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Repainting the Green House with the Pier

foggy-morning-pier

I started to paint the green house and the pier on a foggy day. The interweaving of light and dark under the pier, reflection, different lines and shapes, and muted colors motivated me to paint this view.  However, the view did not translate well into the painting.

gray-day-painting

Repeated small shapes and muted colors made the painting dull. The light cerulean blue top was an attempt to introduce cooler tone to otherwise gray and warm surroundings.  It somewhat helped the painting but that was not enough.  After painting into the evening, most of the issues were still not resolved.

painting-sunny-day

I revisited the painting a day later with a fresher look. Inspired by the sun, I decided to warm the gray to match the surrounding. The busy pier was simplified. The right-hand side house was changed to a darker color.  The deck was removed to get rid of the problematic diagonal. Fish totes were redrawn as larger shapes. The foreground was updated with more details and a few lines to make it interesting.

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The painting is getting better than a few days ago but I thought it still needed a strong line somewhere. I found a solution from a Stuart Davis’s work “The Blue Cafe“.  It has a few lines and a musical note on the sky. It was a floating shape but without it, the sky would have been void. I took the inspiration from this musical note and created 2 short dark horizontal wires with different heights below the top wire.  I was happy with this ending.

Image published on July 22, 2017 | | Leave a response

No Architecture Day

rocks-painting

The third day, I was painting the green house and the pier but I was struggling to keep it interesting. I decided to paint a few hours in the evening to fix it but I failed. The next day I decided to leave the architecture painting alone and paint something unrelated.

I went back to where I painted the boat but the boat was gone so I decided to paint the rock wall. I looked at two paintings to get inspiration for my work. Nicolas De Stael’s “Composition” from the Metropolitan museum and Egon Schiele’s “Schiele’s Room in Neulengbach”

rocks-and-pillars

These two paintings gave me ideas on simplifying my composition of the rock wall and the color scheme. I enlarged one of the rock and built everything around it as supporting shapes. Two vertical pillars were kept to offset many rectangles shapes in the painting. Most of the colors were gray, therefore I borrowed a red line from the nearby building and put it on the top of the rocks.  A thin yellow line was added on the top to connect the top and the bottom.  Finally, a creamy white surrounding frame was added to open the confined space around this clustered structure.

Image published on July 20, 2017 | | Leave a response

Bill’s Green Boat

bill-boat-painting

A green boat under repair anchored between the rocks caught my attention. I spent a few hours drawing it. When I was in the spot to paint the boat the next day, the boat has already moved from the tide and now it was facing the opposite direction. I decided to stay with the drawing and make minor changes based on the current observation.

bill-boat-green

The misty fog and the pale ground inspired me to introduce blue color. However, boat’s green color and the rock’s blue color were clashing. I have recently visited Marsden Hartley’s Maine Exhibition at the Colby Museum of Art. His colors are bold and dark and he often uses blue, white and black.

bill-boat-black

Hartley’s colors inspired me to introduce these colors into my painting. I used the dark green and black to replace the problematic green color in the boat. The background was changed to pure white with the black border at the bottom. A few lines in the foreground was introduced to connect it to the boat. One of the lines was changed to orange color to complement the blue and I called this painting done. I was very happy to have worked with white and black inspired by Marsden Hartley’s work.

Image published on July 18, 2017 | | Leave a response

Lobster Co-op and Oil Tanks

lobstercoop-painting

It was a foggy morning; the fog keeps on lifting for a short period only to return again.  I sat on the rocks close to the Ferry building looking across the water towards a red building and a few oil tanks. I have painted this view in 2009.  However, it looks different with the newly finished red building.

lobsterco-op-oil-tanks

With the fog rolling in and out and silver gray oil tanks against the gray sky, this was not visually interesting. I decided to change the oil tanks to a dark green color.  This changed the tank shape to be a large dense block, therefore a horizontal line opening was needed to keep the space breathing.  A cooler toned staircase was also added to divide the large tank shape.

Image published on July 17, 2017 | | Leave a response

Inspired by Green and Blue

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I have been keeping an eye on this view of the green house on the pier for many years in hopes that I will get to paint it someday.  However there was no safe public area to setup to paint this view.  Luckily, this week it was accessible from one of my friend’s porch; I was thrilled.

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When composing this painting, I took liberty to change the size of the buildings and the pier to avoid large negative space.  The ladder was enlarged, the green house and the pier were shortened and the pillars were simplified.  As I was painting this, I realized the green color of the house was very hard to work with.  I had to change it to different shades of green multiple times to work with the surrounding.   Introducing a much darker color for one of the buildings also helped to balance the green building.  I was very happy with the end result, Thursday was a good day.

