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.

2020 Day10 "You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over." -- Richard Branson Started a bit late. Each time I came here to paint boats, but not today. After one painting was done, the light and shadows made the same landscape dramatic, so I had to paint another one. It was cold after sun went down, the second one didn't work out the way I wanted, just because the Fabriano Artistico Extra White 140p Watercolor paper I used couldn't dry in such weather condition. I was inpatient and ruined it... Well, learned and try not to make the same mistake...

Today looked like a pleasant day, but it was cold and windy at the location, my second time painting here. There were many little flies sticking on to my wet painting. Six hours painting outdoors, light kept changing, but I could finish this 12"x9" small piece painting. Had to wait till it got drier to fix it. Felt starving, cold and tired... (June 1 2018) This original painting and prints are available   @ https://fineartamerica.com/featured/shoreline-lake-boathouse-mountain-view-california-landscape-16-xueling-zou.html