Sudden Snow - Day Seven of the 30/30 Challenge

Sudden Snow, 

Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #9

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Day seven of the challenge -- I am still hanging on there!!! (Truely amazing for me, although I admit only barely... :-P) It seems like the hotter the weather gets, the more I feel drawn to painting images of the chilly winter scene... In this one I really wanted to capture the feeling of sudden change of seasons -- a night's snow fall before the brilliant fire of fall colors have a chance to run their course and gradually diminish. I experimented with very granulating colors such as Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Cobalt Violet and Manganese Violet on the snow washes, then scrubbed with a damp, relatively stiff synthetic brush and blotted with tissue to lift out the light shapes on the snow field. By using a relatively soft brush and varying its degree of dampness as well as the pressure applied, I was able to achieve softer and harder transitions at the edge of these lifted shapes. I really liked this technique and decide to try it more in my future paintings. The light facets on the snow-covered rocks were squeezed out with a palette knife before the applied dark colors have totally dried.

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

Buy It Now from My DPW Gallery ($95)

On a separate note, a painting I created for last year's 30/30 challenge in September (which I was not able to complete but nevertheless is still a great exercise) was chosen as the judge's pick by Carol Marine on Daily Paintworks. I feel very honored to be selected by an artist who I admire among so many great competitors. Thanks Carol! 

Wild Things - Day Five of the 30/30 Challenge

Wild Things, 

Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #7

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $35)

Day five of the challenge -- continuing my adventure with my slanted 1" bristle brush, trying to load more than one pigment onto different corner of the brush, and let them freely blend on paper. Doing a painting without drawing has an especially freeing effect after a day at my easel working out the detailed drawing of a larger floral painting. I let my rigger brush dance freely on the paper to create the twisted branches of the foreground twigs. Painting snow in the heat of summer is also fun. I am feeling the cool breathe of air when laying down those cool blues, purples and muted greens...

Northern Exposure - Day Four of the 30/30 Challenge

Northern Exposure, 

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

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Day four of the challenge -- continuing with big brushes and try to get all the elements of this minimalist landscape in painting on a piece of soaking wet paper as it was continuously drying. I put in the twigs and brushes by scoring the paper with the blade of painting knife, and added the little bare tree using a #3 rigger. Sometimes a picture almost just paint itself. I am happy this is one of those days. 

Day's End - Day Three of the 30/30 Challenge

Day's End, 

Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #5

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Day three of the challenge -- one of the goals I have for this 30/30 challenge is to try using as big a brush I can manage and carry the painting to as far a point as I could, as I did in the last painting, "Woodland Fall"; a second goal I have is to experiment with non-conventional brushes and surfaces without the worry of "failing", i.e., not turning out a beautiful little painting in the end. 

For this 6" x 6", I used primarily a slanted 1" stiff bristle brush to lay in the soft sky and foreground snow on very wet paper, and added gradually thickened pigments to create the distant mountain with fir trees as well as to establish the general shape of the snow-laden evergreens in the foreground before the paper dried. The advantage of bristle brush is, they really can pick up and carry a lot more pigment (especially if your pigment is not fresh squeezed out of a tube) compared to traditional watercolor brushes, even the stiffer synthetic haired ones. Another advantage of these brushes is that they have very jagged hair, hence it is absolutely futile to try to get any detail out of them when painting. One is thus forced to pay attention to the general tone, color and overall silhouette of each value shape, and design the bigger picture before putting in the details (which would require switching to a different type of brush). 

I did eventually switch to smaller bristle brushes to establish the darker crevices on the rocks, the branches of foreground fir, etc., and used a small rigger brush to suggest some bare branches of deciduous trees as well as shrubs, but most of the painting was done with the big 1" bristle that at times made me feel very awkward and not knowing what I was doing. Overcoming that awkward feeling was very liberating, since I know I am going beyond my own comfort zone, pushing myself to learn more and grow as a painter. The results is not always as exciting as the process itself, but in case of this little painting, I am feeling quite satisfied...

