Plein Air @ Luzhi - an Ancient Canal-town by Suzhou China 中國江南水郷甪直镇寫生


Between the end of May and the early of June of 2019, I joined one of the international Plein Air groups organized by professional Chinese artists. It was located in southern China in a 2,500 year old, ancient Canal-town near Suzhou, call Luzhi 甪直. Several great artists were invited to do demos and lectures.

About 40 artists attended, most of them were Chinese professional artists. The event also included some American and Australian artists Billyo O'Donnell, Joseph Mcgurl and Kasey Sealy. We painted, listened to demos and lectures in the evening, ate food and partied for te days...

We had a great time together, exchanged knowledge, not only about Plein Air, but also art and history, etc.. Food was great, we had more than 12, sometime 15 dishes each lunch and dinner, and meals included wine and beer. It was the first trip to China for Billy, Joseph and Kasey.

Weather was nice and a little bit steamy, but it was gray most of time when we were there. There was one watercolor demo Kasey Sealy did for me, it was one of my favorites of the trip! From those ©photos (More photos in the group can be viewed on my Facebook profile @ https://www.facebook.com/zxling1/posts/2229008270539349), we all can see that they did have great fun! Of course after painting, teaching, eating and playing together for 10 days we had built up a wonderful friendship. 

I enjoyed each moment painting. So much so that I did not get to check out some very historical and famous places there. I believe that my grandmother on my father's side was from a town very nearby, but I don't even know her maiden name, felt very bad...

Always great to paint and learn from other artists, especially those very experienced professionals. I wish that I had brought my larger size watercolor paper with me. The scenes were so unforgettably beautiful from each angle... I could stay there and paint a different angle every single day for years. So, I had to beg for larger size watercolor paper from a few artists, because most of them in our group painted in oils. Bummer! Why did I care about the luggage weighing so much? I painted on different type of watercolor papers, British, Chinese, Dutch, French etc. lol... I guess that it will be an unbeatable excuse to go back to paint again!

I share my Pein Air paintings here. For very experienced, masterful professional artists that would be interested in going to China to teach and paint, please send me your bio, I would love to help you to forward yours to the Chinese art group organizer.   

More photos in the group can be viewed on my Facebook profile
 @ https://www.facebook.com/zxling1/posts/2229008270539349

May 29, 2019
May 30, 2019
May 31, 2019
Jun 1, 2019
Jun 2, 2019
Jun 3, 2019
Jun 4, 2019
Jun 5, 2019

Those were painted in 

San Francisco Bay Area CA Luzhi, Wuzhong District, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China
Storytelling artist Xueling Zou who works in ♦️ watercolor & ♦️ oil mediums on ♦️ original art Plein Air paintings. Ship worldwide since 2010 @ https://about.me/xuelingzou@ about.me/xuelingzou or http://xueling-zou.pixels.com

Original Art Story

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