-called colour databank — that's all the colours I've mixed for the past two weeks! I save the colours for a period of time just in case I need to do some touch-up work, or when I have to re-mix a certain colours for whatever reason. The larger photo is a progress shot of my works from three months ago. Now they are all done and will be in the Art Crawl show in two days. I can hardly wait!

March 26, 2008

Many apologies!! My website disappeared completely for three weeks without notice until two days ago. I am sorry it happened but my website's server died and a laptop has been in its place to be a temporary solution. I understand that there are some of you out there keep checking back to this site so my most sincere apology to you all. I will be looking into an alternative server very soon (hopefully it will be stable and robust).

I hope I can make up with a more substantial update today. It has been a very productive run for me for the past three weeks. Have been going into the studio constantly and working on more oil paintings. Here's a quick-and-dirty parorama shot of my studio from last week.

 


I would say that it's not exactly organized but it wasn't utter chaos either. :-) The left side is my material shelf with, among other things, some reference books I have been amassing over the past three years. I have set up a Julian easel for my oil painting needs because it does the job of holding small panels perfectly. On the far right, there are two watercolour studies of my friend Myly Pham. I am going to incorporate her image into a new piece of work later on.

For the two new oil pieces I have done (including the frontis piece on the left of this page), please check out the gallery.


January 12, 2008

Hi there! Just a quickie update. I am in a group show at Ben Navaee Gallery right now on Queen Street East. Its address is 1111 Queen Street East and it's opened everyday from 1pm to 5pm. It runs from Jan 12 till 18. It's a drawing show and there are a few good drawings in there by other artists as well. If you are around the neighbourhood please check it out. The space is beautiful. Below is a digital flyer.

 


Oh and by the way, two doors down from the gallery there is the most amazing sushi place called "Sushi Marché" and they have the best sashimi my family has ever had in Toronto. Note that they are take-out only.

I am working on some oil paintings now and it's great to go back to this medium which I used quite a bit in my graduate years. I am doing several layers and each layer has to be dry before the next one goes on so they are all taking a bit more time to make. Stay tuned and come back next month; I am sure I have something to show you then. Cheerios.


December 19, 2007

Oh man oh man. Time flew right by and no time to update! Have been dabbling into computer, watercolour, ink drawing to coagulate some ideas for my next series of works. Went to New York for a bit to meet up with some of the old friends, watched No Country for Old Men (Highly recommended if you like brooding movies! More info here)

Just want to present a smorgasbord of things I am mucking around with these days to you... A sampling if you will... :-) 

 

 




Lemme see here. I got two watercolour sketches that I am working on, hoping to turn them into paintings. Trying to build a city model on Blender and it's taking forever. Last but not least, took some photos for architectural references when I was in New York; I was in Dumbo checking out the massive structure of the Manhattan bridge. Saw the Martin Puryear show at the MOMA and the physicality and his attention to detail in relations to the scale of his sculptures are staggering. Really nothing short of awesomeness.

Got to get back to the studio. I hope that when it comes to January, I have some finished works to show you. Happy Christmas and new year as well!


September 20, 2007

Hi y'all. This is going to be a teeny update as I don't have much to show. Currently I've been working on sketches for new etching plates and they are taking quite a while.

I have finally found a studio space where I can concentrate and work on my stuff. In fact, I am sharing it with an extremely talented artist and good friend, Luke Painter, whose site I would like you to check out. Here is his site.

Below are pictures of what the studio looks like.

 


It looks a bit bare but for my use it's perfect. Since I have to bring my etching plate to a printmaker studio to crank out the prints anyway, I really don't need much to set up shop on my own.

As you can see there is my sketchbook in the second picture. All my sketches for all the prints are jot down in this sketchbook first. I find the sketchbook size very portable but sometimes it falls short when I need to draw something more immense. In such cases I often tack an extra sheet of paper onto my sketchbook to give it more space to draw (also shown in the picture).

Also another good thing about the studio is that it faces north and I got the so-called "north light". Painters love this north light because it lasts through the day and it's constantly diffused; as opposed to lights shining from either east or west, which are harsh lights and don't last through the whole daytime. North light thus gives a painter some consistency when he works on his paintings in regards to their lighting condition.

That rounds up this update's "shop talk". :-) See you in October!


July 27, 2007

The Outdoor Exhibition was great! I got to meet up with a lot of old friends and thanks to those who came! The response to my new works has been very enthusiastic and I am really excited with the new possibility that comes with etching. The quality of lines is what I have been seeking for for a long time and now I think I've found a good medium. I will be continuing to work with this medium for a while and hopefully I can get more works up soon.

Here are some of the new prints that I've just scanned in. They were shown at the exhibition.

On the Sunday it was pouring for quite a bit heavy with thunderstorm mixed in. I was glad I prepared some plastic covers to cover up my works. It's actually kind of fun scrambling around trying to cover this and that! :-) 

Okey dokey. It's time to head back to the studio! Bye for now!


June 18, 2007

Once again I will be doing the Outdoor Art Exhibition in July. For those who don't know, it's an exhibition being held at downtown Toronto core every year in the summer for three days, rain or shine. 500 artists convene and promote their artworks. It's a juried application so most of the time there would be 1500 applicants every year! It's always fun to meet many people from all walks of life who are interested in art and also many other colleagues.

This year I will be selling some prints at the show. Below's a map (96Kb) for you. I am right next to the Stage, smack in the center of the Nathan Phillips Square. The show is on the 6th, 7th and 8th of July.



I've two more prints to show you here. These two, along with the other two that I 've updated last time, will be available at the exhibition.

Well, this's it for now, folks! Hopefully I will see you at the show in July! :-) Cheers!


May 1, 2007

I can't believe four months just flew by like that. Finally we are having some spring days in Toronto, it sure is nice.

Update has been sparse but it doesn't mean I was slacking. I have been exploring printmaking as a means to my art and the frontis piece you are seeing on this page is one of them. I have a bigger version of that piece and another small one waiting for you in the art gallery here.

I will be making more works in this medium, hopefully they will be up soon. The intaglio process is laborious, so prints come off the press very slowly!

Hope you are enjoying the springtime! :-)


Dec 27, 2006

Phew! Finally I got some time to sit down to update the website. But first of all I would want to apologize for the downtime for the website as the server was having some problem during October and it wasn't accessible at the time. The problem has been fixed and it shouldn't go down again (knocking on wood).

Even though update has been sparse on the website end, I did commit on working on more drawings. You can see some of my new drawings here. In this coming January I am going to take an etching class and hopefully I can transform my drawings into some nice etching prints. I couldn't wait, to be honest!!

During summertime I went away to this city in Japan called Ishinomaki, in the prefecture of Miyagi. It was a small little city but it had some nice scenery. I also went to a place called Nikko, where there were some really baroque-looking temples; I highly recommend this place as a must-go for travelling. Below are some of the photos that I took, except for the first one, which is an aerial photo of Ishinomaki-shi from year 1984 that I dug up from Google.

Well, that's it for now. Have a happy new year, folks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For previous entries, please click here