Winter Woods II -- A Limited Palette Watercolor Study

Winter Woods II Study, 

Watercolor on Aches #140 Rough Paper, 7"h x 10"w, 2015 #1

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I really enjoyed playing with the very limited palette of French Ultramarine, Burnt Sienna and Prussian Blue in this little study, and experimented with combining wet-into-wet and dry-brush to created the texture on the bark of birch trees. I think I might try to play with the composition a bit and make a bigger painting from this little study...

So many things have happened this year! Time really flies... I have just completed the Silicon Valley Open Studio event and it was a blast... And today I learned on the phone that I was chosen as the San Mateo County Fair Artist of the Year again! I am really thrilled to get this award two years in a roll... Yay!

I'm sorry that I haven't been posting as often as I would like to for the past year, since I started painting in oils in the Golden Gate Atelier. This is the first semester of the fourth year I am enrolled at the atelier, and I am making steady progress toward learning the craft of classical methods of drawing and painting from life. I am really grateful for this incredible opportunity, and the fine teaching I've received from my instructors there. I have really struggled very hard to learn how to handling an oil painting brush, as it is very different from painting watercolor (those of you who work in both these media would know :-P). But lately I'm feeling I've finally getting the hang of it -- after a year of almost crying myself to sleep every night thinking it may never work for me. Looking back at my first effort of working in oil (it was truly horrible) I know I've come a long way, although there are way more miles to go ahead of me. I will post a few of my paintings (only in grisaille at this point -- I am not allowed to use color yet) in my next posts and share what I have learned so far. I am finally feeling a bit more relaxed as I am seeing the light at the end of this long black tunnel now...

And nothing better as a celebration than going back to my first love -- watercolor and try out some loose landscapes! Yay! It's like eating candy!...

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

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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:

Summer Heat, Central Valley -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 14

Summer Heat, Central Valley,  

Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper , 6"h x 9"w, 2013 #65

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $55) 

This piece started quite a while ago as a study of negative painting in a workshop with the wonderful landscape artist and teacher Roland Lee. I saw this scene first when driving down to central valley on one of the little winding roads from Pinnacles National Park (at that time still only a national monument). The heat has totally scorched the land. There is only yellows, orches and browns in my field of vision. Now and then, a single, very skinny cattle or horse would been seen lying under valley oak trees, trying to get as much shade as possible from the what little shadow a lone tree could offer. It must be over 100 degrees even in shadow. Every inch in my line of vision is burnt by heat. Even the wind was choking hot, and when it titillated with the dried up grass it almost sounded like the vegetation were moaning out of pain and thirst. An old wind pump was slowly operating on the roadside, draining what little water it could squeeze out of ground into the huge rusty metal tanks standing beside it. I couldn't help but imaging how hot it would be if I put my hand on the shiny surface of those tanks... I can almost feel the thirst on my lips again when finishing this piece last night, although I was sitting in my cool, damp, comfortable San Francisco home...

I guess this is what I love most about painting -- it allow you to recall and relive the experiences that has once moved you, or forever scarred you. The pleasure and pain that has once changed us are, through the movement of a brush, fixed on a piece of canvas or paper for eternity...

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:

Edgewood -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 11, and What I Have Learned from It about Underpainting

Edgewood,
 Watercolor on Saunders Waterford #140 Cold Press paper, 10"h x 10"w, 2013 #62

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One of the consequence of painting landscape everyday for quite a few days is -- I start to crave to paint on slightly bigger pieces of paper and really allow the wet paint flow. This is something very hard to achieve on tiny formats such as 5" x 7" or 6" x 6" -- there is just not enough space for very wet washes to run, and the quantity of water has to be very strictly controlled so that you do not lose all precious white space after the first wash. And a few pieces that I liked after observing what such runny washes have done were further developed with glazes, including this one.

