Original Art Stories - Xueling Zou

2020 Day31 Today is the last day of the Strada Easel 31-day challenge to paint from life. The day before I felt overwhelmed, so only did a watercolor still-life sketch as the last piece #31 of the challenge today. Forgive my daily post, hopefully not a bother for you. I tried to be polite and not post too often but in this case it was a daily requirement. Thank you so much for your feedback, comments, likes and shares. I appreciate your support and encouragement to help me make it through. It was a necessary experience, especially for me to make personal progress, not because being a full-time artist to create art, and think through which area I should focus on depending on my own interests. I think it is important being an artist to create art and also to inspire others or to be inspired. I will continue sharing some my work and stories behind my work, and practice in English my second language. Happy painting!

2020 Day27 I trimmed most of my plants before Chinese Lunar New Year, and had these trimmed branches in a glass jar of olives since then. Finally, I did a watercolor sketch before the flowers drooped. The Abutilon Flowering Maple Chinese Lantern Plant is one of my favorite plants. When we moved into this house eleven years ago, I did a little research before I started gardening. I focused on the plants that could live well in the shade and attract hummingbirds, also ones that bloom often annually . I discovered this Chinese lantern flower was the absolutely perfect plant, I love that the leaves look like maple leaves, the bell shape flowers look like Chinese Lanterns, and it can produce flowers almost year around. These plants really helped to attract hummingbirds who moved into my neighborhood, I watched hummingbird mother guard territory, built nest, raise and train her babies over the years, took countless footage of course. Now, my plant is at least three meters tall, it makes me