Evening Reflections

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

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $40)

Crystal Springs Sunset -- Color as Value Exercise

Crystal Springs Sunset, 

Watercolor on Aches #140 Cold Press Paper, 10"h x 6"w, 2014 #20

Bid in My DPW Auction ( Starting Bid $40)

"Crystal Springs Sunset" started out as an exercise in Stan Miller's workshop. Using a black-and-white photograph as reference, Stan asked us to use any colors -- arbitrary colors even, like green for the clouds -- to paint each shape, mostly wet on dry, soften edges as we go. The only requirement is to get the shapes painted in color as close in value as the black-and-white reference photo. It was a very valuable exercise, teaching me the importance of value to create a believable illusion of three-dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. As long as the value relationships are right, almost any color can be used to create a believable image. That is such a freeing exercise! 

In the end, the resulted image reminded me of the the evening drives I used to take along Hightway 280, when the glorious last rays of sunlight reflects from the water of the reservoir, the golden shimmers of light are breathtakingly beautiful. Against the setting sun, the silhouettes of the evergreen-and-oak-covered coastal range mountains are in a somber blue-grey color that is hard to describe with language. Not being able to resist the view, I have always pulled over to the roadside to observe and take it by heart. Cameras just don't do it justice -- high-contrast, low luminosity scenes like this are hard to photograph unless you are a pro with all the right gears (which I am certainly not). But today, when finished with this little painting, I am filled with joy that all those roadside stoppings did not go to waste. They have carved the magic hour, the majestic light into my heart...

Enough rambling for now! I should really get back to my watercolor table... 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:

South Wind -- -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 22 (This One is Finished!!!)

South Wind,  Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper, 11"h x 15"w, 2013 #72

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $95) 

Today is a really productive day -- I finished two 11" x 15" sized paintings -- "South Wind" and "Stormy Weather", and almost finished "Under the Autumn Sky". Most time were spent designing the shapes of various trees, meadows, rocks, etc. in these paintings, as the shapes of these objects in the initial reference photos may well need to be altered to be made interesting. This is one of the things I consider as very difficult for landscape painting -- often you cannot simply put down what you see in front of you, not like still life and flower painting! It is certainly a brain-intensive day of painting...

Stormy Weather,  Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper, 11"h x 15"w, 2013 #71

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $125) 

This is the final version of "Stormy Weather" -- I was very happy with the negative painting of some of the light fir trees on the left side, as well as the calligraphy to suggest tree branches in the middle ground light colored tree shapes. I did quite a few negative paintings on this one, using the dark mountain shapes behind to set the edge of the middle ground tree that is being lid. The main point of exercise for this one is trying to depict dramatic lighting, and using brushwork to suggest mountain, tree and grass. I have certainly learned quite a bit designing those shapes...

Unfortunately, along with these good progress something really bad also happened -- I drove to the gallery today and discovered that one of my little landscape painting was stolen from the gallery. It was unframed, only matted and put in the "matted original" bin in the gallery, and it is nowhere to be found. I have left it in the gallery only a week ago after my "Meet the Artists Day" in Filoli, and now it's gone. I checked the sales records -- it was not sold; I checked everywhere in the gallery, and it was just nowhere to be found. It really saddens me to think anyone who likes my art to the extent of wanting to bring it back home would opt to not pay a mere $35 and choose to steal it. This just breaks my heart... I do not know whether I should feel sad or angry about such incident... Has it ever happened to you, my artists friends? 

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:

Braving the Storm -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 18

Braving the Storm, 

Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico #140 Cold Press Paper , 5"h x 7"w, 2013 #69

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $30) 

I've not painted many boats -- don't get me wrong, I really love them. Living on the coast and literally less than three miles away from the ocean, I almost come across them on a daily basis -- from gigantic ocean liners to tiny speed boats. But what impresses me most are the elegant sail boats that one is guaranteed to spot on a good sunny day in the San Francisco Bay, their smooth curved body braving the green-blue waves, their white sails catching east wind, zipping by at lightening speed. With the American Cup underway now in San Francisco, top-of-the-line sail boats from all over the world are accumulated in the bay waters, truly a treat for the eyes of those who love this gentlemen's sport. It's really about time for me to tackle this subject!

The idea of this painting comes from a stroll along Crissy Field (part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area), while all of a sudden the wind just started to blow and these huge, threatening dark clouds gathered from all directions. It seemed that a down-pour is about to happen at any moment. Suddenly a light-color zipped into my field of vision -- a sail boat catching the strong wind and flying on the water, seemingly oblivious of the coming storm, instead just enjoying the strong push from the wind that is blowing harder and harder every minute. It was just the blink of an eye before it disappeared into the distance, and I could not get out of my camera in time to snap a picture, but that imaged was carved into my memory, and recalled out today.

A lot of times, when we really looked, our minds are better than the best camera -- it filters and chips away the non-essential, and what's left is the most important and what attracts us to the subject at first.

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:

Beachcombers -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 17

Beachcombers at Linda Mar, Pacifica, 

Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough Paper , 6"h x 8"w, 2013 #68

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $35) 

I had a fabulous day enjoying the brilliant summer light, cool ocean air and roaring breaking surf at Linda Mar beach of Pacifica -- I went out painting plein air again!!! (I cannot believe that I don't do this often enough, as it was such a great experience every time I do it. Maybe I should just set a schedule for myself, like "go out and paint plein air every Friday morning at 6:30", so that I can stick to it, like I have stuck to this challenge..."

There isn't any shade on Linda Mar beach and it is difficult to do wet in wet under direct sun, so I used a very wet squirrel quill brush and lots of water to dilute the paint, and did most of the painting wet-on-dry. I also chose a rough surface for the paper so that I can do dry-brush more easily, which is something that is not hard to do outdoors -- the underlying wash almost dries instantaneously, so you can put the dry-brushed details on top of it immediately. ;-) Again, not many people on the beach on a weekday (this is the time that I thank the universe for letting me be an artist so that I can get out on such a beautiful day and enjoy the outdoors, instead of being confined in a cubical; but then, the cubical comes with a more steady paycheck which I do miss! :-P), but a handful of sandpipers are combing the wet sand for their afternoon snack -- just the center of interest I need for this little study. I happily added these lovely little creatures, and watched them busy poking and digging around where the wave just left, immersing myself in their world for a precious moment. I am a grateful women, when I know I am at peace with what's around me.

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:

Fall over Marsh -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 16

Fall over Marsh, 

Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico #140 Cold Press Paper , 8"h x 12"w, 2013 #67

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $65) 

This is the second piece I have completed from the exercises started at Sterling Edwards' workshop. The initial imagery comes from many evening walks I have done around the marsh lands in the bay area, when the sky gradually turns into a beautiful magenta purple color, and the reflections of bushes and woods in the still waters of the marsh simply glow with a golden hue. Those last minutes before dark, the "in between" moments, the magical moments of the day, when I ambled through the quiet trails around these wetlands, they are all carved into my memories. Those were quiet times to reflect on the day, or watching a flock of birds gliding through low sky and marvel at their agility. Those were moments I felt at one with my surroundings, totally lost but knowing exactly who I am, and why I come to this world. 

I feel truly blessed every time I attempt to record such moments, such experiences with my brush. The action of painting itself recalls the joys of time experienced, shapes seen, sounds heard -- the completion of the picture seems only of secondary importance in comparison. The impressions seemed vague and hard to capture on paper, yet with every brush stroke I was reassured that they are actually part of me, and I will have them in me forever. It's a truly amazing experience... Let a scene simmer in your heart with time, before to bring it in front of the world again.

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:

End of Storm -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 15

End of Storm, Watercolor on Sennelier #140 Rough Paper , 4"h x 9"w, 2013 #66

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $35) 

A few years ago I had the pleasure of taking a workshop from Sterling Edwards, a wonderful landscape painter in watercolor, from whom I have learned to paint with big square brushes wet in wet, manipulating soft shapes using a stiff bristle brush. At that time my proficiency of working with watercolor is still very limited, so the projects I have attempted during the workshop failed miserably. But I kept the class materials and took them out from time to time to ponder upon. Then today, I felt that I could give them another try -- after all, I have definitely progressed as an artist during the past two years while I was painting almost everyday. I started six projects in the same time, reflecting what I have learned in class, painting mostly from memories and imagination, recalling familiar images of wetlands, woodlands and sea shores that I have wandered through when making a particular shape. The whole process is really refreshing. I've also deliberately stayed away from the good old Arches, and picked soft surfaced papers and even hot press papers that dried relatively fast, and have completely different handling qualities when wet. The unfamiliarity created more stimulation, and as a result, I have completely enjoyed the process. And this little piece is the first one that came out of such exercise...

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 -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 13

Fisherman's Evening,

 Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press paper, 6"h x 9"w, 2013 #64

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $35) 

After a busy day at Filoli, I was happy to be able to still finish this little painting tonight. I used a very limited palette because I was inspired by some Sumi ink paintings and Haiku-like photographs I saw today. When I was painting it I thought about fog gradually rising on empty river surface, a lonely fishing boat anchored near shore, with its fishing-cormorants resting on the long pole at the end of it. The fisherman with a glass or two of hard liquor, resting after a day's hard work... It's a more and more rare scene even in rural China nowadays, the country being so rapidly developed. I know the romance in rural lifestyle is probably exaggerated while the hardship deliberately overlooked with people outside writing or painting about it, but still, born and raised in a mega city, I cannot help but being slightly nostalgia when thinking about such life of the past, which I have never experienced genuinely... :-P Life is full of controversies I guess. 

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 (DPW Sky Challenge)

This is a little test of landscape I've posted on my facebook page (with a terrible image taken by the iphone camera in a hurry just after I finished it) and I never got around to share on my blog, or upload to my Daily Paintworks Page. The painting was done completely wet in wet, as a test of the Fabriano Blocco per Artisti paper I recently purchased. The surface of this paper is more similar to the laid instead of woven patterns (which is the most prominent surface pattern of contemporary watercolor paper), The lovely laid pattern gives it a very antique look, as this is the surface pattern of most of the paper in the age of Cotman or Turner. Layer on this paper, or repeated wetting, has proven to be extremely difficult. Like all Fabriano paper I have tried, it lifts like crazy. But the granulating colors separate and diffuse beautifully on it, and created this glowing orange (of Burnt Sienna) along the horizon and in the light passage in the land -- a river channel reflecting the setting sun. (The photo here, unfortunately, does not show the subtle, low saturation color in the original painting.) I am submitting it to this weeks DPW challenge -- paint a sky. John Sell Cotman has said "a sky a day" is a great exercise in watercolor painting, since it is always there for you to observe. This one is painted looking at the lovely back waters of San Carlos.

Storm over Estuary, 

Watercolor on Fabriano Blocco Per Artisti140# Cold Press Paper,5"h x 7"w, 2012 #51

Sold!

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!

More Big Sky Paintings...

More sky-centered paintings on the go... I've become braver and switched to quarter-sheet paper now, and using my 2" and 1" flats for the majority of this stage. What I found out is that sable flats have so much more characteristics while doing the initial wet-in-wet washes -- they release water with a more even rate, and deposit pigments slowly, giving the painter more control when the paper is soaking wet. However, the synthetic flats tend to leave interesting color "streaks" when carrying a denser mixture of pigments, which can create some nice effects when painting water or texturize foreground areas. 

South Wind, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper , 11"h x 15"w, WIP 1

I used mostly sable flats for the rainy clouds in the sky, but switched to synthetic flats and rounds for the foreground areas. I also tilted the paper to make color run down in diagonal directions to hint storm coming...

Stormy Weather, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper , 11"h x 15"w, WIP 1

Work in Progress: Dancing Tulip (Almost Finished, Really...), & Class with Jeanne Vooden

I'm still painting away for the upcoming tulip art festival in Oakland, adding denser pigment wet-in-wet on the leaves to create a glow of spring yellow-green. When finished, the leaves would be the only true light-colored shapes and contrasting with the deep burgundy-purple flower. I am a little worried that they would attract the eye too much and draw the attention away from the main flower, but I do like the reddish purple vs. yellow green color scheme. We'll see how it goes. I also added more of the same color on the upper left corner of background to hint foliage in the distance, and to balance the movement of color throughout the image.

Most work I did was on the flower pedals. I found Fabriano Artistico Cold Press paper very very hard to glaze on -- even the staining colors seem to lift easily. And when the pigment density is too high, it seems that they don't get absorbed into the paper at all, just floating on the surface and being pushed around by the next brush load of pigments. I'm a bit annoyed at this stage, but decided to carry on -- after all, almost all mistakes made on this paper can be corrected easily with lifting! I guess I just have to learn the art of dancing with the devil...

Dancing Tulip,  Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico 140# Cold Press Paper , 5"h x 7"w, WIP 4

What made me super excited today was I got to start my six-week class with the amazing artist Jeannie Vodden! She paints with beautiful, delicate mingled fluid washes of very limited palette -- most often just one red, one yellow and one blue, letting the pigments mixing both on palette and on paper to create a rainbow of hues. Her method involves very patient glazing and our class project this time was a landscape. I am showing my humble efforts here -- it looks so pale and subtle, but it's already three washes on wet paper! -- The first one going down from the sky region and covered almost all paper, changing color from the Cobalt Blue Sky to the light yellow-green of meadows, then to the pink flowering bush, all finished by applying a combination of Permanent Rose, Lemon Yellow and Cobalt Blue on pre-wetted paper. The second wash strengthened colors on the left bank wet-on-dry, and the third partially covered the right bank in the same manner, carefully painted around the tree trunks and distant rooftops. It's very different from my usual painting method, and I can't wait to see how it would turn out... 

Spring Run,  Watercolor on Arches140# Cold Press Paper , 9"h x 12"w, WIP 1