When applying the first layer of underpainting, sometimes I just apply a very simple all-over color tone to unify the future painting, giving it certain mood -- for example, a light yellow first layer can almost warm up the coldest, harshest paintings on top of it and gives a subtle sunny feeling to it. But most of the time, I would try to create soft-edged shapes with this first, very wet application of paint. Sometimes these shapes are related directly with the shapes, tones, directions, sizes, lines textures and colors which will follow, other times I just start with a rough idea, which means the first underpainting layer would only by partially, or approximately related to these aspects of the painting to come. And then, on other occasions, I've started with a blank mind not knowing what I'm going to paint on this piece of paper, and just apply very light colors an tones on soaking wet paper, and observe their movements -- which may give me some idea. I have even superimposed the value and color structure of another painting or other reference materials (instead of the one I am currently painting) in ghostly light versions as an underpainting, which means it would not at all correspond to the shapes, colors and values of the current painting that is to be developed on the same piece of paper -- and surprisingly, often enough, I have found that add a lot of surface interest instead of being a total disaster.

This has made me think why I have always liked to start with such a soft-edged, light underpainting layer, if it is not always to hint what's going to come. I believe underpaintings comes with its own advantages: It gives variations in the "white" section of the painting, and allow optical superimposition of color and tone. Since optical color is the synthesis made by our eye when seeing the underpainted color thought the overpainting, it is unlike any single layer and has its own mysterious "shine" or "glowing" quality when done right. An underpainting, especially when not totally correlated with the overpainting, often promotes an abstract quality of the image developed, and soft under hard edges usually makes a rich counterpoint and makes the pictorial experience more interesting and stimulating for the viewer. As long as one keeps the underpainting layer soft and light (usually lighter than midtone in value), allowing for final considerations and readjustment of edges and drawing during the overpainting process, it usually would not be too intrusive as to interfere with the viewer's experience with the overpainted image, just like the ambient sound of forest or ocean often do not interfere with our experience of music in such environment, although their rhythm or beat may not coincide with that of the music's.

For this particular painting, I have applied a very light, gradated magenta wash from top down, adding various greens, blues and purples toward the bottom, because I roughly had the idea that I wanted to paint a sunset  in the woods on a cold, snowy winter day. But I did not exactly draw out the trees, the rocks or the topography on the snow-covered field. Instead I have concentrated to vary the color temperature and value while applying this wet wash. As a result, I really liked the added interest this first layer has created on the otherwise all-white snowy field. And because of the dark woods and rock shapes developed in the overpainting, the light purple and blue areas at the bottom still read as "white" and "snow". One thing I wanted to improve on this is to add more color variations in the areas that I know will be very light (such as the sky) when doing the underpainting. I was a little timid about doing this when painting "Edgewood", and as a result, there is not a lot of color variations in the sky, and makes it a little bland compared with other areas of the image. Luckily, there are enough business in the woodland area directly below it, so that quiet patch of sky can actually give the viewer's eye some rest and relief. It was not planned, but I'm glad it worked out this way... What do you think, my friend?

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 Few More Pieces for the Climate Crisis Show, and Winter Solitude Finished!

Disappearing Beauty - Langjokull, Central Highland, Iceland, 
Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 7"w, 013 #49

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $30) 

One of the other litter pieces in the "Disappearing Beauty" series -- this one depicts another endangered glacier in the central highland of Iceland. During my visit to Iceland I drove across the roadless central highlands -- it was almost a moon landscape with sparse ground vegetation (only lichen and tundra grass, not a tree visible) and its various shades of ochers, siennas and browns due to the iron and sulfur compounds abundant in the volcanic rocks and soil. Most of the mountain encountered on this journey are half-covered with glacier, and when temperature rise during the day, fog start to hover at the base of them, intermingle with wind-carried dust (due to the lack of vegetation), veiling the foothills in such a surreal way. Not another soul to be found in my entire journey -- no people, no animal, no sound of critters. The only thing one hears is the roaring of ever-blowing wind. I feel I was almost transported to an entirely different eon of time. The whole experience was so surreal...

Later I learned that the glacier I saw during this road trip, Langjokull, was one of the small ones in Iceland and was much threatened by the gradual warming of the surrounding sea of Iceland, and its area acreage has shrunk quite considerably in recent year already, because of the fast summer melting in higher average day temperatures, and mild winter without much snow replenish it. It would break my heart to see such unique landscape losing its essential components due to the lack of action on our side -- it takes millennium to make a glacier, but they could be gone in decades in the current trend, and never to be experienced again by future generations...

