Watercolor painting by
Doan Thien Huy Hung
Doan Thien Huy Hung's watercolor learning experience:
Painting is always one of my favorite things to do in my whole life. And of course, I love to do that whenever I have time. But I have faced a lot of problems when I paint. And like everyone else, I prefer one topic than the others. And my topic or subject is landscape. It doesn’t mean that I am good about it but surely I feel more comfortable when painting a landscape than painting a human or others. So, my works come out better, I believe.
First, I like to sit in any place that I can have a good view of the environments like: river, sea, mountain as natural scenes or city, street, building as urban scenes. It is just my simple hobby. In one occasion, when I have a trip on a mountain, I have a chance to view a really nice view. When I stopped at a mountain side, I sit down to relax. Just cool off my mind, gaze everything around, all of them help me a lot in releasing stress in busy life. When my eyes spread around the scenery, I realize that all of them seem to dissolve to each other, make it a natural harmonized picture. At that time, what comes to my mind is that I want to paint a nice picture about it. But I didn’t have anything for painting but a camera. Then I just go around, trying to find a place to take a perfect reference so that I can do it when I go back home. I really don’t want to miss it. I did it at home and it comes out nice.
Second, the other reason that makes me focus on painting landscape is that I am really not good at painting portrait or people. The problem I come up with when I do portrait is that I cannot expose all of the feeling of the people or all of the facial features of them. That is really hard for me to do that. I tried a lot to learn how to do that but maybe it need much more work on that. I know that some people have the same problems like me. I will try to work on this kind of painting in the future until I can really show the expression of people.
In a water color class I have at Bunker Hill community college, I definitely learn a lot about water color, about kinds of paper, color, technique to paint. And it is new for me to paint water color gift cards, it is fun. I learn a lot when I paint and when our professor show us more about how to choose a reference, to draw, and to paint in a right way. I practice it a lot at home and it does help a lot. Now I have my own made presents that I can give to my families and friends at Christmas, New Year or any other celebrations. Thank you a lot, Mr. Chen. I learn a lot when I study with you. I will try it more now and later in my life, it will help me release stress in life and enjoy it.
