Qiang Huang's workshop

Where to begin?  I attended a three-day workshop with Qiang Huang in New Braunfels TX this week.  He is such a master painter!   Each day he did a demo and we sat in rapt silence and watched him work.

He told us that he doesn't paint objects, he paints light.  Watching him paint I could understand what he meant.   (But I never managed to do it!)

Here are a few photos I took:

Qiang painting.  The studio had a large mirror above him so we could see what he was doing.  He also had a video camera that projected the painting on a screen.  I have to say that the New Braufels Art League had one of the best facilities of any workshop I've attended.  

This was his set up.  It's pretty complicated for a two-hour painting session.  For his backdrop cloth he uses a brownish green fabric, rather than black.  It is warmer than black, and makes me want to get one that color.

This is his palette.  He mixes a large puddle of black from ultramarine blue and burnt sienna.  For his mid tones he adds naples yellow and cad orange to make it warmer.  

Qiang starts every painting with a value study.  He establishes three tones, dark, mid and light.  After that he begins to add color.  

I forgot to take a picture of the painting before he started adding color.  Here you can see the three areas of light, mid and dark, but he has already starting adding color to the tea pot.


This is his finished painting:

Ok, so what did I do?   I tried to paint using his method of establishing the three areas of value.  I had a 12 X 16 canvas and used a really large brush to try to stay loose.  Here's my first effort:

It's totally unfinished!   I was trying to paint light and dark.  The only thing I liked was the dark shadow of the handle and the little sliver of light on the left side.  I was just happy that I could SEE that!  But gosh it looks amateurish next to his wonderful painting.  More workshops!