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LIVE PAINTING
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
“HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN PAINTING FOR?”
I received a fast-track art scholarship when I was in high school, attending early admission drawing and painting college courses when I was fifteen. Once I entered college, I studied traditional drawing and painting and received my Bachelor’s Degree in 2015. From there I continued to make and sell art as a side income, until 2020 when several Newport Beach home staging and real estate companies began buying my art in bulk. Since then, I have made my living as a full time artist - painting landscapes, teaching workshops, and creating live paintings for weddings and large corporations such as In-N-Out Burger.
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“WHAT KIND OF PAINT DO YOU USE?”
For landscapes and live painting I prefer oil and use a palette knife wet-on-wet impressionist style, meaning I juxtapose complementary colors for a vibrant and slightly magical take on real life. Oil paint is known for it’s light reflecting qualities, buttery consistency, slow drying time, and intense pigments - complexity and versatility of the medium is just incomparable to anything else, in my opinion.
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“DO YOU HAVE TO WORK QUICKLY?”
When live painting, yes! In a fast-paced environment such as a wedding, guests are always moving and lighting is constantly changing - but that’s part of the challenge. Faces and other small details are best done in a studio setting. They call for steady hands, tiny brushes, and controlled lighting in order to make them as accurate as possible. The goal of live or performance painting is to block in as much of the setting and feel of the space as possible. Entertaining, and capturing the mood and colors of an event are the primary goals!
“HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO DRY?
While watercolor can dry in thirty minutes, and acrylic paint forty to sixty, each layer of oil paint can take up to fourteen days to dry. Depending on the thickness and binding material, some colors - such as white, can take several weeks to be dry to the touch. Even then, oil paint is often considered “cured” but never fully dry.
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“HOW LONG DO YOU SPEND ON EACH PAINTING?”
Paintings vary greatly depending on detail level and subject matter. In general, I spend about two hours on a pre-sketch, six hours live painting and then another twenty to forty hours working on details and final touches as the various paint layers dry over the course of the following weeks.