Colorful Color Scheme

  So I've decided to be very regimented in how I find inspiration for my work. I'm still working with the idea of microbes and growth and the idea of strange bacteria secretly growing in caves, but, I need further inspiration for shapes and colors. I decided to get those from my large photo archive. We've traveled to so many places over the years and I still haven't developed any serious work from it. Now feels like the time to finally do that.

  I am limiting the types of photos I can use. It's all by color scheme. Every week I've been choosing a different color scheme. For this week, it's colorful. Whatever colors I want. Last week was only yellow, green and blue. Limiting the colors forces me to concentrate on shape and helps me explore those particular colors.

  Above is a work I created for the #100dayproject, an instagram hashtag to get artists creating again. I've been doing it since it started in April and it's been a great kick in the pants. I used the photo below as a guide for shape and color. It's a very very loose interpretation, I just get basic shapes.

Hong Kong Island Street Car

Buildings in the La Boca neighborhood of Buenos Aires

   I took some of the color blocking from the photo above, in La Boca. It's been more fun combining elements from different pictures as well.

  The painting above is also from the #100dayproject and it was inspired by the photo below of Venice, hence the boat shape.

Venice Canals

Indian Crescent, watercolor on handmade paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

   The painting above was influenced by the ghats of Varanasi. The umbrellas make such a great shape. I kept the crescent shape from the Western China paintings. The crescent is fun to work with.

Ghats of Varanasi, India

Indian Colors, watercolor on paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

   After looking at a few photos and working with a few different shapes, they all begin to meld and I repeat the shapes and ideas over again. As long as I restrict my palette and loosely use the shapes given to me, I can explore and be more creative.

Ghats at Varanasi, India

Color Compartments, watercolor on paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

   With these I went back to the crystal idea. I am still very into the crystal shape and concept. The idea of microbes being trapped in the crystal is forever inspiring.

Crystal Traps, watercolor on paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

Indian Crystals, watercolor on paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

Umbrellas of Varanasi, watercolor on paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

Hairy Color Crystals, watercolor on paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

Balloon Crystals, watercolor on paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

The Shapes of Western China

Crescent Lake #1, watercolor on paper, copyright Nina Leung 2017

  I've begun working in a bit of a different way. Since looking through all of our old photos, I'm finally discovering that I can take something from all the travels I've done in the past. I wasn't able to do it at the time of travel, but I'm finally feeling it now. It's been a revelation. I'm still interested and pursuing the idea of microbes and growth and strange crystal cave creatures, but I now have a place to find inspiration for shapes and colors. They're coming directly from these old travel photos.

Crescent Lake #2, watercolor on paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017 

 I begin with a color scheme and then look for photos that meet that theme. After choosing them, I look for shapes I like within the photo and use them in my paintings of microbes. It's been great! I'm forever inspired and excited and intrigued. The weekly color scheme change keeps it interesting and I have an excuse to look at all my old pictures.

  The paintings above are inspired by our trip to Xinjiang province which has this amazing Central Asian culture. It's as if we were travelling in the Stans. The people are beautiful and kind and the food is so good. We loved it there so much.

Pink Micros

Pink Micro #1, watercolor on paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

   Pink and black are my new color obsession. Somehow I've been seeing it or maybe just noticing it lately. It has to be a pale pink and the black must be rich and velvety. Here's a little watercolor painting secret..

Pink Micro #2, watercolor on handmade paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

  When I learned to watercolor in high school, my art teacher taught me to never use color straight from the tube, it must always be mixed, black especially. The black needs to be strong and it's best to mix it with another dark color. I chose green to help highlight the pink because they are complementary.

Pink Micro #3, watercolor on handmade paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

  It has taken me way too long to learn the importance of color and how to pair colors. I've always thought of the color as secondary to the line or the subject. I normally just choose any color when I'm ready to paint the line. There is power in a particular color combination and it is so fun to play with. Now that I've discovered this, I'm seeing different color combinations everywhere, especially now that it's spring. The trick is, how do I remember so many of them!

Thing in the Garden

The Thing in the Forest #2, watercolor and graphite on handmade paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

 Been working in the garden again. Every rock I turn over holds some delightfully wiggly creature whose image stays with me. I just can't get that A.S Byatt imagery out of my head. That Thing in the Forest was so grotesquely described by Byatt and is so fitting to my personal experience in the garden, only on a much smaller scale.  The strange creatures we find that are right outside our door or maybe even closer. Our yard is full of salamanders from 2" in length to as many as 8" as well as tons of roly poly's and snails and fat spiders with spindly legs.