Disappearing Beauty - Palisade Glacier Lake, Sierra Crest, Summer,
Watercolor on Sennelier #140 Rough Paper, 4"h x 9"w, 2013 #48

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $35) 

The third one in the "Palisade Glacier Lake" set -- this one depicts the scene of lush summer. All three are matted together in a triptych format with 16" x 20" frames right now, in the "Climate Crisis" show of the Main Gallery of Redwood City. This exhibition is now open and runs through Sunday, June 30th. The Main Gallery, located at 1018 Main Street in Redwood City, is open every Wednesday through Sunday from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. If you are in the area, remember to stop by and see all the interesting art pieces in the show!

Winter Solitude, Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough paper, 7"h x 10"w, 2013 #50

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $40) 

Finally, I completed "Winter Solitude" by adding foreground calligraphy of little shrub and withered grass, and like the mood -- I may try to paint a larger version of it, on a different type of paper... Recently I am really itching to paint larger and use my 2" and 3" sky flow brushes... I enjoyed exploring the different stage of drying and the textural effects one can achieve by continuing adding dense pigment on a gradually drying surface, which you can see on the foreground tree bark and shrub -- some part of its main stem has a fuzzy look which is accidentally achieve when a rigger brush loaded with stiff mixture of brown and blue is pressed hard on surfaces with different level of wetness, and in the wetter areas the pigment would diffuse just enough to create the fuzzy look. I thought it added surface interest and decided to keep it, and maybe explore this effect later more deliberately in future paintings... One of the "happy accidents" so famous for the media of watercolor, isn't it? ;-)

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:

Visual Poetry, and Thoughts on Landscape Painting

Winter Solitude, Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough paper, 7"h x 10"w, WIP 1

When I started to learn watercolor painting, I would be really puzzle by the idea that somebody could and would prefer to paint from a pencil sketch -- black and white, maybe with some notes jotted down on it. I would always wonder how they could proceed to paint a large full sheet landscape from a small 4" x 6" thumbnail value sketch -- how do they know what color the field it, and what detail do they put on that tree, how do they manage to paint it without a reference photo?... 

As I progress as a painter, I have gradually come to the realization that painting -- especially painting of landscapes -- is more about accumulating your collected pool of visual symbols and editing the shape in the image you are creating on paper, about tuning your visual language into a coherence poem. Even with a detailed photo snatched on spot a good landscape painting would more than likely to divert from it, and inventing his own shapes for a foreground bush, or tuning the sky color to create a certain mood. A good still life painting can be 80% similar in its color and shapes to the original reference photo (or setup), but in landscape it is very likely one would need to do 50% or more editing on shapes and colors to reach a pleasing picture on paper. It is more close to poetry than prose in this sense, if compared to literal arts.

This is probably why it is such a hard transition for competent still life painters to transition to landscape painting, and vise versa, because it in a way emphasizes a completely different arsenal of skills, although the basic elements -- shapes, color, value -- are the same for the two genre. Just like poetry and prose both uses words and sentences, though, it doesn't mean good poets would write compelling short stories, or reverse.

I feel I am relearning my visual language in painting more landscapes in the past couple of weeks, and would love to pursue this direction more. It is both exciting and terrifying, as all learning experiences are -- I am in uncharted waters here, and feeling again helpless more than competent most of the times. But it is also exhilarating. The journey has begun...

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:

More Paintings for "Climate Crisis: An Artistic Vision" Show

Disappearing Beauty - Vatnajokull Glacier Lake, Iceland, 
Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2013 #45

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $30) 

Continuing my "Disappearing Beauty" series for the Climate Crisis Show in the Main Gallery -- it opens this Wednesday! The artists' reception is this Saturday, June 1st from 6 to 8 pm. If you are in the Redwood City area, stop by 1018 Main Street (right beside Alana's Cafe) and say Hi!

