Haiku for Hope Reception at Columbia Art Center in April 2013.

Hurry to see the Haiku for Hope Art Exhibition at the Columbia Art Center to raise funds for the Howard County Hospital's Claudia Mayer Cancer Resource Center, before the arts are gone like cherry blossoms.  My artwork "Le Printemp" is selected as the postcard artwork for the show and is all over the local newspapers and publications!



En Plein Air at Red Rock Canyon in Nevada

Painted with friends and artists at Red Rock Canyon.  Lake Harriet is beautiful, and the rocks are really red!  We also painted the town in the evening (went to the Nugget and Gold Town).  Enjoy the photos.

  

Joan Lok sumi-e demo for Women Artists' Forum on Lunar New Year

 

 

I was invited by the Women Artists' Forum to present the art of sumi-e at their spring meeting on February 10, 2013.  I discussed the differences between the art of the East and the West in materials, subject matters, and composition.  It was also the Lunar New Year, so I painted peonies, the symbol of good fortune, for the demo.  It's a perfect way to start the new year.

Here is my artwork "Curiosity" which won the Tesshin Sasaki Award at the 49th Sumi-e Society of America Annual Juried Exhibition in Bloomington, Minnesota.  I painted the black mouse and the white mouse fairly quickly but it took me a long while to decide what to do next.  I wanted to give them something interesting to look at, but did not want that item to overwhelm the mice in the overall composition.  I eventually decided on a spider building a web. The title of the artwork coincidentally was the same as NASA's Mars robotic rover which was news headlines during the exhibition.   

I will be teaching an introduction to sumi-e workshop for the Baltimore Watercolor Society on March 16 -17, 2014 in Olney, Maryland.  Please register online with BWS here http://bws.onefireplace.com/BWSEvents?eventId=609023&EventViewMode=EventDetails.  The class is designed for watercolorists interested to widen the horizon with the art of sumi-e to improve brushwork and explore new way of looking at art.  Class is expected to fill up quickly so please register early.  Note the late start on Saturday because there is an exercise class at the center in the morning.  Call or e-mail me if you have any questions.  Hope to see you there.  Joan Lok 

Learn how to create different shades of grey

Just posted two articles in "Jumpstart" in my website, www.joanlok.com.  The material one is about sumi-e brushes: difference between flat and rounds, soft and hard hair, and the materials used.  Do you know that wolf hair brush is not made of wolf hair?

Another article is on how to make different shades of grey in a consistent way of adding water to sumi-e ink, and how the amount of ink and the speed of the brush also affect the appearance of ink marks.

About the title - I was conducting black ink only painting workshops when my students proclaimed that I taught them how to prepare “Fifty Shades of Grey”.  They suggested the title of the article, so here it is.  Now you know. - Joan Lok.   

Joan Lok won the Kyoto Education Award

Joan Lok's "Magnolia and Cardinal" won the Kyoto Education Council Award in Japan.  After touring various cities in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States, the scroll came back with an award certificate written in Japanese, plus a really cute plaque with the winner's name and the award engraved on it.  Neat!  

I just updated the galleries in my website with tons of new artwork.  Please check them out at www.joanlok.com  Enjoy.