Purple Dream - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Purple Dream, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2016 #2

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $85)

In the neighborhood I live in there are many lovely old Victorian homes with wisteria leaning onto their front gates, and during the walk one morning I spotted this beautiful butterfly spanning its wings in the morning fog on one of the large flower clusters. The temperature was low in the moist morning air of San Francisco, and large droplets of water were dripping from the wisteria leaves, so I wondered whether the wings of this butterfly was wet and it could not take off. When I sneak closer I realized it was... mating, with its lover hiding in the shadow of the leaflets underneath the first butterfly. I snapped a photo and decide to capture this rare moment with my paintbrush... And every time I look at the painting, I can almost smell the clear, cold, moist air of that morning, and the slight aroma of wisteria... 

Sugar Swirl -- Continue with the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge...

Sugar Swirl, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2014 #16

Bid in My DPW Auction ( Starting Bid $85)

My second butterfly painting for Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" Challenge for this September. I have painted this butterfly on Ampersand Aquabord and uploaded the image onto my Daily Paintworks Gallery Page, but haven't shared it with you here yet (which I plan to do in the next few days, after the challenge is over). The two surface behaves very different -- Arches are great for wet-in-wet application and colors do not lift from it all that easily, but one has to account for the fact that bright hues dull down quite a bit on this absorbent surface, and compensate for that when laying down colors with stronger intensity when painting; on the other hand, bright colors stay as brilliant as the moment it's laid down on Aquabord, as this surface is not absorbent at all, hence all colors stay on its clay-coated surface and do not sink in. However, this makes glazing a color-covered area extra hard, and its fast-drying surface makes doing thick, juicy wet-in-wet application very difficult. I had fun switching back and forth between the two surfaces, playing with their different properties, which is a great exercise to avoid falling into the crutch of always painting with the same procedure and method... :-)

As I was painting the background greens, I realized that I do have some favorite mixtures that I often go to without thinking, and Hooker's Green + French Ultramarine Blue is just one of them. You can add Quinacridone Gold, Quinacridone Burnt Orange and Undersea Green to vary the hue a little bit and add more warmth or depth, but starting with Hooker's Green + French Ultramarine Blue almost guarantees that you will get that deep, shadowy green you get when looking at dense foliage that is not in direct sunlight. I learned this combination when I just started painting watercolor, and it has been helpful to me ever since. Of course, this does not mean one should reach out for the same color mixture without actually looking at nature -- it's just a starting point, a jump board for you to use and land onto your own color mixture for every possible variation of the rainbow.

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:

Spring Feast -- Continue with the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge...

Spring Feast, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2014 #15

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Continue with Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" Challenge for this September! I am posting the new paintings I am finishing this week and will catch up with the ones I finished earlier in October -- forgive me if it is a little confusing! (The challenge has started when I was still in China, where I have no access to blogger or facebook due to government restrictions on internet there, so I have a few of those piled up, uploaded onto my Daily Paintworks Gallery Page but not here.) 

I am doing a few butterfly paintings this week, among other things. This is the first one I finished. I tried something new in the background -- glazing wet-on-dry but still try to maintain the boundaries of different color-shapes soft and diffused. I found that I can control the shapes and values of each shape better, but multiple glazes do dull the color a bit if I am not super careful. I had some fun with the butterfly, letting the lightest background washes seep into the light shapes of its wings to add a hint of color, thus subtly show the translucency of the wings in sunlight. For its furry body I used very small brush and scumbled with think paint to get the texture of tiny hair, and contrasted that with the smooth, shiny underbelly of the insect. I am quite happy with how it's turned out. Now off to the next one! (Hardly any time to breathe with this challenge! How are you doing my friends?... :-)

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: