Featured in the Art Room!

Fields of Gold, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2013 #36

Private Commission

My friend, wonderful oil painter Taryn Day organizes this wonderful blog: The Art Room, about artists she likes and the amazing paintings they do. Currently she is running a mini-series of painters who blog, and their favorite paintings of 2013. I am really honored to be included... If you have time, stop by the blog or its facebook page -- I promise you won't be disappointed!

Summer Glow II, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2013 #81

Sold!

So, my choice of my favorite paintings done in 2013 are "Field of Gold" and "Summer Glow II". The reason for choosing the former is I feel really happy to have captured the sense of glowing light when painting primarily in the color yellow, which I continue to find to be a very challenging color. It was also a commission done under a tight time schedule when my school was in session. But the wonderful customer -- a gentleman who wanted to purchase a painting of bulbed flowers for his wife of dutch origin for their wedding anniversary -- gave me a lot of freedom to choose my composition and work out a small color study, and it ended up to be a piece of work I am very happy with. (I feel so lucky to have met so many wonderful, appreciating and supportive collectors in my short adventure into the art world!) The reason to choose the latter is that I have deliberated selected a very "black and white" reference photo -- white flower, dark foliage, without much color variations -- to challenge myself to not to copy so literally from reference materials, but to see and push more vibrant colors whenever possible. I have also tried out the largely wet-on-dry working method that I have learned from my wonderful teacher, master artist Jeannie Vodden. I really loved the resulted paintings and felt I have suffered through as well as grown from this project as the best artist I could be at the time. Pushing boundaries, working with new and unfamiliar methods, developing a vision -- for me, these are what being an artist is truly about...

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: