Tag: landscape

Painting Huế: Nostalgia and Summer

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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.

Nhật Thành Lâu
Cổng Ngọ Môn

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.

Phước Thọ Am
Lầu Tịnh Minh

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.

Vườn Thiệu Phương
Lăng Minh Mạng

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.

2025 Plein Air Challenge review: Learning to love life as it is

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I have always wanted to join the Plein Air Challenge held by the Warrior Painters, but never found the time in the past years.

This year, I had more free time due to a sudden decline in commission requests, possibly due to the introduction of AI to Fiverr. Instead of jumping into a new course, I decided it’s time to join the challenge, or just tried to see how far I could go.

The challenge was a good distraction in this transitional period. Fiverr has “encouraged” creatives to allow AI to create free or cheaper artworks for users, which forced me to accept how sloppy my art career is. While I still managed to work with long-term clients or projects to support myself in this period, I felt an existential crisis slowly burning myself out. On some days, when waking up, I was hit by questions such as “What am I doing here? Are my goals realistic or achievable enough? Am I feeling and doing like this forever? …”. The challenge helped me refocus my attention, simply speaking, I know today I need to finish by #13 painting because today is 13th.

The challenge also introduced me to a few more talented background, concept and landscape painters. Some are Giacomo Sardelli , Lex , Ferrari Duanghathai, and more; it ignites a bit of hope in me about posting arts online. I have always struggled to stick to a regular schedule of posting; and now that I’ve accepted it, I just post whatever I’m ready to. I also got featured on Warrior Painters page and story a few times, which helps my audience grows a bit.

This challenge also motivates me to appreciate small things, both physically and mentally. A quiet morning, a few hours focus in a distracted day, a tree coming up with new leaves, a cool summer breeze, a small commission, a regular client ordering little comics. In the days that I’m haunted by big questions about career and life, these little things keep me grounded. I tried to simplify everything, from declutter my art corner to relationships in my life.

I tried to simplify my tools as well, I used the same set of brushes and only four main colors: red, yellow, blue and white. I use a portable palette recycled from a plastic package of some electronic devices, which already has some grayish and brownish paints left. They help create the neutral gray parts of all paintings.

My original plan was to use this to motivate me to go out of my neighborhood, but in the end, I painted mostly houses in my area. I already have a collection of references taken by me during my weekly run. Painting from photo references taken on my own doesn’t lure me into copying the image, because I know the limits of my own photos and already have my own impression of the place.

And in the end, I have a lot of works to share and talk about, 29 paintings. I realize I have worked much faster, since my landscape sketchbook has only about 10 pages left and I began it 2 years ago. Along with reading about Mary Cassatt, I found more hope in myself and an art career, motivation to stay resilient and patient. Of course, I’m still at loss visualizing what kind of career I truly want, but there’s one thing I know for sure: I want to draw and paint everyday.

Personal Painting Collection 2024: Portraits, Practices, Pleinairs

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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.