Some New Directions -- Divergence from Florals!

Low Tide - Plein Air at Muir Beach, 

Watercolor on Richeson Zoltan Szabo #140 Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 11"w, WIP 1

I've taken a sabbatical from my floral watercolors lately to explore other directions, and I thought maybe I should be sharing some of them with you here. I was a bit hesitant since I have no idea how they would turn out -- it's both scary and exhilarating to explore new territories! Oh well, you, my blog friends have been very kind and supportive to me throughout, so maybe my worries are unfounded! Here they are:

The first one is another little plein air watercolor I did recently at Muir Beach. It's painted on Richeson Zoltan Szabo #140 Cold Press paper and the size is 7"h x 11"w. The sky was over cast that day, therefore all the colors are more saturated without being bleached by the all powerful sun, and I really wanted to accentuate this in my painting. I liked the result in the field and thought it was finished. However, after going back home and giving it a second look, I noticed that the center of interest - the dark rock - is almost smacked dead in the center of the painting -- a compositional NO-NO. I also think the dark shapes of the wet sand can be improved a little more as well... So, back to the drawing board it goes! I will post the modified version in a couple of days...

In Between, Watercolor on Lanaquarelle #140 Cold Press Paper, 15"h x 11"w, WIP 1

The second project is a found still life. Now, if you have followed my blog for a while, you probably have noticed that my florals are often very high in chroma, and seeing flowers in sunlight often make me feel inspired to work, but light is the first painter that reveals beauty in a lot of commonplace objects, even neglected corners. I found this dried leaflet and branch perched in between pebbles on the roadside while taking a walk in the neighbourhood a couple of years back -- and when the sunlight was cast upon it, the pattern of light and shadow is absolutely beautiful. When I pulled the photo out of a dusted drawer during spring cleaning (yes, even I occasionally do this!...) it inspired me to try a subject that is unfamiliar to me. The reference image is low in color saturation so it will be interesting to try different approaches -- increase the chroma or emphasize the value difference in low saturation -- and see which one I like best! (I am even thinking of starting a new series of still life paintings with the theme "Everyday Beauty". If you have reference photos of objects that often do not catch the eye of most people, but you find very beautiful and inspiring, please share with me by posting it here or email me at arena.shawn@gmail.com!)

The Gossiping Ladies, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 9"w, WIP 1

The last one of my newest projects is really a step out of my comfort zone and something I've rarely tackled before: animals. This image of two parrots perched on mossy branch in bright tropical sunlight has caught my eyes a while ago and I've finally decided to tackle it after gathering my courage for a while. I love the bright plumage colors of these birds, and their expression really reminded me of some of my relatives gossiping about family matters while resting in the traditional front yard after a day's work -- a scene so common back in the days when the large, extended family still lived together in the countryside, but more and more rare these days with the younger generation moving away into towns and cities and forming their own nuclear family... My main focus of this painting is trying to depict the texture of the fur and feather without painting them one by one, as well as capture the individual personality of these cute little critters! I am a bit nervous about how they would turn out. Please feel free to give some critiques and suggestions!

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:

Marsh Sunset -- A Little Plein Air Painting at Elkhorn Slough

Marsh Sunset, Watercolor on Fabriano #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 10"w, 2014 #13

Bid in My DPW Auction ( Starting Bid $70)

The weather was great and I went out to do some plein air on Friday, and completely "Marsh Sunset" near Elkhorn Slough. Unfortunately, it was very cold once the sun started to set, and the coastal fog came in swiftly. As a result, I was not feeling well over the weekend  and did not get much of painting done... Still, I was happy to finally get back there and paint in nature! It's been too long since I have done that...

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:

More Work from My Study at Golden Gate Atelier

Elegance - Life Drawing of Anne, 
Chalk & Charcoal Drawing from Life on Fabriano Roma Grey Charcoal Paper, 25"h x 15"w

Oh boy! Did this blog suffer some serious neglect in the last two months! (I cannot believe I have not blogged for two months! I really need to make a more serious effort in keeping a regular blogging schedule...) So here it is: "Elegance - Life Drawing of Anne" is my latest long pose figure. It measures 15"w x 25"h and is done with chalk and charcoal on grey Roma paper. The entire drawing took more than 80 hours to complete, with 60 hours of model time, and a couple nights staying at the studio working on background and folds of the drapery. We experimented with black background for the first time in this set-up, and I found it great to create mysterious atmosphere as well as set the glowing light effect on the model. But to achieve proper value of the black cloth in the background, it took many, many paintful hours sitting at the easel adding layers and layers of vine charcoal...

Still Water Run Deep - Life Drawing of Yeshi, 

Chalk & Charcoal Drawing from Life on Fabriano Roma Grey Charcoal Paper, 25"h x 15"w

"Still Water Run Deep - Life Drawing of Yeshi" is another long pose drawing I did earlier this year at GGA. It took about 42 hours to complete and was my first figure drawings using both white chalk and charcoal on grey Roma paper. It was a relatively simple standing back pose, and my goal is to capture the cascading light down her (viewer) right shoulder, and have the light gradually diminish as it descents the figure. For hair I have tried not to drawing in every single strand, instead treating it as fabric with light and dark planes and fuzzy edges... 


I really liked it and entered it into the Livermore Art Association's Spring Juried Show, and was very happy to find out that it has won second place in drawing/pastels category, as well as the City Selection Awards from the City of Livermore! Now it will be hanging in the City Hall of Livermore for a month, until May 9th... What a great honor!... 

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:

Simple Grace -- My Other Half of Artist's Life at the Classical Atelier

Simple Grace, 
Charcoal Cast Drawing from Life on Fabriano Roma White Charcoal Paper, 18h x 16"w

I haven't done much of sharing of my work from the atelier I was attending so far -- this is one of the latest projects I have finished there. It is a charcoal drawing about the size of 16" x 18" of a plaster cast from a 19th century French girl. The drawing is done from life with sight-size method, and took me a good three month to finish. I was quite happy with it and thought it has somewhat captured her calm, gentle expression, and the effect of light hitting her forehead and cascading down from there. The training at Golden Gate Atelier is amazing and I felt in the two years I am attending it, my drawing ability has just improved by leaps and bounds...

It is very interesting that this cast is supposed to be a cast direct from a real girl's face, after she has tragically cast herself into the river water of Paris to end her life, but the expression is so vivid, peaceful and lifelike, it's hard to believe it is cast from a deceased person... The interesting story behind the cast is that the contemporary CPR's training mask is designed according to it, so that people who are trained to do mouth-to-mouth CPR could have something pleasant to stare at when doing it...

After completing this project, I decide to submit it to Lodi Art Center's Spring Juried Show, and yesterday I was informed that this drawing has just won the Best of Show. This great news came as a total surprise, as this is the first time I submit non-watercolor work to a juried show and I was very nervous how it would be received... Of course I feel a huge sense of encouragement now. 

I would never be able to do this without the two years of priceless training I have received at Golden Gate Atelier -- before entering the atelier I was literally scared to death to pick up a pencil and draw free-hand! The rigorous training -- drawing from life 6-7 hours a day every day has not only taught me how to see and how to use different drawing materials to achieve an effect I want, but gradually built up my confidence to DRAW. Again, this proves you learn drawing by -- actually draw a lot... Along the way I have received so many valuable instructions and help from my teachers, Andrew Ameral and Sean Forester, as well as my classmates. I owe you all a big "Thanks" -- you are the best!


I also owe a big "Thank You" to Sadie Valeri, my first teacher in classical realism and personal inspiration! I took my first life drawing class with her when I was still working my engineer job, and was totally hooked! Now I am on this road of no return... Lol...

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:

Fire Dance (Very Close to Finish...)

Fire Dance, Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, WIP 7

I am currently working on two small paintings of tulips -- perhaps being inspired by the beautiful tulip garden cultivated by our Dutch neighbor that I can see every time I look out of the window facing my painting table. An artist is definitely aesthetically influenced by his/her immediate environment -- albeit some more than others -- but that perhaps is a good justification for our desire to surround ourselves with beautiful objects such as other artists' work?...

That aside, this particular tulip, "Fire Dance", paintings have taken me a long time to complete, dragging from last spring to this one. Numerous times I have seen it as finished, even framed it and showed it in galleries, and eventually after looking at it for a while, I would feel something is still missing, and eventually remove it from the mat and rework it some more. From the last WIP of it shown on this blog, I have followed some very good advice from fellow artists and softened the edge between the leftmost flower in the background and the background itself, linking the two together, as well as separating the center flower from the rest by darkening and neutralizing the flowers out of focus in the background. I've lost some beautiful passages of effects along the way, but I feel the whole painting does stand stronger this way, and it is very close to finish... I just need to think about how to define the front petal in the center flower better -- without losing the light on it. I need to spend more time staring at it and think than to actually move my brush at this stage...

How to finish a painting is a very personal problem that each painter solves in their own way, and may vary from one piece of work to the next. However, being able to actually "finish" a piece without rushing it through deadline or beating it to death by overworking gives a tremendous sense of satisfaction, as well as confidence to build on the knowledge gained in this difficult process and apply it to the next painting. Wish me good luck to pull it through, 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:

Hummers! (No, Not the Monstrous Vehicle... It's the Tiny Bird I am Referring to...)

Rufus!,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 7"w, WIP 1

This is my latest project -- a little Rufus Hummingbird painting to be completed with gold leaf. 

Last September my dear artist friend, the amazing Carrie Waller, has shared a technique of how do combine gold leaf with watercolor on her blog. I was very intrigued by the effect you can get using this particular technique, but was not sure what subject would work best with it. Carrie has done some beautiful still life paintings of fall leaves and pears using this technique, as well as a larger painting of humming birds. I especially liked how the shimmer of the gold leaf would work with the brilliant colors of humming bird plumage, and after some researches of suitable reference materials, have settled on a series of Rufus Hummingbirds to try my hands on. This is the first one of them. All the yellow backgrounds would be covered with gold leaf in the finished painting. I almost cannot wait to do it!

I think the emerald green and green gold used for the feather of the humming bird would work well with the gold leaf. And after reading Chris Beck's tutorial in the latest Artist's Magazine, I decided to give masking fluid another try on the cactus flowers. I used a dipping pen to apply them for the thorns (the masking are removed here and you can see the resulted white shapes of thorns on the cacti), and find them easy to use, as well as capable of producing much thinner lines. I took the maskings off before applying the final wash, so that I can modify the edges of the masked shapes with some brush work, and tone them down if they appear to be too stark... 

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:

Tranquility, and Thoughts on "Virtual Painting"

Tranquility,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 9"h x 12"w, 2014 #12

Bid in My DPW Auction ( Starting Bid $70)

Busy with drawing projects at the atelier for the past two weeks, but I managed to sneak in a few painting hours here and there, and finished "Tranquility". It has started in the "30 Paintings in 30 Days" challenge that I took this January, but had to drop due to health issues of a dear family member. It was part of the "water" themed set of paintings. Now that things are back to normal in my household, I am slowly going back to these unfinished projects and trying to tackle them one by one...

I want to convey the sense of utter stillness and quietude in the early morning hours of an overcast day in this painting, and kept on feeling that the shapes of the cloud and distant trees near the foothills needs to be tweaked more, so I have wet and rewet these areas, dried them, wet them again... It's been a lengthy process. When painting landscapes I often find it's not enough to directly copy the shapes present in your reference materials; instead, conscious, deliberate design choices has to be made to makes tree/mountain/rock/cloud shapes interesting. On the other hand, it is so important to imitate the randomness presented in the natural shapes in your design, and take great care to not make them look too "designed", mechanical or symmetric! It's a delicate dance of balance...

Tranquility,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 9"h x 12"w, WIP 1

When posting the work in progress shot of this painting in January I was really very happy with how the various purple/blue/green colors has blended freely on the left side group of trees, as well as the shape of the silhouette of them. However, after finishing the distant hills and woods I realize the value of this group of trees do not quite work -- they are way too light and therefore does not balance the image. After agonizing over it for a few days, I have finally gathered enough courage to lay another layer of wash to darken them, taking care to change the color every time I reload the brush to maintain the interest generated by the color variation in the initial version. I did it wet on dry using a small squirrel quill brush, whose soft hair would not disturb the underlying wash. I am really happy with the decision, as well as the result -- with the darker, more intense blues and purples, the shape of this group of trees in the final image gives enough weight to balance with the middle-ground shapes on the right side, and blocks the viewer's eye from wandering off the right side of the picture, therefore emphasizes the moored boat. 

Often in landscape paintings like this, I find myself spending much more time staring at the painting than actually "painting" on it toward the end stage. It is not uncommon that every one minute of painting time is accompanied by ten or more minutes of looking and thinking. Sometimes after a long period of repeated starting, pondering and evaluation, I would finally decide to not add anything more and just call it done. However, I don't consider this as time wasted -- time spent evaluating the work to be done with a painting so often saves me much heartaches from taking that "one stroke too much". As painters even when we do not have brush in hand, we may still be mentally "painting" a picture on that virtual sheet of paper. And that, I believe, is a vital exercise for my growth as a painter, and time well spent.

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:

Featured in the Art Room!

