I’m supposed to be working on my novel for NanoWriMo, but I got distracted today. Suddenly I’m concerned about Geisei, which is coming up soon in December and I really want to WOW people. So I came up with a new painting idea. Here is the very rough mockup. It’s complicated, but rather than do it all in detailed oils, I’m going to try making an elaborate pencil sketch and only doing very light colors with chinese water color paints – this should make things much faster and it will probably look awesome. It’s way too busy, I know, but …

Today I forced myself to carry out my ‘paint in public’ plan. Theoretically, it’s a great idea: I go somewhere famous and local and paint in public… people crowd around and I give them all my business card. It’s a way for me to get free and easy exposure. However, when I actually arrived at the Confucius Temple in Tainan today, having skipped breakfast, carrying too much junk (easel, paints, canvas, etc), drawing a lot of attention to myself wasn’t appealing. And let’s face it – as a foreigner in Taiwan, I already draw attention to myself. Setting up my …

Here are two new paintings, both of which show Jesus in Taiwan and problematize the influence of Christianity on Asian culture. The first was inspired by a similar picture but with Jesus actually hugging the geographic leaf shaped island of Taiwan; which I found absurd and sickening at the same time. (“Jesus loves you, you strange, foreign, Asian country, and you are under Jesus’ love and protection, regardless of the fact that 90% of you worship strange Samurai-esque gods.”) I change the Taiwan into a Taiwanese baby, and put these two fierce but very common local spiritual entities in the …

I wanted to finish tonight, and got close… besides a few small details she’s done – and looking awesome if I do say so myself. The white spots in her hair are spring onions (I’ll paint over them in green). 7am, migraine from some bad Thai food, it’s moon festival and a typhoon is on the way.

Oops. On the far left is the original; not quite finished but basically there. This week I’ve been ‘detailing’ some of the paintings that I did too quickly. However – I feel like the original, colorless, plain girl had a lot of sophistication. Now she looks kind of like a whore, and there’s too much distraction from the main idea. Still… it looks more ‘finished’ and complete which is what I wanted. What do you think? (Update – I’ve decided it’s the blue eyeshadow I don’t like the most – going to tone it down.)

I’m back at school (4th year Masters) taking a very light load. In 3 weeks I have an exhibition at 102 gallery in Tainan. I’m mostly working on cleaning up/improving some of the paintings I did for the last exhibition that I may have rushed, however I’ve also got two new ones in the works: I absolutely love how this one looks half done, all rough and white… I kind of wanted to sign it and move on. Gotta learn how to do that half done thing I appreciate. (A lot of great portraits; most actually, are a nicely blended …

This painting is about as tall as me; making it just about double all my previous canvases. I had the idea for awhile – even before I connected it with Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. As usual, the sketch and outline is amazing, but it gets seriously sidetracked with my messy underpainting (I underpainted in acrylics this time, based on some online feedback about that). The colors should be pretty striking though; bright blues, oranges and greens. Is painting beaches as backgrounds becoming a theme for me? When I went to the Art Taipei 2009 convention last week I came home …

Here’s 7 paintings that are almost finished; I have to finish them sometime tomorrow, and then hopefully varnish everything. With my portraits, I have almost 50… there are about 5 more that I won’t have time to finish, but at least I’ll have something new for the next exhibition. And geez, I have a lot of paintings. Good thing this gallery is so big. Now I just have to sell them to make room!!

I have a little more than a week before the blue truck comes to take my paintings to the gallery. I just checked my studio: I have 4 half-finished paintings, and 7 that I’ve only sketched or outlined! Crickey! I busted out these three today. The little girl with the sign (I think I’ll call ‘guilt trip’) that says “buy this painting” is going to be great – I love the beautifully depressing gray background. I went for a heavy shadow on my shower man (maybe I’ll call it ‘conservation’?)… I know it looks funny now, and I hope I …

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 …