Research Interests & Creative Plan
(Traditional and Digital Fine Arts)
by Edward Locke
For any questions, please send me an email ([email protected]).
Research Interests
(1) Develop and publish online more creative methods of using Adobe Photoshop tools to accomplish the tasks of creating special effects for digital photography, graphic design and illustration.
(2) Study and publish online more creative methods of using Adobe Illustrator tools to accomplish the tasks of creating special effects for graphic design and illustration.
(3) Continue research on artistic expression found in American cities and marketplaces, and publish online relevant information to share with professional in the graphic arts community.
(2) Study and publish online more creative methods of using Adobe Illustrator tools to accomplish the tasks of creating special effects for graphic design and illustration.
(3) Continue research on artistic expression found in American cities and marketplaces, and publish online relevant information to share with professional in the graphic arts community.
Creative Plan (2020-2025)
To download The General Guidelines for My Interdisciplinary and Multimedia Artistic Creative Plan (2020-2025), and The Major Projects for My Interdisciplinary and Multimedia Artistic Creative Plan (2020-2025), please click the thumbnail below.
edward_locke_creative_plan_2023_final_version.pdf | |
File Size: | 2379 kb |
File Type: |
Temporary Online Exhibition
(Progress of the 2020-2025 Artistic Creative Plan)
(Completed Artworks and Reference Images)
The 2020-2025 Artistic Creative Plan includes eight Major Projects, each of them would contain 100 pieces of artworks. Some pieces have been completed or are in progress (“Completed or In Progress”), while others are in the initial stage of ideation with sketches or other types of reference materials (“Reference Images”), as shown in the Progress Reports at the end of each section.
1st Major Project:
America the Heroic and Beautiful
This Project will celebrate America’s heroic spirits and scenic beauty with images of heroes and their achievements, as well as National Parks and other sceneries as principal motifs. In some of the artworks, natural scenes will be integrated with images of American heroes who have made significant contributions to the causes of peace, freedom, justice, and progress in the past, for the benefits of the Nation, the humankind, and especially the less fortunate and disadvantaged members of the communities. In other artworks, skyscapes, landscapes, and seascapes will be integrated with the images of ordinary citizens from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds in their colorful ethnic dresses, to celebrate their individual and collective contributions to the growth of the American Nation as a great melting-pot, “One Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” In the previously completed projects, these heroes included outstanding political leaders such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Illinois Governor Adlai Ewing Stevenson II, Los Angeles Mayor Thomas Bradley, labor leaders Cesar Chavez and Huerta Dolores. For some additional projects, images of other heroes will be painted or printed on transparent glass or plexiglass panels, to be overlayed on the main projects, which consist of beautiful sceneries of their birth places or landmarks of their great achievements; these heroes might include great political leaders such as Presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, President John F. Kennedy, entrepreneurs and philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie, Norton Simon, Henry E. Huntington, and Henry Ford, labor and civil right leaders such as Mother Johns and Rosa Parks, scientists and inventors such as Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein, outstanding artists with unique personal styles such as Mary Cassatt, Patricia Tobacco Forester, Stan Lee and Andy Warhol, and finally, visionary religious and community leaders such as Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Dorothy Day, and Elizabeth Ann Seton, and great educators such as John Dewey and Booker T. Washington. Some pieces will feature images of mascots or dream-world animals, such as the Happy Lion and the Happy Mouse that I have previously created digitally with 3ds MAX and Maya software programs, as well as real or imagined animals and plants previously created with markers, crayons and color pencils. The purpose of the inclusion of these creatures is to celebrate the achievements of digital technology, especially in 3D modeling and animation, and of the art of cartooning, in American visual arts and entertainment industry, and the creative and innovative potential of the American people.
Published and Award-winning Artwork
Progress Report:
1 “Published and Award-winning Artwork,”
40 “Completed or in Progress,” and 44 “Reference Images.”
1 “Published and Award-winning Artwork,”
40 “Completed or in Progress,” and 44 “Reference Images.”
2nd Major Project:
Towards the One World of Peace and Freedom
This Project will celebrate the beauty of traditional and modern life and ecology among the Nations across the five continents of the Planet Earth, in terms of colorful scenic attractions and diverse cultural heritage. The artworks will feature scenic attractions, such as rainforest in Amazon, emerald coast of Ireland, mystical Stonehenge, magnificent Angkor Wat, cultural artifacts of the Greeks and Romans, Anglo-Saxon-Celtics, Jewish, Vikings, Spanish, French, African, Asian, Slavic, Native-American and other peoples. Heroic figures with positive and constructive spirits from legends, mythologies, religions and history with be organically integrated with the natural scenes, to express the aspiration of mankind for a harmonious and peaceful global community, or the “One World” as advocated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or the community of common human destiny with peace and freedom. The progress of ecologically-friendly technology, such as tidal, solar and wind energy will be visually represented by personified and cartoonish figures, to express the aspiration of mankind for a shared and sustainable prosperity.
Progress Report:
28 “Completed or in Progress,” and 38 “Reference Images.”
28 “Completed or in Progress,” and 38 “Reference Images.”
