Original Art Stories - Xueling Zou

Say prayers for all the people impacted by the fires in California! Do you trust your own instant feelings? I do sometimes, but I do not always to follow them. Today I was hesitated if I should paint outdoors, because there were fires in Santa Cruz Mountains and our surroundings... Everything I needed was prepared in the car, I spent a lot of time trying to search the location on the car GPS, it didn't show. I had to give it up and used the Pillar Point Harbor direction after 15 minutes search. Often there isn't a T-mobile signal in that location. On the road, I kept thinking if I should just go the the Pillar Point Harbor, since I loved to paint the boats so much. At the last turn I changed line to the beach, further drove 14 miles. There were only a few people, and a black cormorant walking on the parking lot toward to the ocean. The beach was beautiful and the air was clean. I did a quick study sketch, more people arrived. I didn't feel that I wanted to paint, back to my...

Finally, I came back to my favorite painting spot and paint my favorite subject. Did a small sketch, but I wasn't sure how I painted the background. After struggling through this old fisherman's fishing boat, I noticed that I spent too much time on boat. I started with bigger and flat brushes painted bold. Looked it worked OK. Overdressed, I had to take my down jacket off at the pier. Weather report said that it was only 60 degrees. It was quite busy, seemed that fishermen's business doing well. Overheard that salmon was about $14 per pound, I changed getting fresh fish idea, wild salmon I can get from Costco. Both ways, there were no traffic on #280. Actually I was happy experiencing the light traffic on #92, feeling everything was back to normal, I wish.

  I almost saved about 45 minutes on #101 to the location because of the pandemic and light traffic. Spent a lot of time drawing this "Harbor Patrol" boat, still I didn't get it right. I forgot that I moved a couple of times to my right so I could paint in the shade. Sun kept rising, finally I had to stand next to a big garbage bin. Took three hours to paint up to this point. I am not happy with the result of today's work, the composition and perspective bother me, but I am quite tired to fix it. My husband has working at home, going to prepare dinner earlier, not mentioned that I didn't have lunch...

It was my first time painting on location since "Shelter in Place". No traffic, great day with fresh air. I enjoyed painting outdoors and my favorite subject. Though the airplanes flying overhead made me feeling sad (I miss my family so much and I don't know when I able to visit them, especially my old mother...). Just tried my best to focus on my work. I didn't follow my study much in my painting. I feel happy now, even though my painting's result wasn't that good... So much going on and I had been feeling depressed. So many times I reminded myself I should go out and paint to avoid reading endless news I feel helpless to change. After a while, I started warning myself that I should not pay too much attention to the news. Since my family is in China... Slowly I have learned how to take better care of myself, my family and my surroundings in a new way, because I don't want to live as a victim of Covid-19, and all the madness and politics that come with. Th...