Memories of China

So I'm finally back to the land of the living and seem to be (hopefully) out of the woods with this illness I've been having problems with! I've been given a new brief on composition to play with which I can easily say I'm enjoying quite a lot I feel very unrestricted to play with colour and imagery. The first concept I am looking at right now is "Memories of China". I feel quite in touch with Memories of China as my boyfriend is Chinese and I've spent quite a bit of time immeresed in various aspects of his culture. I have quite a thing for chinese paper lanterns that you can find hanging up in any chinese supermarket.

One artist I've been looking at is Jing Ling and his paintings on nature such as lotus flowers;

I was thinking of doing something similar to this for my literal representation, I'm thinking of abstracting using the idea of Chinese Lanterns in various compositions with pattern.

Finally here are some pictures I've played with using composition to create something intresting and different. I've also played with the focus to give a contrasting effect. To continue the theme of Memories of China I decided to use the Lucky Chinese Cat (which infact may be a Japanese version but they are very similar).