Today, at the insistence of a friend, I took an afternoon with Bob Ross and learned how to paint ‘happy little trees, rocks, and mountains.’ My finished project isn’t a masterpiece, but it only took an hour which is pretty cool. Also, as I’m considering opening a studio, this kind of easy landscape is a great thing for beginners to learn how to play with paint.

I’ve decided it’s ok to swear because I don’t think many people visit my blog anyway; I’ve been using facebook a lot and it’s way better for letting people see what I’m working on. Today, as I sometimes do when I’ve been painting and I cross from “this looks terrible, I’m not sure I can pull it off” to “Damn, I’m awesome”, I realized that I am the shit. In 5 years I will have galleries and collectors around the world begging for a piece of the action. There are other great artists, doing other great stuff, and many are …

How to paint portraits with oils. Tip: Oil paintings rarely look smooth and natural up close. Frequently take 4 or 5 big steps back, to see what your piece really looks like. 1) Select a great picture with deep shadows. Painting a person will be so much easier if there are clear blocks of light and shadow. If you select a picture taken by a normal flash camera, the whole face will be lit up and you’ll have no way to depict the nose, eye and mouth areas except by outline, which will look cartoonish at best. 2) Sketch the …

I finished “Mao” and “Orange Juice” and I’m close to finishing “Rubix girl”. They look great – and yesterday I started “Horny”: it’s a picture of a pair of very standard Taiwanese temple door gods, getting a rise out of a hot Asian girl. I know it looks pretty busy now, but it’ll come out OK.

Amazing what you can do with a bit of raw umber: deep shadows on Mao and the fruit bowl give an already 3D look – and it’s just the underpainting. That’s my first ever fruit bowl, folks. I was going to call it ‘still life’; because every artist starts out doing still lifes of fruit bowls and it’s great that my version has three hysterical people in it… but I decided to add the Taiwanese “GMP” sticker (genetically modified product) on everything… a statement on Frankenfood I guess. I’ve been liberally using a big tube of black painting I bought …

I am SO on my game this week. OK – I don’t know what the butterflies one is all about. It’s beautiful but too ‘nice’ and cute for my usual style… makes me feel like a teenage girl. And I don’t know what to do about her stomach yet. “Duck Soup” is super large, one of my biggest, and pretty simple but it still makes me laugh out loud. My favorite new piece is the ‘Shower’ (I need a better title, any ideas?) actually I thought of that a long time ago, forgot all about it, and was really excited …

“Happy Meal” 快樂兒童餐- 71x91cm- Oil on Canvas, 2005 Grinning Buddha reposes as Ronald McDonald, holding his daily bread. If Buddha preached fasting and control, why was he so fat? The painting also draws attention to the blend of globalizing tendencies in commercialism and religion. 笑嘻嘻的彌勒佛扮成麥當勞叔叔的樣子，拿著食物歇息著。若佛祖倡導的是禁食和約束，那祂又怎麼會這麼胖呢？這幅畫也提醒我們，商業和宗教間的融合有全球化的趨勢。 Oil on Canvas Surrealism Oil Painting by Derek Murphy www.derekmurphyart.com

Finishing up some more. “Mao” is the sound cats make in Taiwan…therefore the cute hello kitty/Mao painting. “Banana” is Taiwanese slang for Asian people who want to be white (yellow on the outside, white on the inside). If this “banana” painting looks insane, it is. Go ahead and question my sanity. Just looking at it makes me confused. But I think I’ll be able to pull it off, and it will rock.

I’m excited about this new painting…. with the red Taiwan door knockers. The model is my friend Kei. The ‘fortune cookie’ one is also going to be a favorite. I’m feeling like the other one, with the three girls chasing after the nerdy white guy instead of the cool, handsome Asian, is kind of an inside source of bewilderment in Taiwan. Though I’ve been thinking about it for awhile and I’m pretty happy with the effect, it’s not as simply great as many of my less complex pieces. Maybe because, unlike the others it is providing social commentary, and I’d …

Some of the things I’m working on today. The rubix cube girl is going to be amazing… I’m tempted to put a pervert reaching across her chest and ‘solving’ her, but it’ll be stronger if she’s alone. The very sad girl with the sign is from Cambodia; there’s something mischievous about using the pity emotion to sell fine art – but that’s the point, especially as it’s so transparent. The wedding painting is from Brian and Nini’s wedding but I like the expression and it seems like there is more going on, and the three girls on the bike are …