architecture – Jeanne Lolness

Painting Huế: Nostalgia and Summer

May 27, 2025May 10, 2025Posted in BlogTagged architecture, collection, culture, gouache, hue, landscape, painting, Personal, series, tradition, vietnamLeave a comment

In the summer of 2024, I spent two sunny days exploring Huế – the place holding memories of a bygone era: Nguyễn dynasty. It was the final medieval dynasty before Vietnam became a colony of France and experienced warfare to the extreme in WW1, 2 and the Cold War.

Despite bombings and destruction, Huế and the Imperial City still maintained a variety of structures and monuments with their intricate details.

I had been longing to visit Huế for a long time and finally I got to enjoy this little peaceful city.

It was a sunny and hot day, and there were swarms of people visiting the citadel: foreigners, local people, Vietnamese travelers. The entrance (Cổng Ngọ Môn) was the most crowded spot, afterwards, people started wandering to different areas. It was understandable, because the entrance was built to impress anyone coming, foreshadowing normal people to pay respect to the king. My little painting can’t capture all the details of the entrance, many decorative elements were made by skilled craftsmen from all across Vietnam.

These two places (Phước Thọ Am, Lầu Tịnh Minh) were built much later, reflecting the changes coming from the outer world. Lầu Tịnh Minh was built in 1927, featuring a higher ceiling, a larger balcony and many other elements from Western, particularly French architecture; but still keeping the traditional roof and decorative tiles of Vietnam.

There are many places that I haven’t painted and I’m still excited to paint them, even after a year. There are still so many things I want to learn about Hue architecture and history.

You can use some of my images below to paint if you are interested in Vietnamese medieval architecture! Share with me if you can.

Sketchbook Pages of 2024: People, Costumes, Architecture

Mar 11, 2025Posted in BlogTagged 2024, architectural, architecture, collection, costume, sketch, sketchbook, sketchingLeave a comment

I tried my best to stay consistent with filling in sketchbooks, daily sketching for practicing techniques, as well as, … keeping me sane from my turbulent life. Here comes some of the best pages in my sketchbook in 2024.

I found joy in learning to sketch costumes, starting with historical dresses and gowns from history since they were layered or made of different textiles allowing movements to be subtly depicted. Or maybe I’m biased towards modern fashion, particularly mass-produced and fast fashion.

These sketches are copies of works by Charles Dana Gibson, who created the “Gibson Girl” – an iconic representation of American woman in 20th century. His sketches were lively, comical yet with a sense of reality, I find him a great source to learn sketch costumes.

Together with new interest in costumes, I still find sketch houses, churches, etc basically everything architecture relaxing. Perspective used to be a huge obstacle, but but I get loose with it now, just eyeball every detail. Of course, for professional works, I still create a perspective grid to make sure things fall in their places; but with sketching, I think it’s better to distort, twist and play with it.

Mostly of my sketches are done with black and purple ink, but I’m slowly get familiar with all medium as well. With that being said, ink forces me to think and plan in my head before letting the ink reach the paper, because, whatever mistakes I make, the marks will stay permanent on the paper.

I’m still figuring things out, still experimenting with different mediums, and still making plenty of mistakes , but that’s part of the fun. So, here’s to more sketchbooks, more messy lines, and more moments of getting lost in drawing.

Personal Painting Collection 2024: Portraits, Practices, Pleinairs

Feb 25, 2025Feb 17, 2025Posted in PersonalTagged architecture, collection, creativity, gouache, illustration, landscape, nature, painting, Personal, plein air, portrait, reflection, thoughts, watercolorLeave a comment

2024 saw me going up and down with painting, beginning with an intensive period of doing portraits and then a loose period of painting random things to find out: what do I want to paint? Some context: for the past 2-3 years, I have been allocating my efforts on the technical side rather than idea sites; since I often stuck by techniques. Sometimes, it was confusion while mixing colors, other times, it was problems about anatomy, perspective, etc.

My belief is that I would perfect my techniques or style to some point before thinking about what I want to express with my works. Well, it turns out that arts doesn’t work like that, and I get annoyed by endless practice and studying sessions.

But let the story begin with the first few months. I was into learning about colors (again) and portraits. Portrait paintings were to recall my anatomical knowledge and to boost my color skills. Mixing skin tones is still something I need to work on.

*This is my favorite portrait of the whole year.*

One big shift in my color usage is towards a brighter palette with bolder color choice. It possibly coincided with my switch to Holbein acrylic gouache, but also my slight change from just painting from dark to light or reverse to painting from the boldest color to neutral tones. It’s not an intentional thing, it’s more about keeping my palette organized so that I can avoid over mixing.

One thing I have been thinking about is how to add “life” into my paintings, or to be more specific, movement. My paintings use to have a nostalgia vibe, because I mostly painted the places I visited, the places that I met someone and talked with someone. The later paintings of 2024 has something else with bolder and brighter colors.

My summer trip to Quang Binh (Phong Nha), Hue, Da Nang (Hoi An) deepened my interest in painting traditional architecture. My only regret is that I should have taken many more reference images.

In the last months of 2024, I turned to painting nature, flowers and gardens in particular, as a method to relax. It’s also under the influence of writing about female artists, Rachel Ruysch, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, etc who use flowers as a subject and a recurring symbol of femininity. They allows me to work quickly with not-so-bad results, work freely wihout a reference image and can be used as gifts in rushed events.

Looking back, 2024 was a year of shifting perspectives—from focusing solely on technique to questioning how I want to express my ideas. While I haven’t found all the answers, I’ve discovered new directions, from bold color choices to the love for life and nature in my paintings.

I guess that’s it for a year.

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