  After my last couple paintings on the handmade paper, I felt the need to create some problems for myself and work on more obviously handmade paper. This paper is really weird! It acts like a blotter paper, it soaks up the paint immediately, no time to move it and the surface is so ragged it's impossible to get a smooth line, which is almost a necessity for me. It proved to be quite a challenge. I couldn't fight that raggedness and had to embrace it and try to find it's advantages. This is the beauty and the fun of the creative process, creating problems, finding problems and then trying to fix them or use them to advantage. I got a little outside help with this when midway through the painting, my three year old woke early from her nap and quietly went to the room I was painting in, pulled a dropper full of concentrated watercolor and proceeded to randomly drop paint all over! Completely spoiled all my plans. But, after much thought, those drops created a new possibility and I'm so happy with the results. If it weren't for her meddling, I would not have taken the risks that I was forced to. Thank you Elsa, my collaborator.

Aurora Rockets

Aurora Rockets #1, watercolor on paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

  NASA is shooting 3 rockets into the Aurora Borealis to learn more about near Earth space. Reading about it immediately brought on strong imagery. I don't want to learn too much about it because I want to use my own imagination to picture exactly what it is they're doing, though I'm dying to know! The technology involved must be pretty wild. More after the jump...

Bacterial Evolution

Evolving Bacteria #1, watercolor on paper, 19" x 19" copyright Nina Leung, 2017

 I'm still working! The crystal caves in Mexico are my muse right now. It's too much fun imagining what all of those strange new micro-organisms look like. They've had to evolve in order to live in such a strange environment and that new thought has inspired some new shapes and forms. There's more.....

Compositional Studies

Mingling Microbes, acrylic on canvas, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

   Here are the results of the flow of work from last post. It finally felt natural to paint. My thoughts are often absorbed in what I plan to paint and what is behind those plans. See the rest after the jump.

Micro-Disk

Micro-Disk, watercolor on paper, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

  Imagining these micro-organisms from the crystal caves has been too much fun. They must be so strange looking. Apparently, they're mostly bacteria. When in Biology class as a teenager, I remember thinking the viruses were the prettiest. They're much more complex looking.

Microbial Worm

Microbial Worm, watercolor, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

  I'm loving this idea of weird microbial creatures that have never before been seen. What might they evolve into given the time? What are the implications of life and even the definition of life? I found a related article questioning what life might be found on other planets, similar to these microbes? Our space equipment could be bringing it back to earth unawares. Tiny, dormant microbes sleeping in a grain of sand from Mars and brought back to Florida.

Weird, Microbial Creatures

Weird, Microbial Creatures, watercolor, copyright Nina Leung, 2017

  Have you heard of the Cave of Crystals? It's in Mexico and it's an otherworldly place with oversize crystals continuously growing through it. The scale is confusing. While exploring this incredible place, scientists collected crystal and discovered dormant micro-organisms. With some coaxing, they brought some of them to life. 90% of them have never been seen before.

  This discovery just blew my mind. I've always been fascinated by the strange shapes of micro-organisms and how they evolve. This painting is my interpretation of these new life forms.

Imagines Nozkowski 80s Album Cover

My parents had an album with a cover that featured a white grid in the background. I studied that cover along with all the others and still remember many of them now, 30 some years later. It definitely proves the strength of visual materials to a young child.

That grid came out in this Nozkowski inspired drawing. I couldn't help it.

On Vacation: Paintings

I did these two painting while on vacation. The one above is from Miami. It's the view from a tram. No idea what building it is, I just thought it was very pretty. The painting below was done in Manarola, Italy in Cinque Terre. I was sitting in the middle of an adjacent terraced vineyard and did a quick watercolor. That was definitely one of the more beautiful and memorable travel moments I've had.

Vacation: Painting

Okay, I didn't get too weird. It's so hard to do something other than the norm. I love clean lines, color, and bleeding edges. But, I did add pattern which is something I never do and that pattern is plaid which is even more rare. I'd like to think of this experiment as a vacation from my usual way of painting/ drawing. This should make for an interesting week. Maybe I'll even learn something.

The Rose

Jay DeFeo's incredible painting, The Rose is one of my favorites. It's a painting and a sculpture. The paint is so thick, she carved and cut into it. It went through many changes and evolved from a flat plane to the sculptural landscape it is now.

She spent 8 years working on it; allowing it to go through its own evolution. Apparently, she had a T.V and a radio on while she was painting in order to ingest information so she could translate it into the painting. I love that idea of having to input in order to output.