"Jeana in Pink" my first attempt at painting in Hong Kong

I did "art jamming" for the first time the other day at this place Tong Saam Lau in Central.

Here's their sign.

They even put the tone numbers in the spelling to help folks like me with being able to pronounce the name.  :)

A friend of my wife, Iris, bought a bunch of Groupons to art jam here, so we figured it ws a good idea for a Saturday afternoon activity.

And here is me... Joe "Le Artiste" ready to get started... but what to paint?

They had some pictures of other artwork and magazine clippings that they said we could use for inspiration or even to reproduce, but being that I am an "artiste hoh hoh HOH!" I decided I would search for my own original inspiration....... in my iphone.

I looked around at pics I had taken recently and then came across the pics from the Exmoo.com Launch Party that I had posted pics from not long ago. It was among these pics that I took a glance at this one of Jeane Ho.

Hmmm... there was just something about this picture that called out to me, so I decided that this was it and that Jeana would be my muse for the day.

So as I stated in the title, this was my first attempt at painting in Hong Kong, but it was also my first attempt at painting (period) since high school.  Long time ago.... eh hem... well not that long ago.  hahaha

Thus, I figured that most likely this painting of Jeana would end up resembling a stick figure in color.

Here's the first outline I did in pencil on the canvas, which seemed to vouch for my prior suspicions.  hehe

There you can see my wife working away on her painting, a reproduction of a French advertisement.

Here's how my painting progressed...

Right off the bat, you can see that I started using my own artistic license to stray away from exact duplication of the picture.  But it's starting to take shape.

At some point, I decided that the left side of the canvas needed something... so I got the idea of painting this pink spector like image there.  At first I was thinking it was more of a space filler, but as I worked on it more, it started taking more of my focus in the project.

Meanwhile I was curious to see how Iris was progressing...

Oh wow!  Looking cool.

So I went back  to my canvas...

I decided to try experimenting with a different color, since I was working with some dark tones mostly.

On second thought... the blue wasn't doing it for me, so I went back to my original vision...

Meanwhile, Iris finished her canvas.  So cool.

After some more work, I finally finished up mine.  And there it is...

"Jeana in Pink" 2011

Well, to me it still has some very stick figure qualities, but people have told me it seems very Picaso-esque.  Well to that I say "hoh hoh HOH!"

So that was my first spin at being "le artiste".  Hope you all like it... more importantly, if Jeana ever runs past this blog, hope she likes it... or at least doesn't hate it.  hahah

Either way, I kind of like this stuff.  I think I'll do some more art jamming in the future.  Definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a cool something to try.  :)