Fields of Gold, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, 2013 #36

Private Commission

My friend, wonderful oil painter Taryn Day organizes this wonderful blog: The Art Room, about artists she likes and the amazing paintings they do. Currently she is running a mini-series of painters who blog, and their favorite paintings of 2013. I am really honored to be included... If you have time, stop by the blog or its facebook page -- I promise you won't be disappointed!

Summer Glow II, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2013 #81

Sold!

So, my choice of my favorite paintings done in 2013 are "Field of Gold" and "Summer Glow II". The reason for choosing the former is I feel really happy to have captured the sense of glowing light when painting primarily in the color yellow, which I continue to find to be a very challenging color. It was also a commission done under a tight time schedule when my school was in session. But the wonderful customer -- a gentleman who wanted to purchase a painting of bulbed flowers for his wife of dutch origin for their wedding anniversary -- gave me a lot of freedom to choose my composition and work out a small color study, and it ended up to be a piece of work I am very happy with. (I feel so lucky to have met so many wonderful, appreciating and supportive collectors in my short adventure into the art world!) The reason to choose the latter is that I have deliberated selected a very "black and white" reference photo -- white flower, dark foliage, without much color variations -- to challenge myself to not to copy so literally from reference materials, but to see and push more vibrant colors whenever possible. I have also tried out the largely wet-on-dry working method that I have learned from my wonderful teacher, master artist Jeannie Vodden. I really loved the resulted paintings and felt I have suffered through as well as grown from this project as the best artist I could be at the time. Pushing boundaries, working with new and unfamiliar methods, developing a vision -- for me, these are what being an artist is truly about...

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:

Heliconia Dance

Heliconia Dance,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 5"w, 2014 #11

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $105) 

After finishing "Soar II", I realized that I am really missing painting flowers -- or, from a design point of view, missing working on brilliant colors, and more detailed shapes. Since I have a couple of floral that have been lingering in the studio for quite some time, I decided to get my focus out and finish them!

So, here is the first one I have managed to finish over the weekend, despite of my lingering cold and stuffed sinus (in a way painting actually helps to distract me from the physical discomfort -- it is almost meditative when I am doing the finishing 20%!). The reference photo of this painting is from Chris Gardner who runs a lovely blog of her own photographs of a variety of flowers, and has kindly allowed me to use her pictures as reference photos. I really loved the curvlinear movement that dominates the photo, and decide to use wet-in-wet dynamic lines to further emphasize that. I have also tried to play up complimentary red-green color scheme, using bright, saturated red to emphasize the Heliconia flower, and muted yellow-green and blue-green foliage in the background as "supporting actors". To avoid monotony in the "green, green, green" background, I have dropped in Ultramarine and Winsor Red wet in wet in small amount here and there to add some "zing" factor to it. I am quite happy with the final result, except for the fact that it has taken way too long to complete it! Now it's time to move on to the next painting...

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:

Soar II

Soar II,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2014 #10

Sold!

I have mailed out "Soar II" to its new home in England earlier this week. I thought it was finished at the end of last year, but as I looked at it everyday during the Christmas break, I just felt it is still missing something, so I held off mailing it out to the client (who has been very kind and not rushing me at all) and hope I will know what final "punch line" to add. I often do this to paintings and normally it takes a while for me to actually say to myself "this is done, I have nothing more to say in this piece", but in this case because of the special circumstance I feel I need to finish it ASAP. However, after gauging with myself for a couple of days I really thought I don't want it to take any less effort or attention just because I am repainting the piece, and I don't want it to be a mere repeat of the one that got accidentally damaged. Instead, I want it to be better than the first one -- at least in my own judgement.

As I was doing this my family member got admitted to the hospital due to cardiac issues, so everything got put aside, as you probably already know from my previous blog posts. However, when he got a stent put in his artery and I was in the hospital, I took this painting together with other two small pieces tat I once thought was finished, but not sure, with me, as I would have long time to look at and think about them. I did just that, and worked on all of them in the past two weeks again. I was really happy with how this one turned out...

Soar II,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2014 #10

This is a previous version before final modification. I have decided to darken the leaf against the light stamen of the flower on the upper left to add more contrast, and I am sharing this WIP image which is very close to the finished painting here as an example of the type of modification I have done during the long pondering period. On the topic of when a painting is done, there is really no road map. Most of times we could only trust and rely on our best judgement, which is continuously being refined as we make numerous mistakes and shout out "I wish I had stopped a couple of strokes earlier!"...

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: