Original Art Stories - Xueling Zou

Attended the evening short pose live model sketch practice again after three weeks. Definitely my brain and hands were not as coordinately as quick as before. After a while I was getting a little bit better. New model's poses were nice, and she was stable too. (August 16 2022)

After Plein Air at the Redwood City Port, I rushed to the art center for the drawing class. We had a new model, not sure her nationality, but she was pretty with darker skin tone. And her body shape is beautiful too. She is a nice stable model. But her poses were too similar. OK to me for practicing, other artists were complaining a bit.  (July 27 2022)

After a long day of Plein Air in Half Moon Bay, I drove back and bought a Mediterranean wrap for dinner and went to the studio for the short pose drawings.  It is one of my favorite things to do, though I was very tired at the end of this session.  A new professional model this night, she was very stable for each pose.  Got home it was almost ten pm, felt it was a productive day.  Actually spent almost three hours on the road, and at least one hour looking for inspiration... (July 19 2022 )

Tuesday always is my busy day of the week. I take two sessions of painting and drawing. As usual, long pose model in the afternoon for three hours, then after one and half an hour break, there was a short pose drawing session. I enjoy doing them both. Like many artists, of course I am struggling through each of them, and have been practicing since last September. I was quite happy to hear one of artists, she is an art educator, tell me that she could see I have made progress and am improving. Might be her encouragement, I did better drawings in the evening. We had very full studio, I wondered that our model she was a very professional one and very stable. It really helped me to draw her better. > Afternoon I painted the portrait of model, he was good model too. But I had difficult time to paint his red cloth, not only it was made of velvet, but the folds in the cloth changed after each break. One of my artist friends helped me at the end, she used one of my brushes, and we b

Enjoyed drawing the double models, but it was very challenging. Generally, short poses do not allow us to have enough time to study like for a single model. So two models are even harder, and you have to add in the relationship between two of them. I did as much as I could, one model's body is rounder than the other. After all was done, I wish we could draw double models more often.  (July 5 2022)

Seems that working in the studio and Plein Air outdoors are quite different in many ways. Went to Carmel Plein Air painting with my friends for four days, missed the last session for short-pose live model drawing. So I found that I had difficult time to draw. No matter two minutes, five minutes or ten minutes, I could not draw fast and correctly enough, didn't have time to draw a leg or arm. This model was good, he worked very hard, I saw his body shaking during the pose. Of course we all pay good tips to our models. (May 10 2022)

Always look forward to drawing nude models for their short poses. But I felt it was super challenging to draw this one. His body proportions were unique, long and slim. He posed in many twisty positions while standing, I only could try my best, many other artist said that they felt not easy to draw him too. Felt better by knowing I was not the only one that had a hard time. Hahaha... (April 26 2022)

One of my favorite drawing exercises is face study. I prefer studying on different people and try to express the character of each one. Most models are trained to not showing emotion, but with people you know or are getting to know express their feelings while they are chatting or talking, that is what I try to catch. Today most of them they were talking about their kitchen tools. In few minutes I tried my best to draw them, challenging and fun! Maybe these are my last drawings in 2021.

Finally it started to rain! No one could ever complain a little bit, because California is desperate for it. I wanted to join my favorite morning sketch group. It took me more than twenty minutes to reset it up, that was a little annoying, but I was happy to draw with old and new friends. I could see myself that I have made a little improvement after practicing drawing with live models. Definitely I will try to catch up more.  (December 13 2021)

Close-up sketching is not as easy as I thought, though I had a little bit longer time for working on details.  Actually it was quite challenging!  Not sure how did we start talking about ear-rings. But our Zoom meeting host Doug is a very nice guy.  He really has great people skills on line to make each meeting interesting and encouraging each other sharing our life stories, and we all have fun.  Another wonderful practice morning!  (July 12 2021)

  I was a little bit late this morning. Yesterday was Independence day, the 4th of July. I probably missed some fun stories from concentrating, but always happy to listen and sketch with them. Maybe I could draw better if I focus more. Really I should start to prepare for the Paintout in Alameda that starts early next month. Feels more like I need a vacation somehow... (July 5 2021)

No matter how much I enjoyed listening to the stories everyone shared, I had a lot things needed to be done.  I joined  half way through, really had fun and sketched several people, tried to capture their expression.  Didn't get to share my story with the group. maybe next time.

Exercised profile sketches on Zoom this morning, never thought it could be as difficult as it was. Felt like I drew slower than usual, and had difficult time to capture the shapes, etc.. Everyone had a story to share. I shared the movie called "Goya's Ghosts", which was a very disturbing especially watching it before bed last night. Whole sleeping dreams surrounding the movie, felt very tired in the morning...(June 21 2021 )

As usual, we had great time together sharing our stories, wondered why there were fewer people on Zoom today, might be on vacation... Anyway, I talked about how much I enjoyed Zooming with them, I stopped painting outdoors since they are my favorite part of  Mondays now!

 Many stories about grandparents, mostly about grandmas.  I was busy sketching while others were telling the old day's stories.  Some of them had photos to share.  How grateful we all have had a lot of memories, hopefully them are always sweet and stored away in our brains.  Another great day to meet with others and practice drawing.

  Monday Sketch on Zoom has become one of my favorite activities since the pandemic. I always enjoy drawing people's faces with different characters. One good thing about a professional model is that they are trained not to move and can stay super-still, including their facial expression. But it isn't easy to express their characters through drawings. That is one of reasons that I love drawing regular people, especially with their emotion showing while talking about their life stories. The challenging part is that they cannot stay still, always move around, and minute drawing doesn't allow for too many mistakes, it has to be done correctly in a very short time. That is another reason why my visual brain and listening part need to be better connected.  (May 31 2021)

Another wonderful Monday morning doing sketching and listening to each person's story. Not everyone had a story about uniforms, but it was nice to see others and get to know them more each time we meet on Zoom. I still keep learning how to sketch and listen to the talking at the same time. I missed some part of the stories, just because my sketching brain and listening part are not connected well yet, but I enjoyed it a lot for sure.

Never thought I would love Mondays, but it has me changed after I started drawing with this group of friendly people on Zoom. Today our topic was pets. Everyone shared their stories. One lady had got an adopted shelter dog birthday present from her sister - a couple of month old Husky. We all felt she was so joyful and exhausted taking care of the new baby dog. Another guy shared his sad story that his beloved 15-years cat just past away. I really enjoy listening each of the stories, very hard to focus on drawing.

  Yesterday was Mother's Day, today we shared our mothers' stories during the Zoom meeting. I believe that we all love our mothers, though we all know that no one is perfect. The topic brought many of us emotional feelings, some sweet or bitter... I was quite busy and tried to sketch each one of their special expressions. Just love it, and I could not believe that I had already forgotten what our topic is for next week. Hope it only was because I was too focused and not due to getting old and forgetful, hahaha...

Always feel welcome and encouraged in this friendly group, drawing them was fun and frustrating at the same time.  We shared our pets' stories today on Zoom.  Each one of had stories about their experiences and personal love and care for their beloved pets.  It was so interesting that I could not concentrate drawing well. I had pets back when I was in China, and continue to have interesting experiences and connections with wildlife in nature and even in the neighborhood.  Only several minutes to talk, I only shared the most current story about my hummingbird neighbors. I keep watching them growing, will share the story later.