Starting first set of series

Hey!! It's been so long, and I am only now starting to attempt at catching up on the art work.
Aside from being fairly busy (moving, traveling, work, etc - the list goes on)  and not having nearly enough time to sit down and make something - I also left school again, and post-school I have been trying to figure out what kind of art I want to make. It's such a broad category of potential, that I've felt frozen in indecision. Until I realized, I don't need to plan, or more like..I should stick to my original plan and what I had been working on before the break.

Here's some work I haven't posted here:

Tree & Pond #2 (the first one is below):

Tree & Pond #1

The second one is not quite finished yet, but I am getting to the end of it, and to a point where I can stop to take an evaluation of where I am. I thought the first one was more successful, but the second had ideas that I wanted to try out.

• I wanted to try smaller "pixelated" squares representing the pond, and a simpler background that had loose texture instead of isolated rectangles of texture but I prefer the former painting's background. 
• I realize now, I hadn't planned the tree branches well enough and now they look sketchy and  spaghetti-like, which bothers me. 
• I struggled with colour choices of so many pixelated squares that I repainted some over and over, mixing different paints and trying out many colours. I still don't know how to plan this section.

These issues I will try to broach in the 3rd painting. I am not yet sure how. :)
I had planned to make 5 paintings of the Pond & Tree series. Three more to go!! This whole project may take an entire year. But luckily it won't be the only thing I'm working on.

Fun side project, an invitation to a Badmitzvah party!

Again not finished! I will try to improve with my photos. The final version had all the flowers/leaf detail finished. The print shop then added various colours of the line and also text in the bottom left corner for the party info. This was a really fun project because it was simple black & white drawing and I also felt that keeping my black pen sketchbook had paid off. Making this invitation was as natural as just another night with my sketchbook.

Bye for now and Happy 2015!! 

There's a post on this blog somewhere about me leaving school. Based on one whimsical conversation, I went back to the same program and degree again this fall. One course per semester only so I don't feel overwhelmed with homework. School has its benefits that are not impossible but are hard to come by when trying to art on my own. One invaluable thing is an experienced professional artist giving his full attention to my work for 20 minutes per week or so; which almost never happens in the real world (for me).

This course is abstract art which gave me new ideas to play with. Composition is what haunts me now. These are works with stencils and impressions. I was happy to discover accidental movement in the composition.

Another aspect of painting was helpful to learn (that I wasn't doing at all before) was the composing using collage and then painting afterwards. And the nice tiny accidental paintings that happen on the side. 

On a personal note, somehow, at some point I've become a novice climber now? Not sure if you can see the climbing dudes below. 

Reverting back to childhood

I can't seem to sit down still for more than 30 minutes. So the painting is just a mushing of paint around and around canvas and a feelings of childhood, houses and flowers, houses and boats and bridges to the houses that are on water, and houses in yellow fields of sunflowers and on on on :) Patience when will you return to me? :)

Fall semester

Nature & Culture Course: Last assignment - painting 2

There is a house not far from where I live and it looks haunted.

Nature & Culture Course: Landscape painting 3 - Broken ice

Toronto Lakeshore. The ice seemed broken geometrically.

Nature & CUlture Course: Landscape Painting 1