Plein Air @ Villa Montalvo Saratoga CA

Checked my Plein Air history, today was my eighth time painting at this location. Not only because it was a perfect day, also because another local artist would like to paint outdoors together. I suggested to start at Villa Montalvo, because there are plenty of subject choices to start a painting.


I spent a longer time to draw the building, and noticed later that I didn't really need all the details after all. But it was a good practice. (October 15 2021)



My first time painted Villa Montalvo on April 5 2018

San Francisco Bay Area CA Saratoga, CA, USA
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

The Old Man and The Sea - Original Watercolor

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This original watercolor painting was inspired by Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea.  It is one of my favorite watercolors, and a great gift for Father's Day. (Please click the image to enlarge) I read this book in Chinese a long time ago, then I read it again in English when I was studying in Australia. Back to my overseas studying time, I had to take the ferries from the place I lived to school each day for a while. Not mention the terrible home sick I had, the ending of relationship with my first boy-friend, when I struggled with every single little detail in life. But nothing could stop my love of the ocean and I enjoyed taking ferries on beautiful and stormy days. Watching the sun-rising or sun-setting, sailing by the magnificent city landscape and the awesome boats out on the sea, I promised myself that I knew I would overcome the difficulties... Years later, I started painting watercolors after moving to Bay Area in California, and the first one in m...
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Paintings with Auspicious Symbols V - Peacocks 孔雀東南飛

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I was inspired by the Chinese traditional folk art style to create a couple of peacocks with eight peony-flowers oil painting on canvas recently, which I named "Peacocks Flying Southeast 孔雀東南飛". "Peacocks Flying Southeast" is well-known to Chinese and is a phenomenal poem in Chinese literary history. It is one of the collections of the Music Academy (YueFu) formed by the Han Dynasty (196—219 AD) courts to gather literary works created largely for the common people. It was about a tragic love story between a young couple, who promised to love each other forever. Perhaps the morbid mother-in-law could not stand the daughter-in-law coming between her and her son. Eventually she broke up the marriage when her son was working out of the town. The young couple’s dream and promise of living together was shattered. Both their families forced them to marry someone else. So this young couple took their own lives, fulfilling their commitment of love in a different world....
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Chinese Moon Festival II - A Classical Poem and Homesick 中秋节思乡

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Dream in the Night — Interpreted by Xu YuanChong Abed, I see a silvery light, I wonder if it's frost aground. Looking up, I find the moon bright; Bowing, in homesickness I'm drowned. 静夜思 — 李白 床前明月光， 疑是地上霜。 举头望明月， 低头思故乡。 (Please click the image to enlarge) This poem written by Li Bai (701 – 762) who was a major Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period  - China's "golden age" of classical Chinese poetry (  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Bai ). It was one of the first classical poems I was taught before my primary school. Of course, I would not know the meaning at that young age. The older I get and the farther I live from home, the deeper I feel this poem, which is more often appearing in my head. Hiding my tears used to be part my character. But now, I can no longer control it behind my eyes whenever I think of it... Another Mid-Autumn Festival is coming again, which is a popular lunar harvest festival celebrated by Chinese...
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Original Art Story - The Colors of La Boca Argentina

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Colorful La Boca grew to become an Italian (mostly from Genoa) district of Buenos Aires, Argentina in a very short time in mid-19th-century. It used to be the area where Italian immigrants arrived, and settled in the poorest of conditions. Their houses were built by the leftover corrugated iron and other waste found in the nearby harbour and industry on the Riachuelo river. In order to make the neighbourhood more interesting, they decided to paint their houses in bright colors by using the leftover paint from boats - hence the many different colours that can be seen. Where first a small river flowed, the area that now is Caminito had tracks installed, and when those were not used anymore, this developed into an ugly, abandoned part of La Boca. There were several museums with paintings portraying its hard-working inhabitants in the shipyards and on the docks. Local artist Quinquela Martín painted the walls of the street, which now we know as Caminito (which means little path in Spanish)...
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Plein Air @ Home on a Rainy Day CA

