Dragon Lantern

I already gave this gift to my Mother for Christmas, so its OK for me to post it here now. Its a square lantern that I picked up in Chinatown in Montreal, which I wanted to paint some dragons on. I started painting a smaller one, but I realized it was upside down and that I didn't like it. Then I found a black and white picture of a dragon head which I painted on each side and colored. I put of couple of Chinese words on there, too. It's for my Mom's bedroom which she will decorate East Asian style.

Best of 2011

Hello readers. Thanks for stopping by my painting website! Right now I'm looking for a little bit of feedback from you. I have four paintings listed, and I would like you to pick your favorite of my paintings of 2011. I have selected my four favorites, but I limited it canvas paintings. If you have other favorites please feel free to comment.

The poll is on the page to the right! ----------------------------------------------->

Here are the choices:

Gorilla

Bar Snacks

K Pop

Dogs

Thanks for voting!

London Postcards

So I've finally made it through my stockpile of paintings. I do have one more that I finished recently, but its a Christmas present so I'm not going to post it. I will put up a few polls pretty soon, so check back soon so you can vote.

This is a project I started after my trip to the UK this summer. I picked up a booklet of postcards from the Tate Modern museum, and decided to paint the postcards with vividly colored recreations of pictures I took on the trip. Here's what I came up with.

The booklet:

Columns at British Museum

Scott Monument in Edinburgh

London Skyline

Summer Breeze

Roger's Glass

Buckingham Palace

Welsh Cow

Stonehenge

Me on the Rocks

Scones

Wedding

Marlene in Wales

8 Bit Fire Lantern

Here is one of my most recent paintings, this lantern. I bought this large, football shaped lantern in China town in London. I then carried it all the way back to the U.S. and finally painted it a few months later. I was going for just some rectangle shapes to make a really blocky pattern with the warm colors. What I ended up with was this design that looks like an original Nintendo rendering of fire:

acrylic on paper lantern

diameter ~14", length ~24"

K-Pop

This painting I really like. I started with a picture of this Korean singer named I.U. I painted her face and hand and hair with the yellow, orange, red and purple scheme, and then did this psychedelic background. I'm happy with how everything came out except for her teeth, so I may go back and try to fix them.

acrylic on canvas

16"x 20"

Summer

Here's a picture I painted for my girlfriend. It's from a picture where she is posing next to this strange statue in Incheon, Korea. I jazzed up the colors a little bit, and this is what I got.

Sunrise Sunset

These paintings I'm going to go ahead and list in one post because they go together. It's the last of the tree and plant themed day, and probably the best of the day in my opinion. The backgrounds are inspired by a sunset I saw on halloween night 2010 in Malipo Beach, Korea. I also really like the way the trees came out and the branches look fairly real to me. It's supposed to be one tree, seen at two different times of day.

Dual Tree

Hello, and welcome to a day full of tree and plant themed paintings. Are you excited yet? I like to paint trees, or some kind of two dimensional representation of them. One of my favorite parts is how the branches can cross and mesh together without overlapping. That's basically the theme of this one. It's kind of like the dual tree lanterns I painted, except on a canvas and with a different colored sunset background.

acrylic on canvas

14"x 18"

Gorilla

Here's a painting that got really positive feedback when I showed it to people. But unfortunately, it is unavailable because I have already promised it to someone. Anyway, it's a gorilla. I think that the colors I chose turned out really well for it. Somehow green, purple, and gold look good together.

Yellow Elephant

Back again with another painting of an animal. This one is an elephant where I limited the colors on the elephant to yellow, orange, and blue. I think it turned out well. What do you think?

Dogs

Here's a painting that was actually commissioned. My friend Jackie, who I met in Korea, asked me to make a paintings of her dogs. It turned out well, as you can see. People who have read my Korea blog will remember the details...

Shapes Lantern

This lantern is pretty sweet, I think. I started with drawing a single straight line on the lantern, and kept going and going with it until the surface was split into a bunch of 3, 4, and 5 sided shapes. It turned out pretty well using the warm colors.

acrylic on paper lantern

diameter ~8"

Vietnam Red

This painting I started months ago, but actually just finished it this week. It's based on a photograph that I took while in Hanoi, Vietnam at a museum. I just loved the architecture of the buildings, and decided to put it in monochromatic red. Look for repeating shapes in the architecture, clouds, and plants.

Punk Bass Guitar

This is the first post in the so called "miscellaneous" section. It is my bass guitar, which I bought in Korea to play with my band, Iron Kimchi. At that point, we were going for more of a punk style. My guitar was black, with a white pick guard, and I decided to go with a pretty over the top cheezy paint job on it:

Bar Snacks

I thought it about time to put up a painting from this year. And for my first painting, an orange monochromatic self portrait. Well, a self portrait that includes my friend Joe. We were hanging out in a bar in Seoul, and decided to light some french fry-shaped chips and pretend that we were smoking them. Nothing illegal being smoked here.

acrylic on canvas

8"x 10.5"