Plein Air @ Villa Montalvo Saratoga CA


It was a pleasant day, I went to Villa Montalvo and did a Plein Air painting.


Focused on the statues and was inspired by the curvilinear nature of the beautiful landscape, and tried to avoid painting a lot of the trees in the background to create this painting.

Years of painting experience has taught me that I worked too hard on the areas that were not my strengths. Being artists, we should focus on freedom of expression to create what inspires us using our strengths. LOL, it is not too late to learn... (June 15 2023)x
San Francisco Bay Area CA San Francisco, 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

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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Carson House - Almaden Historic District San Jose California

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This property, Carson House, located at Almaden historic district, San Jose, California. It has been placed on the National register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior. The one I painted was based on the sketches I did on Christmas day 2017. After the painting was done, I did some research to view the old photos, and realized that there was no cactus in front of the house. I wonder how old those cactus are. The red color fruits on the cactus are very beautiful too. It made me really want to visit this museum as well, but it was closed. Next time I will make it. Original watercolor of this painting is available for a collector.  Please view a better image @ https://fineartamerica.com/featured/carson-house-california-landscape-6-xueling-zou.html?viewall=true Carson House 1854  One of three complete adobe house in New Almaden made of creek gravel and adobe mud. From the plaque on the wall:  In 1855 a plan of the settleme...
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Plein Air @ Old Fisherman's Wharf Monterey CA 加州風景寫生

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Long and tiring day, drove more than 140 miles, not counting the milage getting lost when both my car GPS and Google maps lost signal and took me in the wrong direction. It was worth the long way drive, to paint at such an inspiring historic location on a gorgeous day. I instantly found the boat that I wanted to paint, only set up took me longer time, my umbrella kept falling down to the ground with every little bit of wind. Finally Al, the organizer artist, helped and made it stable. There were still many people at the wharf even though it was a weekday. Some of them might be coming daily to buy fresh fish. I didn't have time to think anything else, tried to focus on my work. A motorcycle never turned off the engine, made very loud noises behind me. The situation improved after the motorcycle was gone. On the way home, I saw so many Mexican workers working in the fields, and I knew they were hard working people, their lives were not easy in this country, especially during the pand...
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Plein Air @ Foothills Nature Preserve Palo Alto CA 加州風景寫生

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This morning was only 40 degrees when I started out driving on the road. I checked the weather that it wouldn't rain in the morning, thought I should go to Plein Air. I was pretty sure that I had painted at the Foothill park last spring, and remembered that it wasn't too cold while painting on a sunny morning. There were only a few vehicles in the park. I saw two people walking their dogs and drove on the top of the hill where I thought I did a painting last year, and noticed all the trees were growing taller in the distance. I still thought to paint the same spot, so I could see if my outdoor painting skills have improved. It was chilly, saw there was still snow  on top of the distant mountains.  I told myself that I should use as little water as possible for the watercolor Plein Air, from my years' experience, I learned that paper won't dry if there was too much water, especially in the cold weather. I heard a guy playing guitar and singing songs nearby me, but I was...
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Guitar Doggy And Me In Wine Country

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Actually this painting was created inside my head for a long time. I really saw the picture with my minds eye. Finally, I painted it on canvas while I was listening Don McLean's "Starry, Starry Night" Vincent (song) over and over. The result that came out was nice, of course it has the Van Gogh feeling for sure. But this was the first time I was stuck with naming my own painting, what should I title it? Glad that I have this artist community to ask.. In such a short time, there were many great ideas suggested. Siesta, Intermezzo, Guitar Break, Melody of Dreams A Perfect Day, All Played Out, Passing Time, dreams of Van Gogh, Perfect Ending , Little Dogie With Shades, Dog Day Melody, While My Guitar Gently Weeps , Six Strings, Four Feet and Sweet Dreams, A Cowboy's Melody, The end of the howling blues, All we need, California Dream Interlude, The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Howling, The Sun's Comin' Down On Me, On The Road Again, Acoustic Aphasia, Cool...
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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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Short-pose live male model drawings

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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)
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Quick studies before the Annual Alameda Plein Air Evert

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Redwood City Port seems like a perfect location for practicing painting on a windy day. A year ago I painted at the location a couple of times. It was windy in the afternoon. I found a short tree to paint under to block a little wind. Took me almost an hour to finish the drawing. I tried to paint the kayak, but it was removed from the people working there. Lucky I had my reference photo. Not sure why I love painting fishing boats Later the owner of the boat next to it came to me, he took a photo and wanted me to paint his boat someday... Rushed to the drawing class...(July 26 2022) I have to get ready for the Annual Alameda Plein Air event, so I drove to the Campbell Community Center to practice, but I didn't know what to paint. Walked around and saw the Campbell Pool, then I knew it would be a good subject to practice. Found a corner and set up my stuff. For the composition purposes, I had to "move" and "reset" several little details. It wasn't a...
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Original Art Story - African American Men Portraits

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Being not black nor white, I am pretty sure that I am not the only one Chinese female visual artist interested in studying on black people's face structure, skin tones and the expressions. Since my portrait paintings were uploaded onto the Fine Art America, I have got mostly positive feedback from the artists over the world. Thanks for that! I've been around. I believe a majority of people can live together and get along peacefully! Born and raised in Beijing China, studied and lived in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, traveled to many counties in Asia, Europe and South America and now I have lived in Silicon Valley for over 11 years. I am always interested in different cultures, different people and different food, no political interest at all. America, is one of the biggest countries with multi-cultural identity and we all admire it. If we only could understand each other from the one universal language - Love; if we could treat each just only one race - the human race. Th...
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