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Raining season finally has come.  It was the challenging part of Plein Air. Rained over night, a little unpredictable during daytime, not easy for painting outdoors. My husband pointed out the unique clouds outside our home window this morning. Fall colors were still there, also there were cooler colors in the distance with the fogginess. Wonderful for a watercolor work I thought. I brought my Plein Air painting pack upstairs, and started an "indoor" plein air landscape painting. Actually, I've wanted to paint the view outside our front of the window for over a decade of living at here, especially during the winter, when the scenery looks more beautiful after most of the leaves have fallen. There was an orange tree in the neighbor's backyard. I changed it to a pine tree, to carry some spirit of the coming holidays since there is no snow in our location. I enjoyed painting inside, didn't have to suffer from the cold or hot. windy or sunburn weather... but it ...
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Guatemala Impression - 危地马拉印像

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We traveled from Antigua, Lake Atitlan, Chichicastenango, Xela, Coban, Flores, Tikal, Rio Dulce, and Livingston for 14 days in Guatemala last year, because the airline ticket was on sale. We did not even have more than 10 words in Spanish, and you can imagine it was not an easy trip especially during the low season. Guatemala really is a beautiful country! Unfortunately, what we saw was how hard the people have been working since they were still very young. Making a living is very tough for most families. Everywhere we went, the local kids surrounded me and called me "China, China,..." in Spanish! I wish I was able to understand a little bit more about what they tried to say. They were so friendly to me, and very deeply touched my heart...Like most of Chinese, I am not afraid eating and trying all kinds of food. Because we faced a lot of stresses with language barrier, all the bus connections, which were never on schedule and our traveler's checks did not work or...
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Plein Air @ Downtown Campbell Light Rail Station CA

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Planned to Plein Air in the morning, but there were some household things that interrupted that plan . It was about 4pm when I set up to paint at the Downtown Campbell Light Rail Station,  I've painted near this Light Rail Station several times over the past two years and have found it a very interesting place to paint from different angles in the morning or in the afternoon. For example just this red warehouse I painted from the other side in the morning on the last day of 2021.  This building had a "for sale" sign on it.  Today the sale sign still was on the fence, but the messiness I saw around before was all cleaned up.  It is unusual that a property could be on sale for so long in Silicon Valley. Many times I've told myself that I should not copy what I see exactly, so  today I slightly moved things around or implied things a little bit.  Slowly but surely I will get there for sure one day. There was a condominium behind where I was painting....
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Practice painting with my left hand

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I am a right-handed person. Especially writing in Chinese, parents have to train us from a very young age, and make sure we all use our right hands correctly. Painting itself is an art, there is no right or wrong answer for any result, just like every single individual, we all have our own characters. Being a visual artist, how we can well present our artistic style takes a lifetime to find out. Though as time passes styles change as well. I don't like to get stuck with the same style and same color tone, that would be too boring for me. Change is an excitement in life, of course it could be painful sometimes. But I enjoy doing something different all the time, that is my style I believe. I don't think I could run out of ideas, maybe that is my creative "problem" :-). So, I painted these works with my left hand. I was so frustrated holding my brush, as an adult starting to train my brain to do something really odd. I remember that my brush jumped out of my lef...
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Plein Air @ Orchard Heritage Park Sunnyvale CA 加州風景寫生

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Good news to share for the coming up holidays, my figurative oil painting "Diary of Venus" won the 1st place in oil, juried by Pancho Jimenez at Great Bay Area Open (GBAO) "Potentiality/Actuality" biennial exhibition in the NUMU museum Los Gatos. There are many great works created by Bay Area based artists and the exhibition is open to the public at NUMU museum in Los Gatos until March 9 2024. I took a break from painting outdoors after Capitola Plein Air event. Of course I still paint at my home studio. Gorgeous day here in winter, it looked like fall. Though it was only 59 degrees, I felt warm in the sun. All foliage showing autumn leaf colors like yellow, orange, red, purple, and brown, which contrasted the blue sky and other plants of green were everywhere. It was great to go out and paint a day before the rainy season starts. Drove to Sunnyvale and the Heritage Park Orchard jumped into my mind. I think it is always inspiring when I drive on streets named af...
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