Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Blog Hop!!! -- Around the World in Artist's Blogs...

The new semester in the Atelier has started, and my watercolor painting time has again become few and far between... But I have not fallen into the oblivion! In fact, I have been invited to a great blog party! My dear artist friend, Kara K. Bigda has been kind enough to inviteme to participate in the "Around The World Blog Hop!"  (Thank you, Kara! :) So I'll be answering a few questions she asked regarding my paintings, and then I will be sharing with you links to 3 people I've invited to participate in this online event.

If you are familiar with the website that hosts my online gallery and sells my art works - Daily Paintworks, you are probably already very familiar with Kara's beautiful still life paintings and her whimsical "Little People" series. She was one of the original artist members of Daily Paintworks before they opened their membership for a larger artists' community, and now is a featured artist of DPW. I've been a long time fan of her work. To me, her paintings are best described as visual poetry, and reminds me of the world of Emily Dickinson -- quiet, unassuming, yet filled with beauty that are so often not notices in our daily glance... They are carefully woven tapestries of subtle nostalgia, soft winter light of New England and the passing of time. Her compositions are often simple - a pot, some wild flowers picked from roadside or the backyard, a plate of fresh blueberry on light patterned fabrics, the corner of the living room -- yet they are always very effective, carefully planned, with beautiful layered washes and vivid rendering of the texture of different subjects. Light is the biggest star of her painting, and it works the magic to make the most ordinary object appear glorious, showing the personality of an old, chipped desk, or the playfulness of half-eaten strawberries. She never ceases to amaze me by opening my eyes again and again toward something I have glanced over perhaps a million times in my daily life, but never actually "seen". On top of that, she also does amazing, life-like pet portraits on the (very difficult!) surface of Aquabord, and use her great sense of humor to make me crackle up every time she designs and paints yet another scene of her little Fisher-Price "people" in their tiny desktop community. If you are not familiar with her work, be sure to stop by her blog and website to take a look! And, you can purchase some of the amazing art pieces she creates from her Daily Paintworks Gallery (they make great gifts for the holidays ;-).



Morning Sunby Kara K. Bigda

Ok... Now onto the questions:

1.  What am I working on?

I am actually working on my first every oil painting! (Well, that is not entirely true since I have tried my hands on oils before by taking some classes with a very talented still-life painter, David Chefeitz. But I quickly realized that to be able to paint expressively, one has to be able to draw quite accurately, hence the embark of the whole journey in the classical atelier... And now, two years and many long-pose figure and cast drawing from life later, I am doing my first oil painting in the atelier! It is only in black and white for now, but I will be painting the cast of the ear of Michelangelo's David, and doing a figure from live model (whose name, coincidentally, is also David!), both starting this week! I am still working on the transfer drawing at this stage, so no oils to show yet, but there will be in the coming few days, and I'm so excited to apply all the things I have learned through two year's drawing process to painting!



Morning LightWatercolor on Ampersand Aquabord, 6"h x 6"w, 2014 #21

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That aside, I am working on two separate series of watercolor paintings -- a series of 6" x 6" sized rose paintings on Aquabord (which has proven a very challenging surface to me, as I have mentioned in previous posts). I really love the brilliance of color you can achieve on this surface, which is great for floral paintings! So I will keep on experimenting with it until I know how it will behave with each wash like the back of my hand... 



Morning Light IIWatercolor on Ampersand Aquabord, 6"h x 6"w, 2014 #18

Bid in My DPW Auction ( Starting Bid $75)

The other series I am working on is "Winter Woods", which will be quater-sheet sized landscape paintings of snowy woodlands. So far I am doing sketches and small studies on different types of paper, trying out various methods of creating the rough bark texture of different kinds of trees, and observing how I can utilize the soft texture of snow and distant woods painted wet-in-wet to contrast with the linear elements of tree branches and twigs to generate pictorial interest. Below are two examples of small studies I am doing for this series:


Studies for "Winter Woods" Series, WIP


2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Since most of my paintings have a floral theme (although I have also dabbed in landscape paintings from time to time), I will first answer this question in the floral genre. I think what makes my floral paintings differ from most other painter is that I am interested in not only the painted image, but also the painting process, especially the wet-in-wet process so unique to watercolor. Hence, my flower painting often has a very soft, blurred background with only shapes suggesting distant foliage or flowers contrasting with a center blossom in sharp focus, creating high-drama and a "spot light" effect. To heighten such effect, most of my flowers are painted in very rich, saturated color, with dramatic dark background to contrast with it, creating a sense almost like theater stage lighting. I often only put one blossom in the center stage of a painting, making it the "diva" of my watercolor show. By utilizing these design tools, I hope my watercolor painting of flowers can be read as the portrait of one particular blossom, instead of just a general depiction of yet another rose or tulip.




Fire Dance
Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, WIP 9

My landscape paintings are often developed from (or simply are) small plein air studies. I am not interested in painting just "the place" or well known landmarks, though, instead I am interested in capture the mood and atmosphere of a particular moment in time. 



Fisherman's Evening II, Watercolor on Arches #140 Hot Press Paper, 7"h x 10"w, 2014 #2

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I am especially interested in quiet, less busy scenes with barely any "things" in it, when the elements has largely did the editing for me and got rid of the non-essential objects from my view -- such as fog blurring the distant mountains, or snow covering the busy ground. I like the "zen" like feeling of such scenery, and choose to paint them on very wet paper, often finishing each painting in one drying cycle of the paper, letting water doing most of the work for me and create interesting soft gradations and organic shapes. 



Falling Snow (Thoughts of You Fall Quietly upon Me...),  
Watercolor on Arches 140# Rough Paper , 7"h x 8"w, 2012 #30

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I only use a very limited palette for my landscape painting, mostly just browns and blues, sometimes with a little bit of earthy yellows. I like the harmony created by the restraint of color, and feel these quiet landscapes are good contrasts to my floral work (which is often very high in chroma and energy), providing me necessary meditation time and peace of mind when painting them.


Spring Meadow, Tamalpais 
Watercolor on Winsor Newton 140# Cold Press Paper , 6"h x 10"w2013 #63

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3.  How does my creating process work?

Most of my flower painting starts when the a glimpse of an image I have taken catches my eye again -- I usually let my reference images sit for a while before painting from them, using this to test whether they will still be interesting enough for me with the text of time, when the intial "wow" effect has faded. Then I will print out the image and play with the composition with old-fashioned corner mats, rotating and cropping the initial image until I am roughly happy with the composition. Next comes photoshop -- I will do my cropping of the digital image in the computer according to what I have done with the mats, and also digitally enhance the images by creating copies with blurred background, increased color saturation, increased contrast and/or luminosity... I work from these multiple reference images generated from the initial photograph: when I paint the background, I paint from the blurred image to take it out of focus; when I paint the flower I often work with the image with increased color saturation, and sometimes with the image with lightened shadows... etc. I am aware of the fact that the camera does not have nearly as large a dynamic range for values as the human eye, so these changes are merely necessary to make the final painting closer to the reality perceived with our eye, instead of through the cold mechanics of a camera lens. 

For the actual painting, I often do multiple glazes wet-in-wet, rewetting each section (larger than the area I am working on to create seamless connections between sections) after the last glaze dries. I usually paint from the background to foreground, and doing a faint-colored underpainting before doing the wet-in-wet application, so that I would have a road map when the paper is dripping wet and everything is in heightened motion. You can see an example of my underpainting and finished painting of "High Summer Dreams" below:



High Summer Dreams II, Finished Underpainting 


High Summer Dreams II, Completed Painting 

To view more of my work, you can visit my website, or my Daily Paintworks gallery.

And now for my invitees who will be blogging next Monday - October 20th.

Taryn Day - is one of my favorite oil painters that blogs. Her works are amazing combination of abstract brushwork and realistic depiction of the plane and forms of subjects, and she has such a great sense of composition, making the most ordinary snapshot morph into great paintings every time. It just makes my jaw drop. On top of that, she curates this other blog - the Art Room - that introduces artworks of other great artists she loves. I just don't know how she does it.




Franz Kline and a Blue Hatby Taryn Day 

Brienne Brown - is an amazing landscape painter in watercolor, and she whips out these atmospheric plein air paintings wherever she goes -- her friends farm, the corner of a street, even the boat dock of a small park. They are filled with interesting shapes and textures as well as vigorous brushwork, yet the big washes unifies everything and her paintings never looks too "busy" with details -- just enough to suggest and intrigue. Did I mention I love how she use colorful and luminous shadow shapes (sometimes invented shadow shapes that are not actually in the reference photos!) to create the coolest compositional designs, and add interest to large boring foreground areas? No wonder she is winning plein-air competitions left and right, and is a staple in Daily Paintworks' monthly competition as the judges' pick. Oh, I forgot to mention that just like me, she has a science background and worked in labs before becoming a full-time artist. How cool is that?



Tagged Againby Brienne Brown

Yevgenia Watts -- She is one of the most creative watercolor painter I have discovered since taking up blog and social media. Known for her loose, vivid portraits with beautiful brushwork, and her quick pen-and-ink watercolor sketches that is both whimsical and charming, now she has embarked a completely different journey, painting half-abstract architecture-themed paintins on Yupo! This latest series of hers just makes my jaw drop -- they are filled with beautiful color and texture, and the imagery just straddles between realism and mystical abstract shapes, filling the viewer the imagination with the wildest dreams.



Unity 21by Yevgenia Watts

Wow! This is such a lengthy blogpost... If you're still with me now, I really owe you a big big thanks! Thanks for stopping by and do check the artists I mentioned in this blog -- all of them have taught me so much about painting!

Enough rambling for now! I should really get back to my watercolor table... In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!

You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Crystal Springs Sunset -- Color as Value Exercise


Crystal Springs Sunset, 
Watercolor on Aches #140 Cold Press Paper, 10"h x 6"w, 2014 #20

Bid in My DPW Auction ( Starting Bid $40)

"Crystal Springs Sunset" started out as an exercise in Stan Miller's workshop. Using a black-and-white photograph as reference, Stan asked us to use any colors -- arbitrary colors even, like green for the clouds -- to paint each shape, mostly wet on dry, soften edges as we go. The only requirement is to get the shapes painted in color as close in value as the black-and-white reference photo. It was a very valuable exercise, teaching me the importance of value to create a believable illusion of three-dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. As long as the value relationships are right, almost any color can be used to create a believable image. That is such a freeing exercise! 

In the end, the resulted image reminded me of the the evening drives I used to take along Hightway 280, when the glorious last rays of sunlight reflects from the water of the reservoir, the golden shimmers of light are breathtakingly beautiful. Against the setting sun, the silhouettes of the evergreen-and-oak-covered coastal range mountains are in a somber blue-grey color that is hard to describe with language. Not being able to resist the view, I have always pulled over to the roadside to observe and take it by heart. Cameras just don't do it justice -- high-contrast, low luminosity scenes like this are hard to photograph unless you are a pro with all the right gears (which I am certainly not). But today, when finished with this little painting, I am filled with joy that all those roadside stoppings did not go to waste. They have carved the magic hour, the majestic light into my heart...

Enough rambling for now! I should really get back to my watercolor table... In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!

You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Water's Edge -- Continue with the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge...


Water's EdgeWatercolor on Aches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2014 #19


Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" Challenge for this September is officially closing, and I sort of fell off the wagon again in the past few days due to preparation for the start of my atelier's new semester. I will be starting to paint in oil this coming semester! I am so excited and terrified at the same time... Luckily, I have you guys -- my wonderful artist friends who are veteran oil painters! Well, be prepared... I will be bugging you guys with tons of questions (many of which very silly I'm sure... :-P)

I experimented with this water lily painting on how to most effectively paint shapes that has only very subtle color variations and next to each other -- I tried to paint some petals one at a time, carefully model the roundness of them by adding deeper and deeper reds when I was painting each petal; some other petals are painted as one shape with slight warm/cool variations of reds, then crevice darks are added between petals after the underlying colors are dry. I tried both and wanted to find out how to avoid leaving a very harsh, dark edge at the border between two petals, which is the result of wetting an area then adding dark colors wet-in-wet. I find when I paint one petal at a time, it is easier to clean the edge of each petal buy running a damp stiff nylon brush along where the dark pigment accumulates, then blog the area slightly with tissue. When painting multiple petals at once, the petals painted at the same time have better connections and looks more natural, yet the edge between sections painted at one time and another always looks quite harsh. I am still struggling to find a good method and make the connection of areas painted sequentially more natural... If you have some good tips, please share with me, my friends!

Enough rambling for now! I should really get back to my watercolor table... In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!

You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Morning Light II -- Continue with the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge...