3rd Major Project:
The Positive Flow of Life Energy in My Spiritual Spectrum
This Project is intended to celebrate some positive and constructive human values that survive all negative and destructive challenges throughout history, in an abstract and expressive but powerful and profound manner. These values include loving-kindness, open-mindedness and tolerance, generosity, altruism, universal sisterhood and brotherhood, upward mobility, progress, peace and freedom, symbiotic co-prosperity of all life forms, constructive attitude, optimism and others. As abstract artworks, they will deliver visual beauty suggestive of diverse human values, through the application of the principles of color harmony and symbolism, the statics and dynamics of shapes, volumes and lines. However, the interpretation of the inherent message is up to the viewers’ imagination.
Progress Report:
25 “Completed or in Progress,” and 22+ “Reference Images.”
25 “Completed or in Progress,” and 22+ “Reference Images.”
4th Major Project:
The Positive Flow of Life Energy in My Dream World
This Project is intended to celebrate some positive and constructive human values that survive all negative and destructive challenges throughout history, in a symbolic and realist or representational manner. These values include loving-kindness, open-mindedness and tolerance, generosity, altruism, sisterhood and brotherhood, upward mobility, progress, peace and freedom, symbiotic co-prosperity of all life forms, constructive attitude, optimism and others. In addition, it will celebrate human spirit and capabilities at creative exploration, in both spiritual and physical realms. Mountain, spring, waterfall, river, ocean, a lot of them personified, will provide backgrounds for the magic dramas of human, humanoids, animals, flowers and plants, in real-world or dream world settings. They will deliver visual beauty with figures, objects and scenes in a concrete and “down-to-the-Earth” manner, but will still allow the viewers to freely interpret the inherent aesthetic, social and cultural messages or meanings of the artworks. The depiction of the positive flow of life energy will be achieved by the contrast and harmony among the visual elements in the composition, in terms of their sizes, placements and color schemes.
Progress Report:
30+ “Completed or in Progress,” and 83+ “Reference Images.”
30+ “Completed or in Progress,” and 83+ “Reference Images.”
5th Major Project:
The Neo-Arcimboldo Beauty of the Mother Earth Our Sustainable Habitat
As a celebration of the Mother Earth, life forms and their physical habitat will be extensively featured throughout all artworks in this Project; they include humans, animals, and sceneries; plants, flowers, vegetables, machine parts and other “everyday objects” will be used as graphical elements to compose landscapes, seascapes, skyscapes, human figures, and animals, in a style similar to the works of Renaissance artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo; these images will constitute the positive space in the composition. This Project is intended to celebrate the values of vegetarianism and environmentalism. Scenes from well-known national parks of the United States and other countries will be integrated with personified real or imagined living creatures, animals or plants. For the background or negative space, abstract forms and shapes based on geometric patterns will be used.
Completed or in Progress |
Reference Images |
Progress Report:
8 “Completed or in Progress,” and 11 “Reference Images.”
8 “Completed or in Progress,” and 11 “Reference Images.”
6th Major Project:
Mergen-Dasan’s Paradise of Manchu Spirit
This Project is intended to celebrate the positive heritage and long-lasting achievements of the Manchu people in the past 400 years, as well as their unique traditional social, cultural and economic values that are still relevant in today’s post-industrial age, as we gradually move into a global community with sustainable prosperity and shared human destiny.
The Manchus are a minority ethnic group originally from the Northeastern provinces of China commonly known as Manchuria (about 0.72% of today’s entire population of China, including Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau). By a holistic combination of political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, and military means, the Manchu people have integrated five previously antagonistic and mutually genocidal entities, i.e., China Proper, Tibet-Qinghai, Mongolia, Manchuria, and Xinjiang or the New Territory, into a peaceable and stable community of shared destiny, the Great Qing Empire of China; and they led the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Qing Government for about 300 years (1616-1912). After the unification of China under the Qing Dynasty, the Manchu people promoted a series of enlightened social policies for the benefits of the working classes and the previously disadvantaged ethnic groups of China. These policies included:
The Manchus are a minority ethnic group originally from the Northeastern provinces of China commonly known as Manchuria (about 0.72% of today’s entire population of China, including Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau). By a holistic combination of political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, and military means, the Manchu people have integrated five previously antagonistic and mutually genocidal entities, i.e., China Proper, Tibet-Qinghai, Mongolia, Manchuria, and Xinjiang or the New Territory, into a peaceable and stable community of shared destiny, the Great Qing Empire of China; and they led the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Qing Government for about 300 years (1616-1912). After the unification of China under the Qing Dynasty, the Manchu people promoted a series of enlightened social policies for the benefits of the working classes and the previously disadvantaged ethnic groups of China. These policies included:
- Cutting tax on peasants, artisans and merchants by about 70%;
- Abolishing the system of unpaid slave labor in public works and establishing a system of compensation for the participants;
- Abolishing the old Han-Chinese system of forced recruitment of peasants into military services, and establishing the all-volunteer, fairly-paid and professional military forces consisting of the Manchu, Mongolian and Han-Chinese Eight Banners, the Han-Chinese Green Camps, plus local militias directed by literati-gentry and staffed by peasant volunteers;
- Ending the construction of the Great Wall, a military fortification built by the previous Han-Chinese feudal regimes to prevent Mongolians from moving into China Proper; under the Qing Government, China Proper and Mongolian both belonged to the same nation-state; thus, the need for the Great Wall disappeared;
- Emancipating the “pariah” or “untouchable” social groups (the so-called “criminal families” whose livelihood had been restricted to prostitution, indentured service and other “lowly professions” by the previous Ming Dynasty regime);
- Building grass-root welfare networks to assist needy people such as widows and handicapped;
Progress Report:
17 “Completed or in Progress,” and 39+ “Reference Images.”