This one is based on my travel a couple of years ago to Iceland -- a country with 25% of land covered by glaciers of various sizes, all in the process of disappearing if the global climate keeps its warming trend. Vatnajokull is in the southeast side of Iceland and its tongue is directly melting into a large lake, with icebergs broken off the glacier tongue floating on the lake surface, it's quite a surreal scene of intense purples and turquoises -- colors that are even considered too bright-hued when used on canvas actually appearing in nature. With the glacier melting faster than ever, in less than a couple of decades lakes like this may totally cease to exist...

Disappearing Beauty - Palisade Glacier Lake, Sierra Crest, Fall,
Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 4"h x 9"w, 2013 #46

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $35) 

I've enjoyed doing the long-format little piece of palisade glacier lake so much that I decide to make it a triptych. The last one is a winter view and this one is approximately fall, with the high peaks surrounding the lake starting to be covered by snow, but the lower foothills still have some brown colors of brushes and prairie grass. The lake is not yet frozen, reflecting the clear autumn sky color of the high country... With a warmer planet and much less winter snow fall, such high country glacier lakes may totally disappear due to the lack of replenish water source from melting snow in the next couple of decades, just like the lakes that used to cover the vast region of death valley a hundred thousand years ago...

I've used a very limited palette of three colors to do this piece and thoroughly enjoyed it -- with such limitations imposed, I actually feel that I can spend more time concentrating on solving the relative color temperature and value problem without being distracted by the decisions of whether it is the right hue that I am mixing for a particular object in the landscape. Also, it is much easier to abstract landscape into various shapes instead of considering it as a compilation of different objects when the colors are not an accurate imitation of nature.

Disappearing Beauty - Sunset over Rockies, June, 
Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2013 #47

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $30) 

The next one, "Disappearing Beauty -- Sunset over Rockies, June" is based on my trip up in Colorado a couple of years ago. It was June but snow is still everywhere once you get into the mountains. And as the sun sets against western sky, all the snow covered peaks in the high Rockies just turned into this flaming red, which gradually faded into a deep purplish blue near the base of the peaks. It was a glorious show every evening, and never exactly the same. With an average six degrees' average temperature increase as predicted in the next few decades, there would hardly be any snow left on these peaks in the month of June, when the vegetation on the plateau is lush, and such glorious show in nature's beauty would be missed by the future generations...

More to come -- stay tuned!

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:

Gallery Show ("Climate Crisis: An Artistic Vision"), and a New Painting ("After the Summer Rain")

After the Summer Rain, 
Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 5"w, 2013 #42

Sold!

The busy season of Silicon Valley Open Studio is finally over! Thanks too all the art enthusiasts and collectors in this area, it was quite an unexpected success for me the very first time I participated! With every painting sold stories exchanged between the artist and the collector, and I have learned a ton about what attract people to buy a painting...

My next big project is the gallery show with the theme of Climate Crisis in the Main Gallery of Redwood City. It is quite a mighty subject to tackle and my take on it is a series of small landscapes of both mountain and oceanic glaciers under the title "Disappearing Beauty". The one below is a little 5" x 7" painting of the snowy peaks of high Sierra (Sierra Crest near Mono Lake) belong to the series. With gradually warming weather most of these pristine snow packs would disappear in the next few decades in summer...

Disappearing Beauty - Snow Packs of Sierra Crest, 
Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2013 #43

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $30) 

The next one in the "Disappearing Beauty" series is a little long-format landscape of the icy glacier lake of Sierra Crest, near North Palisade... High mountain glaciers are the most threatened by the warming climate, as there are not enough snow in recent winters to replenish what melts away each summer. The pristine lakes of high sierras may become dry lake beds if the current trend continues...

Disappearing Beauty - Palisade Glacier Lake, Sierra Crest, Winter,
Watercolor on Sennelier #140 Rough Paper, 4"h x 9"w, 2013 #44

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $35) 

I really enjoyed doing these little landscapes but also itch to start a slightly bigger one... More to come, stay tuned!...

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: