art-by-pla.com

Welcome to my new blog. The goal here is to have fun and let you all know what’s going on in this life of a Thai artist living abroad in America.
Life is very good and with my son back in school and my family moved into a new house, I’m ready to get back to […]

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Portrait painting is just so difficult. I really struggle with these. Whereas I can spend 15 minutes on a landscape and get the essence of the subject, I often find myself spending days and weeks to figure out a portrait.
How do you really get the character of the person onto the canvas?
A portrait is meant […]

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I wanted to let everyone know about an amazing artist who happens to be my sister-in-law.
It’s funny but when I got married I didn’t realize the artistic talent of my husband’s family. Growing up in my family in Thailand and in Korat I was surrounded by artists. It was a very pleasant surprise to come […]

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Thai food, unlike Japanese, isn’t really known for fantastic presentation. Sure the ingredients alone often provide a lot of color and contrast, but usually it consists of a mound of rice, some spicy meat and if you’re ordering special maybe a fried egg.
Being someone who loves to have things look good though I pride myself […]

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Carving fruits and vegetables is distinctly Thai. It has been a part of our culinary culture for centuries and it’s something that I love to do. The food doesn’t even have to taste that good, but when it is presented with a bit of art, people immediately applaud.
A great site to learn more about fruit […]

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Finger painting isn’t just for kids. I was helping (read: doing) a school project with my son the other day and we decided to get a little dirty and do some hand prints and finger painting.
It got me inspired and so I found a little time the next day and made a small and quick […]

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I was recently asked to help some friends who own the great LA Thai restaurant Chan Dara. They wanted to turn their table tops into works of art. Because they really liked the way I use colors in a lot of my work they asked me if I could paint a few of their tables.
Furniture […]

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Ok. Time for some more fun with food carving. This time I’d like to walk through the individual steps for carving a pineapple.
Pineapples are already one of the most beautiful fruits out there. With their crazy skins and rich deep yellow centers, there is nothing like a pineapple. But carving pineapples can not only help to […]

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