17 “Completed or in Progress,” and 39+ “Reference Images.”
7th Major Project:
Order and Chaos in Today’s Global Community
This Project is intended to create humorous, satirical and entertaining visual commentaries either critical or complimentary of public figures, political events or social conditions, from my “middle-of-the-road” perspective that integrate moderately liberal and progressive points of view with moderately conservative ones on economic, political and cultural issues. As a non-partisan progressive-conservative, I support the preservation of the positive elements from time-proven traditions while accepting necessary changes for the gradual but constant improvements of human conditions in all spheres of social life, under the guidance of Judeo-Christian ethics, the humanitarian values of the majority of American people, and within the frameworks of Jeffersonian democracy, but regardless of the partisan ideological identity of the promotors of such changes. My political cartoons are intended to serve the purpose of promoting social progress while preserving the positive traditional values; however, they are absolutely not intended to uncritically support or oppose any political party or any ideology, regardless of its label, self-proclaimed or branded by opponents, as “Leftist,” “Rightest,” “Democrat,” or “Republican;” in other words, what deserves my support or opposition is NOT partisan or ideological identity per se, but the nature of particular policies and advocacies. I strongly believe that all ideologies or theories of political-economics contain both positive and negative elements, both constructive and destructive factors, both common-sense and unrealistic advocacies, and finally, both decent and disgusting ideas. Therefore, in a healthy and functional democratic society with time-proven Jeffersonian principles and American heritage, none of the political parties or ideologies that exist today should be uncritically rejected or sustained; this principle applies to political leaders as well. My other cartoons or caricatures such as those of movie stars or artists are solely drawn for entertainment.
Completed Artworks
(Topics on American Events)
Award-Winning and Published Artworks
Published and Award-winning Artwork
Published Artworks
Progress Report:
1 “Published and Award-winning Artwork,” 12 “Published Artworks,”
23 “Completed Artworks (Topics on American Events” and
16 “Completed Artworks (Topics on Global Events).”
1 “Published and Award-winning Artwork,” 12 “Published Artworks,”
23 “Completed Artworks (Topics on American Events” and
16 “Completed Artworks (Topics on Global Events).”
8th Major Project:
The Revival of Cultural Heritage of Ethnic Minorities in Modern China
This Project will celebrate the contributions made by more than 50 diverse minority ethnic groups of China including Mainland and Taiwan territories to the evolution of the Chinese Civilization (except those of the Manchus, to be specially celebrated in the 6th Major Project). In the United States and the rest of the Western Nations, when people think about the Chinese, they usually refer to the Han-Chinese, the “mainstream” majority group that constitutes over 95% of the population. There is a general lack of awareness of the existence of minority ethnic groups in China and of an understanding of their diverse cultural heritage as distinct but organic parts of the Chinese Civilization. In reality, the “mainstream” Han-Chinese groups today is the product of integration of diverse ethnic groups over several thousand years through either peaceable means of intermarriage and cultural interchange or violent means of conquest and domination of one group over the others. The minority ethnic groups live in over 60% of China’s land mass today. Most of them still maintain traditional cultural and economic patterns, while the “mainstream” Han-Chinese groups today are more or less “modernized” in terms of absorbing lots of elements from the Western Civilizations. The artworks in this Project will celebrate their traditional heritage and current habitat by featuring colorful scenic attractions (especially those placed under special protection by government authorities in the last three decades since the adoption of “Reform and Open Door” policies), architectural styles, traditional costumes and cultural artifacts. Heroic ethnic minority figures with positive and constructive spirits from legends, mythologies, religions and history with be organically integrated with the natural scenes, to recognize the important contributions made by the minority ethnic groups to the growth of the Chinese Civilization.
Progress Report:
6 “Completed or in Progress,” and 20 “Reference Images."
6 “Completed or in Progress,” and 20 “Reference Images."
Special Online Exhibition
Creative Portraiture
Ceramics
The Lively Teapots
Design Sketches for Ceramic Teapots and Outdoor Sculptures
THE CONTENT BELOW IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
This page will host my own new projects, in the categories of traditional 2D arts (drawings, watercolor paintings, oil paintings, and prints), to be developed in various series as listed in the Research Interests & Creative Plan):
Edward Locke's SuniSea Studio
Important Websites and Webpages Navigator
At the bottom of the Home page. Please click the Home button below to return to the Home page.
Important Websites and Webpages Navigator
At the bottom of the Home page. Please click the Home button below to return to the Home page.
Contact Information:
[email protected] | Phone number for clients only. |