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:

Fiery Sky -- WIPs (Again!), 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Day 5

Fiery Sky,  Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico #140 Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 10"w, WIP 1

Classes at the atelier resumed on Monday, which means I only have 3-4 hours at most to paint now on weekdays. Combining that with my recent sickness due to the cold (although we do not have a frigid temperature compared to most part of the country...), I did not complete this painting yesterday. It is very close to a finish and I am working on it, playing with my new favorite brush -- the slanted bristle 1" to put in shapes suggesting of foliage with minimum strokes. 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:

Autumn Colors... 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Day 4

Bon Fire,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 10"h x 4"w, WIP 1

With theme of today's painting being "Foliage", I could not decide whether to work on a tree or a field of grass. Being the ADD artist I am, I ended up doing the exact wrong thing -- being way to ambitious and decided to work on two paintings in the same time, one a small vertical format study of an autumn maple tree, and the other the exploration of textural and wet-in-wet manipulation of color on a golden wheat field of countryside. I liked the progress of both, but with the day fast drawing to an end, and the obligation of having to drive down to the south bay to hang some of my work at Brian's Restaurant in Los Altos for a little two-person show arranged by my local Los Altos Art Club (LAAC), I realized that I might not be able to finish either of them today! I don't want to just rush to an end since I liked both of them at this stage, and want to take time to tweak shapes and colors, doing a little calligraphy here and there, and a lot of gazing in between. We'll see how I am doing! I would do an update before going to bed... It's going to be a long night...

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

Update: I did not finish this painting until the morning of the next day, but I was happy about the extra time I got to explore the shapes and space divisions by the branches. One thing I found about making small twigs looking real is to lighten and cool down their color toward the end. Of course a little dry brush work also goes a long way!

Bon Fire,  Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 10"h x 4"w, 2014 #4

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $35) 

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:

Moon Rise over Rockies -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Day 3

Moon Rise over Rockies,
 Watercolor on Richeson Stephen Quiller #140 Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 10"w, 2014 #3

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $45) 

So, there is not much doubt what theme group this one belongs to... Yepp, it is "Mountain". The majestic Rockies to be exact. It started as an idea of wanting to paint an image with my favorite palette -- purple and sienna complimentary duo. I thought these colors are just perfect to capture that magical moment of approaching dusk after glorious sunset, when a pale round moon slowly rises into the sky. I tried to be very deliberate about mark-making in this one, making every brush stroke count and use it to carve out shapes that are interesting and suggestive. I am influenced to a great degree by master watercolor artist, Stephen Quiller, in the way of making subtle, indicative, ambiguous and beautifully designed shapes -- ones that remind viewer of tree, rock, bush, undergrowth... But never delineate any of these "things" to one hundred percent exact. I am a firm believer that a good realistic painting needs to be aesthetically pleasing in both the way that representative shapes contain in it, and the abstract marks that sculpt out such shapes. Without one or the other a painting would either be a mere copy of the object or a haphazardly piled heap of calligraphy, each one individually flamboyant but lacking a solid foundation to build upon. 

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

Sold!

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:

Under the Autumn Sky - 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge, Round 3, Ready, Set, Go!...

Under the Autumn Sky, 
Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico #140 Cold Press Paper, 9"h x 12"w, 2014 #1

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $75) 

OK, call me crazy but yes, after much struggle with myself I've decided to take up Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" challenge yet again! Needless to say, last year after doing this challenge in September, my blog postings have become sporadic, and I've not finished many paintings since. There is definitely a possibility of "burning out" for a slow painter like me to take up such a challenge. (In fact I got very sick toward the end of the year, possibly because of the pressure I put myself through doing all the holiday shows, and the school work in the Atelier... :-() But my new year's resolution is to try painting more landscapes in a looser style (yes, you've probably heard me saying this on my various blog posts a couple of times if you have me visiting this blog for a while -- on my defense I did try really hard each time! But being "loose" is such an elusive goal for me -- it is the final product that has to evoke such sense, yet in each of the step toward creating a looser, freer, more atmospheric painting a painter has to be very deliberate and really know what he/she is doing! I have to admit I am struggling here...), so I've decided to take up this challenge with that goal in mind. 

In the following weeks of January, I will try to do a little landscape painting each day, and each week there would be a slightly different focus: sky, water, mountains and foliage (trees, brushes and grassland). This first one, "Under the Autumn Sky", is a sky-focused painting. My main goal here is to capture the fleeting sense of light near sunset on a slightly overcast day, and emulate the beautiful cloud shapes that changes every second you look without getting fixated on being "exact". It has started as a Plein-Air Sketch in the Palo Alto Bayland Marsh last fall (yes, during the last 30/30 challenge =_=b...), but I was not quite sure what I was trying to say in the piece, and had to put it aside for a while until I could see it in my mind's eye. In the end I had to revisit the lessons I've learned from landscape master Sterling Edwards and Carl Purcell's workshop, and revise the composition to emphasize the sky area, making sure the foreground marsh and tree line in the middle ground are not too busy as to detract from this center of focus.

A good lesson I have learned from doing this painting is to try to say one thing, and one thing only in one small painting like this. Since I was initially attracted by the sky when started this painting, I decided to stick with it. The other equally interesting shapes and textures, the lovely distant tree line, for example, is better explored in detail in another painting! (That's the beauty of doing such challenges -- you know you'll have another painting to do just the next day! 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:

Emerging after My Long Period of Absence... Some Fall Colors in Winter, Some New Finished Paintings, and My Last Holiday Fair of the Season

Fall Colors, Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah,

 Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough, 12"h x 9"w, WIP 1

Finally painting again! From October to December the Atelier work turned out more demanding as the projects get harder, and I will finally start chalk and charcoal next semester! It has seriously eaten into my watercolor painting time, and the busy holiday fair season did not help either -- between getting prints and small gift products ready for the shows and doing my charcoal drawings from life, I did not have much breathing room in the past few months... Hence the lack of new paintings here and no update on my blog (shame on me...) -- but, no more excuses, I am painting again! Yay!

Quicken Aspens, Park City, Utah,

 Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough, 8"h x 12"w, WIP 1

Here's a couple of landscapes I have started in Carl Purcell's workshop the past summer (really? It has been so long?...) and like everything started during a workshop, they did not get finished. I've started five of them and the closest one is about 70% done, but none of these. Maybe it is just me -- I always feel quite rushed in the drawing part whenever I am attending a workshop, and was not quite happy with the hard-edged shapes of the foliage on all these tree paintings. To me, a foliage clump in a painting needs to have very interesting and well-designed but natural-looking shapes and a blend of hard, soft and broken edges to really make it look like "foliage" instead of just "choppy brush strokes", and mine in any of these paintings certainly did not meet the standard. 

Quiet Meadows, Sonoma Pasture, 

 Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough, 12"h x 8"w, WIP 1

Not to worry -- off to the faucet! Arches paper can really take some abuse and that's why we love it! When the paper is soaking wet and the half-finished painting is not completely erased but with a lovely ghost image left on the paper, I took out the reference materials from the workshop and started to lay in colors wet in wet. Then I let them dry -- and I've liked these altered images much more. Next step is adding more definitions on dry paper, which involves some serious thought process on designs. Busy paintings filled with various shapes and colors (such as these depicting woods, forest, undergrowth, etc.) really needs succinct silhouette of the center of focus and some quiet areas to let viewer's eyes rest. For example, all the foliage clumps in "Quiet Meadows, Sonoma Pasture" are too symmetric and similar in size, which  is a residue problem from the not-carefully-thought-out initial drawings during the workshop, and therefore needs to be redesigned. I will do some sketch to figure that out... 

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

Sold!

Here's a couple of paintings I've finished but never had a chance to share with you on my blog. The first one is a second version of "Summer Glow"... All because I was stupid enough to want to repair a small smear damage on the first one, and you know what happens next -- the repairs have completely damaged the first version and the only thing I could do is to repaint it... I should have learned my lessons of not messing with a finished watercolor by now... Sometimes I really wonder what I was thinking...

Soar II, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, WIP 1

This one is actually finished and sold to a collector in England. I just did not have a good photo of it -- accidentally dropped my camera and broke it so now I only have my ipad as a camera, which is seriously not adequate to take images of finished paintings... (WIP photos, maybe, but not finished works, especially not when a piece is flying out and I may never get the chance to see it ever again...) So I will be posting the finished image when I get my new camera, I promise ;-)

Finally, since I did quite a few holiday shows this winter, and the holiday fair season is drawing to a close, I thought I'd give a shout-out here for my last fair of the season... It is a very cool venue: I will be selling my Watercolors, Giclee Prints, Holiday Cards, Calendars and MORE in the SF Bazaar Zoo Lights Event at San Francisco Zoo Entry Village Circle, located at Sloat Blvd. & the Great Highway this weekend (both Saturday and Sunday), December 21st & 22nd, between 3:00pm and 8:00pm. So if you find yourself in the city over the weekend, or want to take your kids to see the animals in the San Francisco Zoo under the evening lights, drop by and get some beautiful, hand-made, animal-related art gifts for your holidays!

Especially for this fair I have designed and made some holiday cards (yes, they are year-round good but I made this set of eight especially for the winter season). These little ones are printed on 3.5" x 5" sized Strathmore watercolor cards, and a set contains 8 different winter snow scenes, with name of the painting and my info printed at the back of the card. I have named it "Winter Wonderland" and will upload it for sale to my etsy shop soon, at a price of $20/set. I also have the same set of a larger size -- 5" x 7" for $25. Drop me an email if you are interested in having one!

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:

Watercolor Beginnings -- A Two Day Workshop with Arena Shawn

Winter Light,  Watercolor on Arches 140# Rough Paper , 5"h x 7"w, 2012

I will be teaching a 2-day workshop at the Odd Fellows Lodge located at 342 Georgia Street, Vallejo, California on the two Sundays of 10/20 & 10/27 between 1 and 4 p.m. On the first Sunday We will be discussing the different types of materials normally used for watercolor painting: paper, brush and colors. This will be followed by demonstrations and hands-on practices of of four basic watercolor techniques  flat wash, graded wash, wet-in-wet and dry brush. On the second Sunday you will learn how to paint a simple but atmospheric landscape using these four techniques you've just practiced. We will also discuss the visual language of color, design and composition, with practices on mixing the rainbow of hues using a limited palette. 

Watercolor demonstrations, class discussions, one on one instructions and critiques are all part of this introductory class. I will also have handouts, color and instructional charts for sale, as well as prints and cards.

You can see more details of the class on the registration page. The name of my class is "Watercolor Beginnings".

Winter Solstice,  Watercolor on Arches 140# Rough Paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2013

This class is ideally suited for anybody who has never picked up a paint brush, or those who has dabbled with watercolor and want a comprehensive review as well as some new insights. You will be taking home a little gem of landscape painting and send it as a holiday card to your friend and family. Come and enjoy a comprehensive introduction to the expressive medium of watercolor in a positive and supportive learning environment! Here you will find inspiration, motivation and information to improve your watercolor skills.

If you have your own materials (brush, paper, paint and palette) you are welcome to bring them. Otherwise with a material fee of $20 you will get a square and a round brush, two sheets of watercolor paper (size 9" x 12"), a plastic palette with painted squeezed into them, ready to be used! Just come and have fun!

