Evening Reflections

Evening Reflections, Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough Paper, 7"h x 10"w, 2016 #16

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Moonrise, Eucalyptus Grove - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Moonrise, Eucaplyptus Grove,

 Oil Monochromatic Wash on Claessen #13 Douple Oil Primed Linen Canvas, 6"h x 8"w, 2016 #15

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This is a little monochromatic oil wash painting I have done in Kevin Courter's nocturnal painting workshop. the dark passages are completely transparent (no white used), and value variations are done through thick and thin of paintings. I worked a lot to try to create interesting edges and overall shape of the eucalyptus trees, and varying the colors subtly by using a bit more red or green in creating the dark color mixture used here. Trying to convey a quiet, subtle mood and had a lot of fun doing this... 

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Evergreen Notes - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Evergreen Notes, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 12"w, 2016 #13

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Playing with limited palette and want to create the illusion of fog in the background. To add warmth in the foreground I used a muted yellow-brown which compliments the overall blue-purple color scheme of the painting. The painting was done from a quick 30-minute study on site when hiking in the high sierras. The way those tall mountain hemlock and silver fir trees dance in the wind left such a strong impression on my mind, that even now I can still just close my eyes and see it...

Sentinel - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Sentinel,

 Watercolor on Richeson Szabo #140 Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 11"w, 2016 #9

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100% of the sale of this painting would be donated to the cause of trisomy in ​honor of the lost child of my amazing artist friend and fellow painter, Brienne Brown. She is so brave and kind and strong in sharing her struggle and contribute to the cause!

I have wanted to do this for a while but some personal circumstances have delayed it. I wanted to paint a painting with the symbol of life, revival, resilience embedded in it, in honor of the life that is lost too young yet would never be forgotten by her loved ones. It is not a lot but I want to contribute my little bit. Every little bit helps in the fight against this formidable rare disease, which has not gotten the attention it deserves in the medical and pharmaceutical society, probably because it is rare and not a lot of profit there is to be made. Imagine the impact a cure would have on the families with a loved ones diagnosed... I can't help but hope that day would come sooner...

Where the Eagle Flies - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Where the Eagle Flies - Portrait of the Colorado Plateau I,

 Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2016 #8

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Recently I am having these almost obsessive fixation on the high Colorado Plateau, and seeing the somber, severe landscape whenever I close my eyes. The almost barren, treeless bajadas, the grey-blue granite cliffs and baked red-buff sandstone monoliths, the lone red-shouldered hawk soaring below the low-hanging clouds... I had to paint it. I would probably come back to this series a few times in the next couple of days. I know I have not exhausted it in this little study...

Dusk over Marsh - Day Twenty-Eight of the 30/30 Challenge

Dusk over Marsh, 

Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #30

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Day Twenty-Eight of the challenge -- a little plein air piece at sunset, done mostly with my 1" slanted bristle brush. I am falling in love with this big, stiff brush that is not at all capable of doing any details, but carries so much pigment and water and does soft wet-in-wet blending and rough edges both so well! When the sun is setting and the light changing fast, it is really handy! I actually did several different studies before the sun completely sinks under the horizon, but I love this one the most -- it did capture the glorious sky that I saw, which made all the draw grass near shore literally glows with dragon's blood red! Again, this is done in a quiet back corner of the shoreline park of mountain view. I can never get tired of painting the beautiful wetlands in the bay area...

Remnants - Day Twenty-Seven of the 30/30 Challenge

Remnants, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #29

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Day Twenty-Seven of the challenge -- another little plein air study I did at the ghost town of Drawbridge, near the marshlands by Mountain View. The sky is extraordinarily clear and very intense warm blue in the zenith, with just the slightest bits of pale clouds down toward horizon. The shoreline is cleared of people at the early hour. Because of the heat and drought in the past few months (years?! :-), the grass along the shore is a lovely golden brown color, providing contrast with the cool turquoise water -- I just have to paint it! The dilapidated shack near a broken wooden-plank bridge naturally became my center of focus for this painting, as it has so much character, like an old face full of wrinkles and history. I can't help but wondering who built it, who has stayed in it over the years, coming out between the time after the stars are gone, and before the early dawn light is in, staring into the big empty sky and wondering what is at the other end of the horizon. In the quiet hours of dawn, I feel connected to all that has happened here before, the people who have come, and the days flown by. I put my brush to paper...

