Soar II

Soar II,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2014 #10

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I have mailed out "Soar II" to its new home in England earlier this week. I thought it was finished at the end of last year, but as I looked at it everyday during the Christmas break, I just felt it is still missing something, so I held off mailing it out to the client (who has been very kind and not rushing me at all) and hope I will know what final "punch line" to add. I often do this to paintings and normally it takes a while for me to actually say to myself "this is done, I have nothing more to say in this piece", but in this case because of the special circumstance I feel I need to finish it ASAP. However, after gauging with myself for a couple of days I really thought I don't want it to take any less effort or attention just because I am repainting the piece, and I don't want it to be a mere repeat of the one that got accidentally damaged. Instead, I want it to be better than the first one -- at least in my own judgement.

As I was doing this my family member got admitted to the hospital due to cardiac issues, so everything got put aside, as you probably already know from my previous blog posts. However, when he got a stent put in his artery and I was in the hospital, I took this painting together with other two small pieces tat I once thought was finished, but not sure, with me, as I would have long time to look at and think about them. I did just that, and worked on all of them in the past two weeks again. I was really happy with how this one turned out...

Soar II,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2014 #10

This is a previous version before final modification. I have decided to darken the leaf against the light stamen of the flower on the upper left to add more contrast, and I am sharing this WIP image which is very close to the finished painting here as an example of the type of modification I have done during the long pondering period. On the topic of when a painting is done, there is really no road map. Most of times we could only trust and rely on our best judgement, which is continuously being refined as we make numerous mistakes and shout out "I wish I had stopped a couple of strokes earlier!"...

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:

A Still Life Study, A Small Landscape, I Am Hanging on There...

It Takes Two to Tango,  
Watercolor on Saunders Waterford #140 Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 10"w, WIP 2

With a dear family member falling ill of cardiac issues and later myself getting sick with flu when in hospital taking care of him (thank you all who have sent me kind words and prayers!), I guess I have fallen off the bandwagon of "30 Paintings in 30 Days" challenge this time. I have decided not to beat myself up for it, and just try again next time in September when Leslie is hosting this challenge again. In the mean time, I found out that floral/still life painting actually suited the fragmented schedule I have in between hospital visits and bed rests better than landscapes, so to get back into the groove and also actually learn how to paint glass, I have resumed this study from master artist Jan Kunz's tutorial. Unlike most of my floral work, the two roses here are mostly done wet on dry, so that I could practice softening edges with a damp brush, while in the mean time try to make good shapes with each brush stroke. It's amazing how time consuming all the small shapes of the flower petals and especially on the ball jar are -- I have an increasing appreciation of the amazing work you do, Carrie!

Frosty Morning,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 10"w, WIP 1

When I actually have some chunks of time at hand, I worked on several more small landscapes. Most of them still have not taken shape yet, so I've only included one here. It started as a "Sky" painting in the challenge, and from that palette of Cobalt Blue, Turquoise and purple grey mixed with transparent primary colors, I decide to portray early snow in the mountain highlands, with lake water in the foreground, and some small shrubs still exhibiting fall colors reflecting in it. The focus here is to try to evoke the feeling of chilly late autumn morning air in the highlands. We'll see how it goes! :-) 

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:

Amber Glow -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Day 12

Amber Glow,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough Paper, 7"h x 10"w, 2014 #9

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $50) 

Sometimes misfortune happens in pairs as well -- I managed to finish this little painting last night but did not get a chance to photograph or post it until now, since I had to take a dear family member to the emergency room for his cardiac episode. Please pray for me that everything would be OK... We often do not think about how fortunate we are to have health until we are on the fridge of losing it...

It's very unlikely at this point I will be able to finish 30 paintings in January, but I will keep on painting at least a couple of hours a day. It actually keeps my mind in peace in times of worries... 

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:

Sky in Progress -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Day 8, 9, 10, 11

Tranquility,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 9"h x 12"w, WIP 1

With a progressing cold I fell significantly behind on my "Sky" paintings the past few days. I have been painting but since painting sky requires some serious wetting of the paper, I tend to work on several of them at the same time, so that I can continue working on one when others are in various stages of drying. So, here they are, some very close to finish, just waiting for me to put on the details; others just starting, with one or two wet-in-wet layers of clouds and nothing else yet... 