Morning Light IIWatercolor on Ampersand Aquabord, 6"h x 6"w, 2014 #18

Bid in My DPW Auction ( Starting Bid $75)

Another of my early entries for Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" Challenge for this September... I named it "Morning Light II" since I have finished "Morning Light I" a bit earlier -- the first one of my 6" x 6" rose series on Ampersand Aquabord, but haven't got a chance to share it here with you guys yet... (Promise I will do so in the next few days -- I am gradually catching up with my long-lagged-behind blog posts! But since I haven't posted the entire summer, there is so much catching up to do... :-P)

I have really struggled through this one to get the soft transitions in the background where colors are rich, saturated or dark - which according to my opinion is the hardest thing to do on Aquabord. I think it may still benefit from a few changes here and there to model the volume and turn of each petal, but for now I am stopping, as I have worked on it for two days continuously, and losing insight on the subtleties. The great thing about this challenge -- putting a time limit on each project and force me to work more directly, boldly and fearlessly -- also makes it hard for me to do the last 10% of work that I consider makes the difference between a good piece and a mediocre one -- there is no chance to put a piece away and come back to it with a fresh eye with such a tight time frame for completion... Nevertheless, I think I may come back to this one in a few days to do some fine tweaking... :-)

Despite of all its difficulties, I still think my adventures into Ampersand Aquabord is well worth its while, because it is something "new" and "foreign" to me. Personally, I believe that it is very hard for someone who has painted for a while to avoid getting into an "inertia" of painting simply be deliberately trying to change his or her technique, and one surefire way to push yourself out of such painting rut is to try a new subject, or try a new surface. Different painting surfaces have different absorbency for water, different drying time and subtle variation in the same stage of the drying cycle, different surface texture, different resistance to paint application (which determines how easily the same stroke will spread or different surfaces with approximately the same wetness). Hence, painting on an unfamiliar surface would force you to open your eyes, and really observe the behavior the paint you put down on paper again, instead of just blindly going from one painting stage to the next. All of these afore-mentioned characteristics also determines the different visual effect one is able to achieve on various painting surfaces -- on a smooth, non-absorbent surface like hot-press paper or Aquabord, one can utilize the drying edge of a stroke that is laid down and different "water-mark"s to suggest shapes (wet-on-dry); on a very absorbent surface, it is hard (and often not necessary) to maintain the edge of one individual brush-stroke, yet one can rely on the movement of color laid-down across a large area of wet or moist paper to achieve interesting edge effects and soft shapes (wet-in-wet). The final visual effect is often drastically different, creating different signature styles. 

Of course, it is not impossible to use one technique to imitate the other by softening edges with clear water, or wet small areas when painting wet-in-wet to simulate brush strokes, and create similar looks on different painting surfaces using very different techniques -- which is another great exercise. It has taught me that no matter what road is taken, a painting is ultimately judged not first by the techniques used, but by the final visual effects one is able to achieve. A good painting is first and foremost about "what" is being painted, then by "how" it's painted. Technique is an important means to the end, but for me not by itself an end. The image in one's vision and how it is translated onto the painted surface is the uttermost important thing. 

Enough rambling for now! I should really get back to my watercolor table... In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!

You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Green Bells of Ireland -- Continue with the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge...


Green Bells of Ireland
Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2014 #17

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With my third butterfly painting for Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" Challenge for this September still in the works, I thought I'd share with you one of my previous paintings that I have completed for this challenge. I did it while still in China, therefore haven't got a chance to share it here with you yet, although I have uploaded the image onto my Daily Paintworks Gallery Page. I have started this painting actually in 2012, and at that time my main goal is to explore different variation of greens -- mixed from yellow, blue and brown, or modified from different tube greens. I was a little intimidated by this color, as it is not easy to make it look natural with readily-available tube colors, yet it is so essential to flower (and all nature-related) paintings. I have worked on it on and off many times, and certainly have learned a great deal while working on it! The most interesting fact I have discovered is that you can add a lot of different hue -- blues, yellows, and even reds and brows -- to your painting in different locations at small portions and still have the entire image read as "green", as long as the colors adjacent to green on the color wheel dominate the pictorial space, and colors complimentary to green only occupy small areas -- and these sparsely placed jewels actually decrease the monotony of the whole painting, really making the color "sing".

Paintings in an almost-monochromatic scheme like this one is not easy, as it is relatively hard to place emphasis on the center of interest item without the help of a hint of the complimentary color of the large color field it is placed in. I have to rely on mostly cautiously placed details as well as the contrast of soft and hard edges to reach my goal, and direct the viewers' eyes toward the flower bells in the foreground. I have exaggerated the softness of the background from the reference photo to make the center flowers stand out, and add more atmosphere and movement to the entire image.

In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!

You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Sugar Swirl -- Continue with the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge...


