Sunkissed - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Sunkissed,

 Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2016 #12

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Love Birds - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Love Birds,

 Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2016 #11

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Ode to Spring - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Ode to Spring,

 Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2016 #10

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My most recent obsession is to have combine the portrait of a single flower -- not the glamorous rose or peony, but those often only seen in clusters, such as tulip or cosmos, and a large, abstract background, playing with amorphous shapes and textures contrasting the sharply defined focal point... I think there would be a few more to come in this series as I am working on several of them at the same time. These take a lot of staring and only gradually come into being after many layering and being putting away for a while, as the imagery come largely from my head, instead of from a defined reference photo. It is a new diversion for me, and I like how it prompt me to react to what's happening on the paper while wet colors are dropped in. I am listening to watercolor more now, instead of always trying to cajole it into what I have initially planned it to be. I guess it's all part of coming into peace with this challenging medium...

Sentinel - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Sentinel,

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

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $100)

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...

April's Promise - Day Twenty-Five of the 30/30 Challenge

April's Promise, 
Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #27

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Day Twenty- Five of the challenge -- another one I have labored on for ages. When I first started this painting I had absolutely no idea that Fabriano Cold Press paper is very very different from Arches Cold Press paper -- in absolutely every aspect. Arches is hard-surfaced, holds pigments applied onto its surface relatively well, because the pigments do sink into its paper fibers quite a bit -- and because of this the colors do seem to get a little bit duller as the applied washes dry and sink in, also it is difficult to lift colors from this paper, especially if you are using some of the staining ones such as Thalo or Alizarin Crimson. Fabriano Artistico paper, on the other hand, only keeps pigment on its very soft surface, which makes lifting easy -- even lifting back to the paper white is possible without actually damaging the paper surface, but wet-in-wet glazing difficult as the underlying colors have a tendency to lift off if you wet the paper again! Also, soft-surfaced paper dry at a speed much faster than hard-surfaced paper, as the latter has a lot of surface sizing and prevent drying by absorption to a certain degree. I have since learned my lesson -- the painful way, as I labored my way through this little piece, throwing my brush onto the ground numerous times as the applied wash simply refuse to do what I want it to. Luckily, I was taking some classes with the amazing watercolor artist, Jeannie Vooden when I started this painting. And I have learned the patient blending of very thin, watery washes wet-on-dry in her class. I modified this method by trial and error to use on the Fabriano paper, learning complete different painting techniques and procedures that would suit the temperament of this delicate paper... I have learned so much through the process!

Looking back at this finished piece, I am amazed at how much my method of paint application has changed through the struggle of this little painting. It has literally taught me so much about watercolor, and about myself as a painter. I am grateful for all the struggles it put me through, and feel very proud that I have stuck with it till the end.

Spring Meadow, Tamalpais -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 12

Spring Meadow, Tamalpais,  

Watercolor on Winsor Newton 140# Cold Press Paper , 6"h x 10"w, 2013 #63

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My theme for the "30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge" this week is "landscape with water" -- I guess fog is a form of water hence this painting still fits the theme. ;-) I've learned a lot about using aerial perspective and soft-to-hard edge transition to create a sense of depth from doing this painting, as well as how to create varied shapes within repetition -- it is really hard to make every next stroke representing a fir branch to be of a different size, shape, direction and color from the last one! I don't think I've done an excellent job here -- more practice definitely needed. I've also experimented only using color transition and texture to represent the meadow. Unfortunately it looks more interesting in person than on the photo...

For those of you who are in the bay area -- tomorrow (Saturday, September 14th) and the day after tomorrow (Sunday, September 15th) will be the "Meet the Artists Day" event for the exhibition at Filoli Garden - "Nature’s Many Splendors: Farms, Gardens and Woodlands"! You are all invited to this special art-festival-like weekend, to meet the artists in the show, watch them doing art demos, chat with them and learn what has inspires them to create their art pieces. Framed pieces, prints, note cards and other items will be for sale both during the show and at the "Meet the Artist Day" event. And I will be doing demo there! The show runs from August 27th through October 27th, at the art gallery area in Filoli Garden, which is located at 86 Canada Rd in the lovely town of Woodside, California.

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:

Falling Snow (Thoughts of You Fall Quietly upon Me...), & Slowly Proceeding forward with Spring Meadow, Tamalpais...

Ok, ok, I am admitting... Like everyone else I am addicted to the new HBO series "Game of Thrones". And after watching the snow-covered mysterious northern countries of the Starks for weeks, anxiously waiting for each new episode to appear on the TV screen every Sunday, I thought I'd pay my homage by doing some small paintings of snow scenes on Sundays. 

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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This Sunday's episode gives me a profound sense of loss and loneliness, which prompted me to try to capture the same feeling in this little imagined scene. I imagined it outside someone's window in the northern woods, and the thoughts of the host slowly drifting away to a distant place to be with someone she cares deeply about with the snow veiling the worlds surrounding her little by little... Life in the northern woods, where the life changes following the pattern of the seasons. A distant past, another life...

It was fun painting this one. I experimented with diluting the paint mixture little by little when painting each of the foreground trees from top down to create the effect of snow being blown by wind and drifting near the ground. Paper towels came in handy in wiping away the last bit of thin mixtures near the bottom of the picture to make them completely disappear. I played with calligraphic strokes on the dried weeds near the ground, and on the bare branches of the little tree in the foreground. A limited palette of Cobalt Blue, French Ultramarine, Brown Madder Alizarin, Burnt Sienna and a little bit of Raw Sienna was all that's used. Sober mood calls for muted colors...

I'm also progressing cautiously with my fog painting, "Spring Meadow, Tamalpais". I painted wet on dry using very fluid mixture of Cobalt Blue, Indian Yellow, Burnt Sienna and a little bit Sap Green, paying attention to vary the proportion of colors in the mixture when painting the tree shapes to make it more interesting. Near the ground, I thinned the mixture again in the attempt to capture the effect of ground mist often found in foggy mountain meadows. Again, paper towel came in handy here and there for lifting and wiping out... I am trying to be cautious about how many layers of trees to put in -- a small picture surface can quickly become too busy if I get carried away planting trees ;-). But one or two more layers may still be needed...

Spring Meadow, Tamalpais,  

Watercolor on Winsor Newton 140# Cold Press Paper , 5"h x 9"w, WIP 3

More Fog Paintings...

Here's one of the other fog paintings I worked on yesterday and today. This one is more of a struggle compared to the previous post -- I liked the subtle effects I already achieved in the first wash, but realized that I had to take the risk and put a second, third or forth wet wash on top of it to achieve the depth and subtle muted color needed for this fog scene. The foreground meadow was far too bright and saturated. In a foggy day the meadow may appear very lush green because of the moisture, but to achieve unity in the entire painting, that lushness had to be toned down just a bit since the water vapor in the air would affect even the most close-by objects and blur them a bit too. I did just that in the second pass -- wet the entire painting front and back and laid it on a piece of plexiglass covered with wet paper towels to extend precious time I can use to manipulate wet pigments on the paper surface. I used Cobalt Blue and Indian Yellow to mix the green for the tree line, adding just a tiny bit of Burnt Sienna to mute it further. The yellow and blue separated on the very wet surface, and formed a slight blurry yellow halo around the tree tops, which I really liked -- it reminded me the morning sun shinning behind the foggy forest. I experimented with stiffer brush and denser pigments on the foreground meadows a bit. I think the most scary part -- wet the entire sheet -- is done at this stage. I will add layers of tree lines wet on dry and work on the foreground meadow a bit more to finish it... (Instead of ruin it, I hope :-P)

Spring Meadow, Tamalpais,  

Watercolor on Winsor Newton 140# Cold Press Paper , 6"h x 10"w, WIP 2

I also spent quite a few hours really darkening the background foliages and adding wet-in-wet effects on "Peppermint Rose". Color granulates so nicely on Fabriano Artistico paper surface, but adding the required density of pigments are really painful to accomplish on this paper! I am in a love-hate relationship with it. The soft surface stop to absorb water and pigments much faster than harder paper such as Arches or Richeson, so it's very easy to have dense pigments pooling on a wet surface, creating mud. This one is close to a finish now, I have to be very careful with it...

Peppermint Rose, 

Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico 140# Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, WIP 6

Ebbing Tide, Spring Estuary

I did a long hike on the wetlands near Palo Alto today, and came back with tons of bad reference photos of the pattern of sand bars, reeds, sage bushes and water reflections -- it's very hard to capture the scenes outdoors on the clear day using a point-and-shoot camera, since the value contrast is so huge, the dynamic range of the camera is really far from adequate. Even with two exposure settings for every scene -- a low exposure for objects in bright sunlight and an over-exposed setting for everything in shadow, the reference photos just don't contain enough color information to do these beautiful scenes justice. I tried to do a small study from them nonetheless, and since the scene is really complicated with details of vegetation and reflections, I intentionally blurred the reference photo, and made a gray-scaled version of it to paint from. I also tried a limited palette of Viridian Green, Antwerp Blue and Burnt Sienna in the attempt to capture the tranquil mood of the muted colors I remembered seeing early in the morning there.

Ebbing Tide, Spring Estuary,  

Watercolor on Winsor Newton #140 Cold Press Paper , 5"h x 6"w, 2012 #27

Buy It Now from My DPW Gallery ($20)

My main interest here is to capture the abstract patterns formed by the sand when the tide water is gradually coming in. To make this work, I intentionally down-played the complicated background foliage, using only decorative shapes of light and dark to represent different cluster of bushes, with some branch patterns painted both positively and negatively to add to the impression of vegetation. The reflection in water is also greatly down-played and only hinted with wet-in-wet dropped-in passages of darker colors , so that the eye of the viewer would be lead smoothly into the foreground. I'm quite happy with the thought process, and wanted to try it for a larger piece some day, to further play with the abstract patterns. It was a fun, searching process overall, with lots and lots of stopping time to think what to do next... A great learning experience!

Two Small Landscapes: Season Change (Finished), & Tamalpais Meadow (WIP)

I've felt a bit experimental lately and ventured out to paint more wet-in-wet landscapes, some successful, others disastrous. To manage the drying time and achieve the soft, wet, flowing look that I love about watercolor landscapes, I've shrunk my paper size significantly for some trial-runs before to attack the larger sheets -- quarter sheet for me is large at my current skill level of managing wild wet washes, I'm not greedy in my expectations :-P. And I do fall in love with some of these small jewels from time to time -- sometimes a trial run has the kind of freedom and freshness that a well-planned, well-executed larger piece lacks. There is a delicate balance between spontaneity and careful planning that I am still struggling to grasp...

This is a card-sized "experiment" I did trying to figure out how to create those fluffy white clouds   I've so often seen when travelling in the high country of Colorado and Utah. I did it in two wet cycles in this piece -- first wetting the who image with clear water, and drop in Ultramarine and Cobalt Blues to indicate the sky behind the white clouds; while this is totally dry, I rewetted the white area and dropped in a very light mixture of grey made by Cobalt Blue and Burnt Sienna. The most important and difficult thing here is to try to not let this grey flow to the edge of the white space , so that you still have some white left between the blue of the sky and the grey of the cloud that's facing away from the sun. I played with calligraphic strokes while creating the spruce tress, paying attention to increase the value and saturation of color gradually from the background trees to the ones which are in the foreground. I liked the slight melancholy and sober mood of the resulted piece, and may do a slight larger piece of a different format of it in the future.

Season Change (High Country Snapshot I),  

Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper , 5"h x 3"w, 2012 #25

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This is another piece I've started in the same fashion, trying to find out how to find fog-covered coastal hills. It's a view I so often see and marvel at while hiking in the Mount Tamalpais State Park in winter and spring mornings -- while the entire view ahead is veiled by beautiful silver fog, there would sometimes be a patch of meadow cleared of fog because it is not covered by oak and redwood trees (the respiratory action of these trees actually create huge amount of vapor in the air, and therefore make the fog denser). I'm struggling to recreate the quiet, moist, fresh air in my memory on paper in this one, and so far I've only done one wet cycle on the paper, painting from background forward as the paper gradually dries, leaving more and more obvious brush marks on the paper, ending with the dry-brush mark of muted brown underneath the tree shape near the center of the picture. At this stage I am more concerned with color temperature relationship and the abstract aesthetics of  brush marks -- the variation of shape, size, edge quality among these marks. Glazing over dry paper and tidy up these marks can be done without much difficulty later, as they are all quite soft and diffused. I love this stage of watercolor painting -- it's both exciting and nerve-wrecking, demanding 120% of the painter's attention. I'm feeling like walking on a tight rope while doing these wet-in-wet piece, which is a good change of pace from the more carefully planned floral paintings. Time to go back to the studio. Ciao!...

Spring Meadow, Tamalpais,  

Watercolor on Winsor Newton 140# Cold Press Paper , 6"h x 10"w, WIP 1