Braving the Storm, 

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

I have shown some sample of images of possible landscape projects in this post that we will be working on during the workshop. They are all pretty small (approximately 5" x 7" in size) and utilizes an extremely limited palette (mostly just Cobalt Blue and Quinacridone Burnt Sienna). You will be trying your hands painting one of them during this workshop!

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 Glow, Crimsonscape, and Art in the Park

Summer Glow, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2013 #79

Sold!

I was quite busy over the past weekend, trying to finish some paintings for the "Art in the Park" event held in the central park of the lovely tri-valley city of San Ramon. And the show was a true blast! Not only did I meet some old collector friends, gained some new ones, I also got to meet a lot of wonderful artists working in a whole range of media from monotype and collage to pastel over traditional Chinese ink painting... The quality of artists are the highest among all the art fairs I have participated in, and they did a fantastic job organizing and marketing this event, providing booth sitters and helps for setup/take-down for people who are alone in their booth (like me) for free, and bringing some quality collectors who are not only knowledgeable about the process and difficulties involved in making a piece of art, but kind and appreciating in their personality. One of my collectors even stayed at the end of the event to help me pack my tent, since my hand was accidentally injured during the morning setup... I can't say how much I am thankful to them, and all the other wonderful people I met during the event!...

Crimsonscape - Red Poinsettia, 
Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2013 #80

Sold!

"Summer Glow" and "Crimsonscape" are two of the paintings I have sold during the event, and I have learned valuable lessons from the experience of selling them: sometimes it is not the best practice to go full out to greet your collector and try to strike small talks with them -- that could totally seem too eager to sell and thus scare away an interested customer. Instead, respect your collector's personal space, and let them look at the art at their own pace, consider about them, compare them, and only try to provide information when being asked, or after they have lingered in front of your booth for a while, and seems a little puzzled and in need of some information from you, is probably the best practice. Bring a painting with you to work on is also a good idea, so that people who are collecting your art would have an opportunity to see how they are created, and ask you questions regarding your process if interested. Also, working on your paintings can prevent you from staring straight at your potential customers when they are trying to study and compare your paintings and make a decision. That kind of stare can make both you and them quite uncomfortable and at times can become a unintended hint of "Please buy something or leave!", which is appreciated by no one.

I think for face-to-face sales like those made in an art fair, we as artists get a rare chance of meet and get to know our collectors, and make some good friends by sharing our life experience and love of what we do, why we do it with them. If a sale results from such communication, it's great; if it happens that the pieces showing are not exactly suited for them, we can still plant the seed of friendship and possible future sales. The most important part of making and selling art to me is to reach out and start a conversation regarding the good things of life, the beauty and kindness I experience everyday, a lot of times from totally unexpected encounters and total strangers. I am grateful for all of them, and really hope that through the art I create, I can share such sense of gratitude with everyone I cross path with...

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:

Petunia Done, Tulips Still in Progress... It's Almost Holiday Fair Season Again!

Rise and Shine, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 5"w, 2013 #78

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $35) 

Finishing up some little paintings for the upcoming holiday fair season, and my solo show in the gallery (more details in the next few days, stay tuned!... ;-). After completing this petunia, I thought it would actually make a nice pair with my earlier painting of morning glory... What do you think? Won't they be a cute little diptych together?

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

Can't believe I am still working on adjustments on this one... Sometimes I suspect it will never finish... I've darkened the upper right corner according to suggestions from you guys to my last update on this one. Now I am puzzling over how to make the center flower stand out more against the rest blossoms... Any suggestions? Please!...

A reminder to those of you who lives in the bay area: I will be at the Art in the Park event in the city of San Ramon this weekend. This two day event held at San Ramon Community Center located at 12501 Alcosta Blvd will be a showcase of local artist and artisan talents with live chalk art demonstration on location, and a great selection of live music, dance and theater performances. It lasts from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm for both Saturday and Sunday. If you are in the east bay - trivalley area and have some free time over the weekend, be sure to stop by and say hi!

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: