Up Close & Personal with Tim

[Zindy]

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Hello everyone, my name is Timothy Luk. I’m 25 and I’m from Toronto, Canada. I recently graduated from pharmacy school and I have a younger sister who is also finishing up with school. I’m quite active. On my free time I like going to the gym, swimming and playing tennis. On my down time I also enjoy reading, painting and watching television. This summer I will be cruising in Northern Europe in early June and visiting friends & family in Vancouver, Canada in late July.

How did you find the ZindyZone Forums?

It has been years since I’ve discovered the Forums but I must have found it searching for pictures of LOST characters, which used to be one of my favourite shows. When I first created my thread it was quite small with only a few pencil portraits. Now it has grown and diversified quite a bit through the years!

How long have you been doing art and what got you started?

Art has always been my passion since I was very little. My Mom would bring me to art and music summer camps where I would doodle. From a young age, I used to draw hockey players, animals and dinosaurs, faces, action stick figures and even designed floor plans, mazes etc. Art was always one of my favourite subjects in school so I kept up with it throughout high school doing various random projects. It wasn’t until after first year of university that I took art more seriously.

The story is that when school finished for the summer, I drew my first portrait using a reference. The stubborn artist in me had always refused to use references. Although it was a slow and tedious process, I was surprised at my own ability, so I decided to get it framed. At the framing shop, the shopkeeper suggested that I consider taking lessons from an artist who host informal gatherings at his home. I thought about my desire for painting landscapes and thought sure, why not. It turns out his specialty was in portraits so I showed him my two pencil portraits (below). Starting from the basics by drawing from pictures of statue heads, I started learning how to draw more loosely and quickly. From then on I eventually progressed each summer from pencil to charcoal, soft pastel and finally oil.

My first portraits before lessons:

What medium/materials do you like to work with the most?

Right now my favourite medium to work is water-soluble oil. I really like it because my style is a blended mesh of water and oil along with my background using soft pastel. As a result, the beginning starts off like watercolour, the middle like soft pastel and the end finished like oil. Because the oil is water-mixable, it is less toxic as well.

· An artwork which I feel encapsulates this trifecta of mediums is my painting of the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, Canada. Do you notice the three different styles used?:

What's your favourite motive and why?

My favourite motives for me are beauty, mood and atmosphere, whether I am painting a portrait or a landscape. My approach to each painting is to take a reference and paint a beautiful representation or interpretation of it. My style is more emotive and intuitive, than technical. When I look at reference I figure out what makes it beautiful and transform it into my own creation.

My technical process is something I have developed on my own and it has to do with my ability to continually rotate through all the colours and place them wherever I see fit. There are no preset instructions to tell me where to place certain colours and the reference is often not nearly as colourful. As a result, I let my mind decide itself and I place them intuitively with little thought using a very loose style that gradually becomes more defined. However, sometimes it can get too loose so at a certain point I slow myself down in order to focus on detail.

The advantage of my style is that painting without thinking allows me to paint very quickly. Every time I lift my brush and put it down, it’s in a different spot on the canvas as I don’t systematically paint in any direction. Once I am satisfied that I have used my particular colour or effect without going too much overboard, I move on to the next stage because I know I will eventually paint another round of the particular colour/effect down the road.

Besides rotating between all the colours, I also continually rotate between light and shadow, atmosphere vs detail, colour vs depth etc. For example in one stage, I may use a light colour, and then use a dark colour the next stage. If I focus on the atmosphere (broad watery strokes) in one stage, I lose some detail so I then focus on detail (sharper thin strokes) in the next stage. If I use a lot of detailed colour in one stage, I will next take blunt some of the colour to enhance the perception of depth (eg. far objects are not as clear) etc. and then re-introduce colour again.

My painting of Whistler Village is a good example in which I was able to demonstrate my incorporation of various motives into the painting process. Before painting, I did not create a map or plan of action. It wasn’t until after I was finished that I retroactively labeled each step with a goal or theme I was trying to accomplish. This is the last painting I am able to break down into explainable steps for an audience. Now my painting is becoming more complex and difficult to break down as I use more and more repetition (10x or more) of the motives seen in the Whistler Village painting.

My step-by-step process of the Whistler Village painting:

http://zindy-zone.dk/forum/showthread.php?t=11687

What are your favourite pieces of yours?

My favourite pencil sketch:

Ship by the docks

My favourite soft pastel portrait:

James Caviezel (Passion of the Christ)

My favourite oil portrait:

Sadie (16” by 20”)

My favourite oil landscape:

Pa Beach, New Zealand (20” by 16”)

[Zindy]

Where do you find your inspiration?

I find my inspiration from everywhere I look, whether it is people I see or places I travel to. Sometimes I come up with a vision for my new artwork and I search for photos that help realize my vision. Often I stumble onto an image that I feel like I have to paint because there’s a certain beauty or quality of the image that inspires me.

Currently, I look for challenging pieces to broaden my portfolio and demonstrate my ability or growth from my previous work. I like to vary my subjects and prove to myself that I can paint a certain scene. I always strive to take what I have learned from a previous painting and build from that experience by exploring and developing different styles and techniques.

What is your favourite season and does it influence your work?

Favourite season is spring. Although I have yet to specifically paint a spring scene, I feel like there’s something about the weather in the springtime that often creates mysterious lighting in the air. I like to pay attention to light and shadow effects created by the cover of darkness before the rain or the peeking of sunlight through the clouds after the rain.

Do you have any new projects/artwork we can look forward to?

Currently I am working on a daytime painting of downtown Toronto looking out towards the lake. I’m using a larger canvas size (16” by 24”) and it will be the kind of grand cityscape I have always wanted to paint. I’m working on it bit by bit because I am quite busy right now but I hope to finish it by the end of spring. The painting will also involve quite a bit more detail than I’m used to in the past so I will build it up slowly and take photos along the way. Because my painting style is usually very quick and loose, I have to slow down and pay more attention to details. Overall, the style will be similar in style but also progression in complexity from my Rideau Canal skating piece.

What are your goals for the future?

My goal for the future and perhaps this summer would be to carry my paints around and paint outdoors. For the past while now I have been building my confidence to do so and the main issue right now has to do with logistics in terms of figuring out how to carry around a set of paints and setup a canvas. I would love to be able to travel downtown and set up camp in the city. I’m pretty shy still so I will try to find somewhere that’s not too busy and offers a quiet place to paint. I have a few places in mind but it will be a fun experience exploring the city. Another thing that has held me back in the past is the difficulty in finding company as I imagine it can be quite lonely. Hopefully I find some company but if not, that’s okay as well.

Another goal of mine would be to teach an aspiring artist. My own lessons have never been formal so I don’t imagine them as such. I would love to invite someone over to my place to give them some pointers and just spend the afternoon painting. I feel like I have a lot to share and it would be a great learning experience for me as well.

Is there anything you'd like to say to everyone at the forums?

If you have any questions about your own work or about mine, please ask as I would be more than happy to answer them! I feel passionate about giving back to the community and look forward to helping out where I can!

Tim

[Cold Shiva]

Splendid! I love how you've told your tale and I get a good idea how your works come together, strangely enough. I've always felt you're more the impressionist, rather than the fine-artist and I've always loved your warm style and interesting color-compositions, as well as the emotion you carry in your work; it is a rather rare good nowadays, so keep that up!

[tim]

Thanks for noticing Mike! I really appreciate your encouragement!

Tim

[Carla Michael]

Excellent work Tim & you're a handsom dude too ^_^ you remind me of korean actors a bit, my oil paints are my true passion, I may have some issues now but in the future I hope everything is better for all of us

[tim]

Thanks Carla! I believe in you! You have the passion to achieve your dreams!