Insights on drawing, painting, and the creative process — techniques distilled from five decades of practice and teaching.
Unlock the secrets of portrait drawing with renowned artist Mr. Yim Mau-Kun. Explore key techniques like block-in, planar analysis, and mastering likeness and proportions, all of which form the foundation of great portraiture. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced artist, these insights will help elevate your drawing skills to new heights.
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Whether you’re a seasoned artist or just beginning your journey into oil painting, this course will guide you through the essential techniques to elevate your portrait painting skills. Let’s explore some of the key…
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If you're passionate about improving your drawing and creating portraits that are both technically accurate and full of expression, here are some key insights from Mr. Yim's approach that you can apply to your own…
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Dear Mr. Yim, I love drawing and have watched your drawing video lessons many times. I’m mesmerized by the firm and soft edges and texture in your drawing and would like to emulate, but it’s hard for me to put the…
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This is the final installment in the series on creating narrative paintings. In Part 2, I discussed the composition, charcoal study, color study, and major revisions of “Reaching Shore.” In this post, I will focus…
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This is a continuation of the previous post on narrative paintings. In this part, I will share my experience creating the large-scale narrative painting “Reaching Shore” (“到彼岸”) — a work that went through years of…
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There are different genres of narrative paintings such as contemporary, historical, military (battle scenes), religious, fantasy, etc. Inspiration of a narrative painting topic can be from life experience, life…
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I was born in Taoyuan County on the banks of the Yuan River in Hunan. and I grew up in Changde, Xiangxi. I’ve yearned to go back and visit for many years. I also wanted to visit Fenghuang and Chatong in search of…
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Small paint box, paintbrushes, palette knife, easel, masking tape and of course, oil colors – these are all indispensable.
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Chen Yi-Fei was a household name towards the end of the Cultural Revolution. Red Flag , a Communist Party magazine published by the central government, took the unprecedented step of including his portrait in…
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The East and West are two distinct art systems. How then are Song-Yuan Dynasty landscapes related to Picasso and Cubism? Though they seem completely different at first, unusual associations emerge when we subject…
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I was a student at the Affiliated High School of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in the early 1960s. When I first saw the drawings of the human form that Prof. Guo Shaogang (郭紹綱) brought back after studying in…
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Prior to 1980, I worked at Zhaoqing in Guangdong where there was a medium-sized coal mine outside of the city –Ma’an Coal Mine. I went on two painting trips to the mines and also went down to the mine shaft on two…
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It seems that classical bust study is no longer offered in art programs and still life is the common entry level drawing class is drawing classes are offered at all. I seem to have lived under a rock for I have…
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An issue of the Young Companion art magazine featured an interview with Jin Yong and I was asked to do an illustration for the cover. I looked over the photo of Jin Yong and thought a little commonplace so I made a…
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Painting is art and culture as well as a type of skill. All skills follow the convention that “practice makes perfection”. Without practice, how can you become good at something? Diligence and training may be…
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Before we get into the role of sketching, let’s first define what we are referring to by “sketching.”
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Why is classical bust study an important part of art training? Classical bust study is a good way to train your observation skills which can then be broadly applied to all forms of art.
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A photo of Taiwan’s northeast coast taken around mid-October in 2007. It was around 3:30 in the afternoon with some sunlight and light cloud cover.
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Liang Qi-qi, my class director back in high school, had an extremely good feel for color. He was sent to the countryside as a teacher during the Cultural Revolution and worked at the Yangchun County Cultural…
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Camera is a convenient and important tool for painting and drawing. It’s quite common for artists to take reference photos and produce a drawing or painting in the studio. And cameras are getting smaller, every…
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In September, 1980, my application to travel to Hong Kong and Taipei to deal with my father’s funeral affairs was approved. Carrying only a tiny amount of luggage with me, I crossed into Hong Kong over the wooden…
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The palette is like the command center of painting and is worth mentioning here. The palette is often a reflection of the painting. If the palette is all mixed up in greyish tone colors, you can envision a greyish…
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The eyes are challenging. A common mistake is to make the eyes either too high or too low. Even an experienced artist needs to be very careful. If the proportion is inaccurate, it affects the entire drawing. This…
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The core of drawing is about exploring and rendering the essence of life – seeing beyond colors, revealing an intrinsic artistic form.
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Inspiration of subject matter depends on one’s cultural background, education and life experience.
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It has been too long since I have last written, I cannot believe that time has flown by so fast. It seems the older I get the faster time goes. I sat down to write six months ago but did not finish. I got all…
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My father Yim Mau-Kun is known to many as an oil painter. And indeed, his oil paintings are classical in style; if you were to see one of his paintings such as Christina on public display in the US or Europe, you…
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Note: This is originally published in the second edition of the artist’s drawing book “Drawing by Mau-Kun Yim” in 2000.
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The portrait is a painting style that was established during the Renaissance and its earliest example was the Mona Lisa . Since then all major Western painters whose work featured people have been masters of…
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