Low Tide, Linda Mar Beach - Day Twenty-Six of the 30/30 Challenge

Low Tide, Linda Mar Beach,

 Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #28

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Day Twenty-Six of the challenge -- another little plein air study I completed at the Linda Mar beach of Pacifica. The sun was setting behind a thin veil of clouds, and there is an intense purple-magenta glow through moistened air. The tide is out, ten thousand little channels on the wet sand beach glisten with warm golden reflections. Because the fog is closing in, this busy beach is surprisingly empty, when the near-shore rock formations were back lid into a parade of strange and a little intimidating gigantic mystical beast sculptures. One slender figure in red drifts in with the wind, almost silently, and lingers near the distant rock form. I just had to add her into my painting. Love it when a painting almost paints itself for me -- one of those rare occasions...

Glen River Autumn - Day Twenty-Two of the 30/30 Challenge

Glen River Autumn, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #24

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Day Twenty-Two of the challenge -- working with an earthy palette again. This one is a memory painting of the Russian River valley up north, which I have painted "En Plein Air" many times. I especially love the fall there -- clear air, cloudy sky, muted ocher-colored shrubs, always reminding me of the highlands of Scotland... 

Ancestor's Place - Day Twenty-One of the 30/30 Challenge

Ancestor's Place, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #23

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Day Twenty-One of the challenge -- a painting of the red rock country of Sedona, Arizona. I have been wanting to paint these amazing rock formations forever since I paid my first visit to the desert country of the grand canyon state in 2008... I used a primary palette of Winsor Red, Burnt Sienna (a muted orange serving as my yellow) and Winsor Blue for this one, painting the sky and the clouds mostly wet-in-wet while patiently layering the red rock shapes from light to dark, softening edges where the cloud is in front of the monolith, adding dry-brush texture toward the base. The small foreground tree shapes were painted mostly using the 1" slanted bristle brush to get the rough silhouette of the foliage, and the linear marks of the branches were added where I think a line may compliment the dark mass. I was happy with this first effort, but would like to paint it again to explore different format and play with horizontal as well as vertical composition, to see how they can give different mood to the painting. This is what I really like about the 30/30 project -- it prevents me to linger too long on a small piece of the paper and opens the doors of experimentation. Each project by itself does not become overly precious. But as a body of work, I can always see my progress through them very clearly at the end of each challenge...

Savannah Moon - Day Twenty of the 30/30 Challenge

Savannah Moon, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #22

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Day Twenty of the challenge -- today I am playing with limited palette again, starting with a concept of nocturnal and aridity, I used mostly Raw and Burnt Sienna with a little Indantrine Blue added to cool down the mixture in distance, and just used a large 1" flat sable brush to make various wet and dry marks to indicate foliage. Linear marks were added later with a rigger or scratched into the wet paint as it dried to suggest branches. The moon was lifted in the end with a stiff-haired synthetic rounds. As I have mentioned before, limited palette makes it especially easy to explore quiet, somber moods, and create a sense of mystery. I added the distant group of trees when evaluating the composition and found my foreground foliage shapes have slowly crept up toward the middle of the picture as I was painting, despite my initial planning and composition sketches warning myself not to do so. And the small, distant tree shapes serve well to break this center-symmetry, providing much-needed pictorial relief. Reminding myself I need to stop more frequently while painting to evaluate the development of the composition and avoid such problem in the first place! :-P Lol...

Day Dream - Day Nineteen of the 30/30 Challenge

Day Dream, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #21

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Day Nineteen of the challenge -- I started three little plein air pieces of this marsh in the same time, dividing my big piece of paper and drew views from different directions. It was morning and the soft lavender clouds blushed against the edge of distant shore, shifting in and out of the tree tops. I want to capture the sense of cool, moist air and sun light peaking out of clouds, catching on the top of the lush growth of marsh grass. Unfortunately out of the three paintings only this one turned out to be worthy of posting... Oh well, the reality of painting outdoors! I added thick Cadmium Yellows with a rigger for some definite linear marks to contrast with the soft edges shapes of the marsh grass, as well as some wet-on-dry shapes defining the edge of the big tree on the right side. Thinking of repainting this one into a larger piece, but I need to work on the composition and color schemes a bit more...

Morning Fog, Tamalpais - Day Eighteen of the 30/30 Challenge

Morning Fog, Tamalpais,

 Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #20

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Day Eighteen of the challenge -- Trying to catch up today but was not quiet happy with the other painting I am working on, so maybe I will get a fresh eye tomorrow morning... For this one I again worked from a previous Plein Air piece, changing the format from horizontal to square, allowing more space for the receding mountain ranges. As the evergreen-covered hills gradually get closer, I added more Quinacridone Burnt Orange to warm up the color, and put down the last two tall fir trees in the foreground with thick paint on a quite worn-out old brush to give some more interesting edges. The whole painting was done in one wetting of the paper, but I was not too happy with my first two attempts of it, so this is the third one. Sometimes you can wash off freshly applied watercolor paints and start over on the same piece of the paper, but I find often the surface sizing would largely come off this way, and granulating pigments don't quite settle the same way, so for a small piece like this I would just start anew on a fresh clean sheet. Luckily the shapes worked out quite well the third time... Now it is really time for bed! :-)

Edge of the Meadow - Day Seventeen of the 30/30 Challenge

Edge of the Meadow, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #19

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Day Seventeen of the challenge -- I did not finish this one quite in time and it is really late now... Experimented a little bit with the 1" slanted bristle brush again to suggest the background woods and soft grass shapes in the foreground meadow. Got a little carried away with rigger work on the bare branches, but it was a lot of fun! I am still hanging on here -- happy painting everyone!

Autumn Glow - Day Sixteen of the 30/30 Challenge

Autumn Glow, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #18

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Day Sixteen of the challenge -- I wanted to try something different today and started this one on paper without a reference image, just playing with soft washes of contrasting cool and warm colors that are loosely divided into complimentary color families, being careful to leave enough areas of white paper. When the applied washes mingled on wet paper, I titled the painting in different ways to encourage the blending of complimentary colors in certain areas, and prevent them from blending so that higher saturation could be retained in other areas, especially near where the reserved white is, as I could like to design my center of interest near these areas. When this initial wash dried, I looked at the resulted color-value shapes and saw rocks and back-lid foliage in the glowing autumn light in the foreground, and dark woods behind it. So I enhanced this imagery with further glazing on dry paper, careful not to lose all the soft edges created in the first wet-in-wet wash (it is so easy to overglaze and lose all the soft edges before one realizes!). I also lifted light linear shapes hinting stems and branches of fir trees in the dark background, thus suggesting a dense growth of evergreen forest behind the rock and center pine tree. To counter balance the dominating vertical shapes of trees, I added horizontal shapes at the bottom of the image -- interesting shapes in light and dark glazes overlapping each other, be them suggestion of rock ledges, water or reflections. I am quite excited about this project, as it is very different procedure from how I usually work, and forces me to think more abstractly about the balance of values, shapes and lines. It is from inside out, not outside in. Think I will try it a few more times for the 30/30 challenge...

Edge of the Sea - Day Fifteen of the 30/30 Challenge

Edge of the Sea, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #17

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Day fifteen of the challenge -- can't believe I actually made it half-way this time!!! This is another Plein Air piece from the white cliffs of Limartour Beach at Point Reyes National Seashore. From the usually foggy horizon one can still tell the emerging silhouette of the Bodega Head in the distance, floating in a sea of clouds merging into the shoreline. Ice plants grows on the top of some of the white cliffs, together with other shore grass and scrub bushes give a sense of lush growth even at the end of a long, dry summer. One local naturalist once told me that even in the driest year this shore gets plenty of water by means of condensation. Near the bottom of the cliff, piles of darker rocks are scattered around, covered by sea weeds and barnacles, chitons and like. The water beyond them a dark blue-grey. 

The moist air at shore kept my watercolor paper from drying, so I was able to do a fairly wet-in-wet lay-in of the major value shapes in my first wash, which I was almost never able to do in even the smaller plein air pieces. After that I played with different brushes making marks with fairly fluid washes, trying to form interesting shapes that reads as "grass" and "foliage" without actually painting the individual blades. I painted the darker rocks first as one mass, later adding smaller, even darker planes on their shadowed side. Some spattering with stiff bristle brushes finished the work. It's an overcast day without strong light and shadows, but I liked the subtle colors revealed by this less harsh light. Colors often seem more saturated and nuanced on overcast days to me. Since such days are plenty in the Bay area from June to October, I decide to paint outdoors more often on them to practice observing the difference in light qualities between these and sunny days. Plein Air painting is really great learning experiences to me -- one is always marvelling at the infinite variety nature presents and humbled by our limited ability in capturing them with brush and paint. Never a dull moment...

Marsh Dawn - Day Fourteen of the 30/30 Challenge

Marsh Dawn, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #16

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Day fourteen of the challenge -- I am really late for this one. I tried a very limited palette of Cobalt Blue and Quinacridone Burnt Orange on this one, going for mood and atmosphere rather than details. I found that with restrictions often comes poetry, such as Haiku, with its extremely constrained forms the wonder of poetry often comes through quite easily compared to free-form modern poems where everything goes. 

This is not a particular scene that I am painting from life, but I have seen it so many times while taking morning walks in different wetland parks bordering evergreen forests -- at the mouth of redwood forest streams, near the river estuaries of Olympia National Park, even along mountain meadows at the edge of alpine forests in a wet season. The lingering fog and the mirror-clear reflection of the forest is woven into my most intimate memories. When I close my eyes, it can just flow out to the tip of my brush. I can almost smell the moist air tinged with the scent of new grass. Somethings you just never forget...

Windy Hill & Cypress Hill Sunsets - Day Thirteen of the 30/30 Challenge

Windy Hill Sunset, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #15

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Day thirteen of the challenge -- this one is a little test of compositional elements for a larger piece. I really wanted to do a sunset scene today and used a combination of primary color palette -- Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow and Ultramarine Blue for the sky and clouds. Since the composition is overly horizontal, I tried to experiment with different elements of diagonal movements. In the first one I tried to add back-lid barren deciduous trees; in the second version I used wind-blown cypress trees, since I was working on a larger sheet of paper, and had more room to play with shapes:

Cypress Hill Sunset, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 11"w, 2015 #16

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I am quite happy with both version and think that I may go with the second concept on the bigger piece. But I may play with the composition just a bit more... We'll see!

The Perch - Day Twelve of the 30/30 Challenge

The Perch, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #14

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Day twelve of the challenge -- this is a little painting I did based on a previous plein air piece at the shoreline park of mountain view. In the untraveled back portion of this park you can often see raptors perched on barren deciduous trees that did not survive the invasion of salty water toward shore. Against the pink and lavender evening sky the magnificent bird seems truly free of any weight and terrestrial entanglements...

Raging Surf - Day Nine of the 30/30 Challenge

Raging Surf, 

Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #11

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Day nine of the challenge -- I completed this plein air painting from memory back at my studio. When I am out in nature, facing awe-inspiring landscape, I am usually very excited by what I see, hear, smell... etc., and can hardly control myself from laying my brush frenetically on paper to try to capture the energy I feel from the scene in front of me, especially if it is something as dynamic and powerful as surf crashing onto shoreline rocks. Even though I try to do a small value sketch before drawing out the composition on my watercolor paper, and think about the color combinations I am going to use, most of the times I still rely on my intuition and paint rather "literally" of what's in front of me. In the quietness of the studio, there is often more room to ponder, analyze, design. Away from the source of inspiration -- nature, the distance can be good for the artist to assert his or her own voice instead of being "overwhelmed" by what's actually out there. This is often hard to do when the scene is right in front of you. But in the end, the painting needs to stand as an entity of itself alone and the shape, value, color, edges have to make sense as a whole. It will not be judged as how accurately it is as a copy of the actual scene.

As for this one, I glazed over the water with different near-horizontal shapes to counter-balance the diagonal movement of the surf, and shaped the rocks a bit better, casting darker shadows underneath them to anchor them better onto the sand beach. I added sprayed color to indicate foam, and create a bit more surface texture to add interest. I think it is nearly finished at this point, but may continue to pull it out and look at it from time to time, to evaluate whether bits and pieces need to be put in, taken out or altered here and there. This process is the most time-consuming for any painting, any may hardly get notices at the first glance of the before and after images. However, most of the times the inconspicuous changes could make great differences in terms of tying the whole painting together, making it look more homogeneous. Sometimes I will feel that I prefer one of two very similar images infinitely more than the other, but cannot quite tell the "why" explicitly, I would guess the artist has done the ponder, and the back-and-forth dance with the painting.