“Great painters must create masterpieces in order to be remembered by society and by history. They can’t just make ordinary paintings, and definitely should not waste their whole life on painting for commercial sales.“  – Yim Mau-Kun

“Realism is not about replication. It does not try to faithfully capture the subject like a camera. It is a process of extraction and distillation that requires creativity and tremendous skill.“  – Yim Mau-Kun

“Plein-air landscape painting is a process where natural (objective) beauty inosculate with artistic (subjective) beauty.  Natural beauty emphasizes “feeling” while artistic beauty focuses on “gusto,” or “fun.” If you concentrate on pursuing photo realism, then painting becomes a chore rather than pleasure.“  – Yim Mau-Kun

“I like painting people and have always preferred painting portraits from life as it is like conversing with life.  After all, is there anything more exciting and sophisticated than life itself?  Is not the ultimate expression of art the human form itself?”  – Yim Mau-Kun

“The beauty of a painting lies in the composition, the artist image, the ambiance, the colors and skillful use of brushstrokes.”  – Yim Mau-Kun

What to bring on a plein air painting trip?

What to bring on a plein air painting trip?

by | May 20, 2019 | , | 0 Comments

I have written about the benefits of small plein air painting and how and why it can help improve color observation skills. Suppose you are totally convinced and would like to give it a try or you simply love to paint outdoors, what should you bring? Sure, you can...

The Long River of Drawing

The Long River of Drawing

by | Apr 4, 2019 | | 3 Comments

素描的長河   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 the Soviet Union as an exchange student, I...