Friday was the last day for painting this week in Maine.  It arrived early.  I had done some sketches of the rocks from the ledge on Tuesday and thought it will be a good way to depart from architectural painting for a day.  I placed two big rocks first then the surrounding edges were carefully composed to bring in the negative space.  Other smaller rocks were naturally formed while painting and there were plenty of variety of rocks lying around for inspiration.

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Choosing the right shape of the house took me some time.  There were many houses in sight, but to balance the busy and curvy rocks, I thought it needed the simplest house.  I ended up using the closest blue house and using windows and its colors from other houses around.  A single house seemed too quiet and lonely.  I thought of adding a fence, however a utility pole seemed more fitting and whimsical.   This painting turned out to be one of my favorite paintings from this week.  It was a great way to end a wonderful painting journey in Maine.


Here are all my work from a week of painting trip in Stonington this year.  I am already looking forward to my next trip.

Image published on July 18, 2015 | | Leave a response

The Stonington Pier through the years

I have been painting this pier from the ledge since 2009. There is something about this place that I crave to visit and paint every year when I am in Stonington, Maine.

As I sit down on the ledge; I would turn around and notice in every corner an inspiration for painting – lobster boats float quietly, little islands and piers break the horizon and the houses in a distant hills would stand tall. The sound of the water’s rise-and-fall and the cries of seagulls are rhythmic and musical, while the view the ledge’s covering and uncovering from the water and the hill’s appearing and disappearing through the fog are mysterious and magical. It’s poetic.

Designing the postcard for my upcoming show made me realize that I have painted this pier a few times since 2009. Looking back at these works, I noticed that each time the pier in my painting looks a little different. I decided to reflect on the changes in these paintings.

5. 2009

Under the Pier – 2009

This earliest work in 2009 is quieter, colors are harmonious. It is a more realistic view of the pier compared to my recent work. The painting has influence from my watercolor experience. The range of colors and their values are much narrower. The drawing is very close to the real pier as I used to meticulously draw what I see.

4. underthepier2011

Under the Pier, 2011

Instead of faithfully copying from observation, I started to edit my work with more analysis. For instance, the right side of the pier ended up with fewer pillars and the buoys were added from somewhere else. Colors became bolder and richer in 2011. I started to use more black. Values were also fuller. Even though colors were still harmonious but brush strokes became more noticeable and substantial.

1. 2014underpier

Stonington House on the Ledge – 2014

Last year I went back to the same ledge and painted the pier again. Since I have been painting a lot of townscapes for the past few years in Northampton and other places in Massachusetts, the architectural elements became the focus in the composition of the painting. I have become much more comfortable with adding my own voice to the painting. For instance, in the painting the green lawn became a mysterious geometric shape, and the water and the wall would blend in seamlessly to surround the pier. Besides playing with architectural designs, colors have also gotten bolder and more personal.

Looking at these three paintings, I noticed that I have taken more liberty with my own work now. I no longer need to faithfully copy what’s out there.

Image published on March 24, 2015 | | Leave a response

Portland Pier and Salon

Portland Pier

Portland Pier

Painting in the morning

I decided to visit Portland for a painting weekend. A row of old white/gray buildings on the pier, working fishermen, fishing boats, buoys and a group of loud seagulls make Portland waterfront very lively. The geometric and abstract nature of colorful patches of woodblocks on these gray building and reconstructed windows and doors really attracted me to this place.

Saturday’s weather was between sunny and cloudy but I was able to draw and paint for a few hours. I focused on the colorful abstract woodblocks. This portion of the building had at least 5 windows in a row. Since I already had many geometric colorful shapes, I had to edit most of these windows out except for a small square window. The painting turned out more simplified, but more abstract. It is still in progress.

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It has been raining since early morning today. I decided to stay inside the car and painted instead of being on the pier in the rain. I zoomed in to a salon across the street and started to work on simplified geometric shapes of yellow windows and doors. I kept the lamppost but removed all the windows above the salon. The surrounding blue gray color was borrowed from the next building which seemed more suitable than the regular brick color. This painting seemed very flat at the moment and will need more work. I am planning on revisiting Portland.

Image published on September 21, 2014 | | Leave a response

Few Summer Days in Stonington

It felt wonderful to be back in Stonington this summer, even though the painting trip lasted only three days.  Mystical fog and some rain kept the first day  interesting for photography and for painting.  I painted from looking out the window.  Every few minutes the fog would lift, my view kept on changing.

The second day I went back to my favorite ledge and focused on the dock.  Recent architectural paintings have lead the structure of this work to be more geometric.  Green trees and lawn became shapes.  Rocks, however retained its natural shapes to play off with surrounding geometric structures.   It ended up to be one of my favorite painting from Maine this year.

The third day I wanted to do a painting of the houses in town.  I started out with drawing and composing each house carefully.  The painting was not complete and it needed a lot more editing.  I would have to go back some time later this year to finish it.

Image published on July 26, 2014 | | Leave a response