Sugar SwirlWatercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2014 #16

Bid in My DPW Auction ( Starting Bid $85)

My second butterfly painting for Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" Challenge for this September. I have painted this butterfly on Ampersand Aquabord and uploaded the image onto my Daily Paintworks Gallery Page, but haven't shared it with you here yet (which I plan to do in the next few days, after the challenge is over). The two surface behaves very different -- Arches are great for wet-in-wet application and colors do not lift from it all that easily, but one has to account for the fact that bright hues dull down quite a bit on this absorbent surface, and compensate for that when laying down colors with stronger intensity when painting; on the other hand, bright colors stay as brilliant as the moment it's laid down on Aquabord, as this surface is not absorbent at all, hence all colors stay on its clay-coated surface and do not sink in. However, this makes glazing a color-covered area extra hard, and its fast-drying surface makes doing thick, juicy wet-in-wet application very difficult. I had fun switching back and forth between the two surfaces, playing with their different properties, which is a great exercise to avoid falling into the crutch of always painting with the same procedure and method... :-)

As I was painting the background greens, I realized that I do have some favorite mixtures that I often go to without thinking, and Hooker's Green + French Ultramarine Blue is just one of them. You can add Quinacridone Gold, Quinacridone Burnt Orange and Undersea Green to vary the hue a little bit and add more warmth or depth, but starting with Hooker's Green + French Ultramarine Blue almost guarantees that you will get that deep, shadowy green you get when looking at dense foliage that is not in direct sunlight. I learned this combination when I just started painting watercolor, and it has been helpful to me ever since. Of course, this does not mean one should reach out for the same color mixture without actually looking at nature -- it's just a starting point, a jump board for you to use and land onto your own color mixture for every possible variation of the rainbow.

In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!

You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:

Monday, September 22, 2014

Spring Feast -- Continue with the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge...


Spring FeastWatercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2014 #15

Sold!

Continue with Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" Challenge for this September! I am posting the new paintings I am finishing this week and will catch up with the ones I finished earlier in October -- forgive me if it is a little confusing! (The challenge has started when I was still in China, where I have no access to blogger or facebook due to government restrictions on internet there, so I have a few of those piled up, uploaded onto my Daily Paintworks Gallery Page but not here.) 

I am doing a few butterfly paintings this week, among other things. This is the first one I finished. I tried something new in the background -- glazing wet-on-dry but still try to maintain the boundaries of different color-shapes soft and diffused. I found that I can control the shapes and values of each shape better, but multiple glazes do dull the color a bit if I am not super careful. I had some fun with the butterfly, letting the lightest background washes seep into the light shapes of its wings to add a hint of color, thus subtly show the translucency of the wings in sunlight. For its furry body I used very small brush and scumbled with think paint to get the texture of tiny hair, and contrasted that with the smooth, shiny underbelly of the insect. I am quite happy with how it's turned out. Now off to the next one! (Hardly any time to breathe with this challenge! How are you doing my friends?... :-)

In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!

You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:

Friday, September 19, 2014

My Big Pink Rose Painting -- and the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge


Beauty Queen IIWatercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 19"h x 14"w, 2014 #14

Bid in My DPW Auction ( Starting Bid $550)

I have been absent again from this blog for three months! I cannot believe it... It seems like everytime I say in my blogpost that I will post more often, something just happens to make it difficult to keep that promise... I am back now, from a difficult trip back China, my home country, for the funeral of a dear elder family member. Times like this make me think about my own mortality, and I am having some concerns regarding my own health following a recent body checkup, but most important of all, it makes me rethink what I want to do with everyday of my life.

I've always been slightly intimidated by the thought of painting larger, and thought "I could do it when I have more time" or "I could do it after I gain a little more experience with watercolor". But I realized this is not going to happen as long as I keep on putting it off -- so after careful consideration, I've set the goal for myself to paint at least one painting larger than quarter sheet per month in the next 12 month, and try to do at least three paintings larger than half sheet among those. I'll revisit this goal in a year, and see how I have stood up to this self-challenge.

So this is my first attempt -- a rose the size of almost a half-sheet. I have done it in a smaller scale - 7"h x 5"w, a size that I am much more comfortable with. I felt less intimidated by this subject since I've already worked out some of the problems in composition and execution in the small painting, but as I was proceeding with the larger version, I started to appreciate it unique challenges coming with the scale. For starters I found my arms don't stretch to the far side of the painting when I sit, and I often have to paint the top side upside down to solve this problem... And it is not even really large for those of you (you know who I am talking about! ;-) that routinely work on full-size and above sheets of paper... (What do you guys do when you work on a larger size? Please share your tips with me!)

So this is my humble beginning of yet another chapter of my watercolor journey -- it's been almost three years since I started sharing it with you, my friends, and I've loved every minute of it. Flipping back to the first few entries of this blog, I can see how far I have come and I know it is impossible with the encouragement from all of you. Thank you, my friends, at down times it is your kind, gentle nudge that has kept me going on this winding road.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention that I have again signed up for Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" Challenge for this September! The challenge has started when I was still in China, where I have no access to blogger or facebook due to government restrictions on internet there, so I have a few of those piled up, uploaded onto my Daily Paintworks Gallery Page but not here. I will gradually share them here with you in the next few days. It's unlikely I am going to make the 30 paintings quota this time due to my travels, but I will paint everyday nonetheless. Happy painting my friends!

In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!

You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Some New Directions -- Divergence from Florals!


Low Tide - Plein Air at Muir Beach, 
Watercolor on Richeson Zoltan Szabo #140 Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 11"w, WIP 1

I've taken a sabbatical from my floral watercolors lately to explore other directions, and I thought maybe I should be sharing some of them with you here. I was a bit hesitant since I have no idea how they would turn out -- it's both scary and exhilarating to explore new territories! Oh well, you, my blog friends have been very kind and supportive to me throughout, so maybe my worries are unfounded! Here they are:

The first one is another little plein air watercolor I did recently at Muir Beach. It's painted on Richeson Zoltan Szabo #140 Cold Press paper and the size is 7"h x 11"w. The sky was over cast that day, therefore all the colors are more saturated without being bleached by the all powerful sun, and I really wanted to accentuate this in my painting. I liked the result in the field and thought it was finished. However, after going back home and giving it a second look, I noticed that the center of interest - the dark rock - is almost smacked dead in the center of the painting -- a compositional NO-NO. I also think the dark shapes of the wet sand can be improved a little more as well... So, back to the drawing board it goes! I will post the modified version in a couple of days...


In Between, Watercolor on Lanaquarelle #140 Cold Press Paper, 15"h x 11"w, WIP 1

The second project is a found still life. Now, if you have followed my blog for a while, you probably have noticed that my florals are often very high in chroma, and seeing flowers in sunlight often make me feel inspired to work, but light is the first painter that reveals beauty in a lot of commonplace objects, even neglected corners. I found this dried leaflet and branch perched in between pebbles on the roadside while taking a walk in the neighbourhood a couple of years back -- and when the sunlight was cast upon it, the pattern of light and shadow is absolutely beautiful. When I pulled the photo out of a dusted drawer during spring cleaning (yes, even I occasionally do this!...) it inspired me to try a subject that is unfamiliar to me. The reference image is low in color saturation so it will be interesting to try different approaches -- increase the chroma or emphasize the value difference in low saturation -- and see which one I like best! (I am even thinking of starting a new series of still life paintings with the theme "Everyday Beauty". If you have reference photos of objects that often do not catch the eye of most people, but you find very beautiful and inspiring, please share with me by posting it here or email me at arena.shawn@gmail.com!)


The Gossiping Ladies, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 9"w, WIP 1

The last one of my newest projects is really a step out of my comfort zone and something I've rarely tackled before: animals. This image of two parrots perched on mossy branch in bright tropical sunlight has caught my eyes a while ago and I've finally decided to tackle it after gathering my courage for a while. I love the bright plumage colors of these birds, and their expression really reminded me of some of my relatives gossiping about family matters while resting in the traditional front yard after a day's work -- a scene so common back in the days when the large, extended family still lived together in the countryside, but more and more rare these days with the younger generation moving away into towns and cities and forming their own nuclear family... My main focus of this painting is trying to depict the texture of the fur and feather without painting them one by one, as well as capture the individual personality of these cute little critters! I am a bit nervous about how they would turn out. Please feel free to give some critiques and suggestions!

In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!

You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:







Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Marsh Sunset -- A Little Plein Air Painting at Elkhorn Slough


Marsh Sunset, Watercolor on Fabriano #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 10"w, 2014 #13

Bid in My DPW Auction ( Starting Bid $70)

The weather was great and I went out to do some plein air on Friday, and completely "Marsh Sunset" near Elkhorn Slough. Unfortunately, it was very cold once the sun started to set, and the coastal fog came in swiftly. As a result, I was not feeling well over the weekend  and did not get much of painting done... Still, I was happy to finally get back there and paint in nature! It's been too long since I have done that...

In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!

You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:

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