Amber Glow,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough Paper, 7"h x 10"w, WIP 1

Shades of Dusk,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 10"w, WIP 1

Night Sail,  
Watercolor on Lanaquarelle #140 Cold Press Paper, 3"h x 7"w, 2014 #8

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:

Storm over Estuary, Lewis and Clark National Park, Oregon -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Day 7

Storm over Estuary, Lewis and Clark National Park, Oregon,  

Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2014 #7

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $25) 

I have forgotten how difficult it is to paint big sky paintings -- and how little control you have of the outcome. Paint clouds wet in wet means that you are totally at the mercy of the paper and water. I had three wipe-outs (wash-outs to be exact) for this one and yesterday's painting each, because the cloud simply did not come out to be interesting shapes with enough value change in them when dried. I have resorted a simplest palette of only two colors: Payne's Gray and Quinacridone Burnt Sienna to capture this scene from a reference photo I've taken along the Lewis and Clark trail in coastal Oregon. When painting it I remembered so vividly of the big sky, open water, and evergreen trees standing on the edge of the estuaries. I took the road trip during Christmas-New Year break, and when I arrived at the national park that chilly winter afternoon, there is not a soul to be found around. There are some places on this earth that truly allows one's soul to quiet down, take the rhythm of the flowing water and the roaming wind. The coast of Oregon (which is deliberately kept to be public land by the state law) is definitely one of them. Theme for this week: "Sky".

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:

The Big Freeze -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Day 6

The Big Freeze,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2014 #6

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $25) 

With the large part of the country freezing over the Arctic Vortex, I thought winter stormy sky should be an appropriate topic of my 30/30 painting yesterday. Here's my painting of Day 6 -- "The Big Freeze". Theme for this week: "Sky".

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:

Fiery Sky -- WIPs (Again!), 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Day 5

Fiery Sky,  Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 10"w, WIP 1

Classes at the atelier resumed on Monday, which means I only have 3-4 hours at most to paint now on weekdays. Combining that with my recent sickness due to the cold (although we do not have a frigid temperature compared to most part of the country...), I did not complete this painting yesterday. It is very close to a finish and I am working on it, playing with my new favorite brush -- the slanted bristle 1" to put in shapes suggesting of foliage with minimum strokes. Theme for this week: "Sky".

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:

Autumn Colors... 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Day 4

Bon Fire,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 10"h x 4"w, WIP 1

With theme of today's painting being "Foliage", I could not decide whether to work on a tree or a field of grass. Being the ADD artist I am, I ended up doing the exact wrong thing -- being way to ambitious and decided to work on two paintings in the same time, one a small vertical format study of an autumn maple tree, and the other the exploration of textural and wet-in-wet manipulation of color on a golden wheat field of countryside. I liked the progress of both, but with the day fast drawing to an end, and the obligation of having to drive down to the south bay to hang some of my work at Brian's Restaurant in Los Altos for a little two-person show arranged by my local Los Altos Art Club (LAAC), I realized that I might not be able to finish either of them today! I don't want to just rush to an end since I liked both of them at this stage, and want to take time to tweak shapes and colors, doing a little calligraphy here and there, and a lot of gazing in between. We'll see how I am doing! I would do an update before going to bed... It's going to be a long night...

Fields of Gold,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 9"h x 12"w, WIP 1

Update: I did not finish this painting until the morning of the next day, but I was happy about the extra time I got to explore the shapes and space divisions by the branches. One thing I found about making small twigs looking real is to lighten and cool down their color toward the end. Of course a little dry brush work also goes a long way!

Bon Fire,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 10"h x 4"w, 2014 #4

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $35) 

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:

Moon Rise over Rockies -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Day 3

Moon Rise over Rockies,
 Watercolor on Richeson Stephen Quiller #140 Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 10"w, 2014 #3

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $45) 

So, there is not much doubt what theme group this one belongs to... Yepp, it is "Mountain". The majestic Rockies to be exact. It started as an idea of wanting to paint an image with my favorite palette -- purple and sienna complimentary duo. I thought these colors are just perfect to capture that magical moment of approaching dusk after glorious sunset, when a pale round moon slowly rises into the sky. I tried to be very deliberate about mark-making in this one, making every brush stroke count and use it to carve out shapes that are interesting and suggestive. I am influenced to a great degree by master watercolor artist, Stephen Quiller, in the way of making subtle, indicative, ambiguous and beautifully designed shapes -- ones that remind viewer of tree, rock, bush, undergrowth... But never delineate any of these "things" to one hundred percent exact. I am a firm believer that a good realistic painting needs to be aesthetically pleasing in both the way that representative shapes contain in it, and the abstract marks that sculpt out such shapes. Without one or the other a painting would either be a mere copy of the object or a haphazardly piled heap of calligraphy, each one individually flamboyant but lacking a solid foundation to build upon. 

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:

Fisherman's Evening II - 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Day 2

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

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A while ago (yes, in the last 30/30 challenge!) I've explored this theme and really loved the composition. Back during my trip back China visiting my parents, I've got the opportunity to sketch out some old fishing boats and dingles that are common sights along the river ways of populated historical cities and towns built on the fertile delta of Yangzi River, so I thought I'd do a series of painting featuring various interesting ancient boat designs. I also wanted to try out different materials and this is the first time I painted on a hot press paper surface -- I really loved it! It was a great challenge, however, the Arches hot press paper is a little rougher comparing to a lot of other makers' (such as Fabriano), and pigments actually granulate a little on this surface, creating some beautiful texture and separated color effect that are hard to see on the photo. The drying speed of this surface is very fast comparing to cold press paper by the same maker, and water do tend to pool on the surface, making wet-in-wet manipulation very difficult. But it is worth all the effort! Wet-in-wet done on cold press surface just have very interesting creeping edges, and wet-lifting helps create very subtle color separations that gives a lot of depth to the painting...

I lifted a new moon at the upper right corner of the painting, and was very happy that I have finally captured that sense of inner peace and tranquility of floating on open waters into the dusk, after a day's hard work...

And, of course, you guessed it -- theme for this one is... "Water". 

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:

Under the Autumn Sky - 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Ready, Set, Go!...

Under the Autumn Sky, 
Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico #140 Cold Press Paper, 9"h x 12"w, 2014 #1

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $75) 

OK, call me crazy but yes, after much struggle with myself I've decided to take up Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" challenge yet again! Needless to say, last year after doing this challenge in September, my blog postings have become sporadic, and I've not finished many paintings since. There is definitely a possibility of "burning out" for a slow painter like me to take up such a challenge. (In fact I got very sick toward the end of the year, possibly because of the pressure I put myself through doing all the holiday shows, and the school work in the Atelier... :-() But my new year's resolution is to try painting more landscapes in a looser style (yes, you've probably heard me saying this on my various blog posts a couple of times if you have me visiting this blog for a while -- on my defense I did try really hard each time! But being "loose" is such an elusive goal for me -- it is the final product that has to evoke such sense, yet in each of the step toward creating a looser, freer, more atmospheric painting a painter has to be very deliberate and really know what he/she is doing! I have to admit I am struggling here...), so I've decided to take up this challenge with that goal in mind. 

In the following weeks of January, I will try to do a little landscape painting each day, and each week there would be a slightly different focus: sky, water, mountains and foliage (trees, brushes and grassland). This first one, "Under the Autumn Sky", is a sky-focused painting. My main goal here is to capture the fleeting sense of light near sunset on a slightly overcast day, and emulate the beautiful cloud shapes that changes every second you look without getting fixated on being "exact". It has started as a Plein-Air Sketch in the Palo Alto Bayland Marsh last fall (yes, during the last 30/30 challenge =_=b...), but I was not quite sure what I was trying to say in the piece, and had to put it aside for a while until I could see it in my mind's eye. In the end I had to revisit the lessons I've learned from landscape master Sterling Edwards and Carl Purcell's workshop, and revise the composition to emphasize the sky area, making sure the foreground marsh and tree line in the middle ground are not too busy as to detract from this center of focus.

A good lesson I have learned from doing this painting is to try to say one thing, and one thing only in one small painting like this. Since I was initially attracted by the sky when started this painting, I decided to stick with it. The other equally interesting shapes and textures, the lovely distant tree line, for example, is better explored in detail in another painting! (That's the beauty of doing such challenges -- you know you'll have another painting to do just the next day! lol...)

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: