Original Art Stories - Xueling Zou

April 20 2021, the first egg was discover in the nest :). Time flies so fast, we moved in August 2008 and have been living in the same house for over twelve years now. After we moved in, I picked up a DVD from the local library about a hummingbird's story and learned that the hummingbird mother is always a single mother from the onset of pregnancy. Then I started planting some plants to attract hummingbirds. In spring of the 4th year we happily discovered a hummingbird mother had built a nest and raised her babies on a tree branch outside our window. I took so much footage, even caught one of the first flights of her babies. For the next couple of years I watched the hummingbird mothers successfully raising babies from spring to early summer, including the final training before the babies became independent. April 22 2021, the second egg was laid in the nest. For the next several years they weren't able to finish their motherhood experience unfortunately; one year the win

A gray day painting out on location. Thought I was over dressed when the sun came out. Later I felt so cold, only a few steps from my car, but I didn't want to stop. Still learning how to manage time while painting outdoors, especially doing watercolor. Miracles only come from practicing daily for an artist. (Nov.11 2020)  

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

It was a grey day, I liked the dramatic sky and fall feeling. There were many kinds of birds, and my first time seeing Goldeye ducks from a distance. There were a lot of people jogging or walking. Some schoolchildren were out there for their nature class. More people were out of the office during lunch break. I painted the second one by turning ninety degrees at the same spot basically. My work got many compliments, including from those young students. It made me happier that more people knew how to appreciate an artist's work in progress, especially in Silicon Valley. An older guy stopped by and started asking so many questions, like where I had learned how to paint, how long does it take to finish a painting, how much does each work cost, was my talent genetic, etc. Then he started imagining if I was living during the Renaissance with all the great talents, etc. Lol... He stopped by again after he had done his jogging, told me that he had five grandchildren, so I decided to p

They are ocellated turkeys. I first saw them when I traveled in Guatemala, but could not realize that  they were in wild.  I was not surprised that some people mistake this type of turkeys for peacocks.  Both of them are birds with similar and beautiful teal colors and patterned feathers covering their bodies, especially when a male opens his fan in order to attract a female's attention.  After day by day study, maybe the autumn feeling urged me to paint a pair of ocellated turkeys in front of a farm, because I haven't seen them in North America.  The more I got into the painting, the more I felt the love between this pair of birds.  I really didn't want to think about Thanksgiving.  I would love to create an environment where they are happy as long as they should live, no matter whether they lived in wild or on a farm. After the painting was done, I was happy for the result.  I posted a thread at http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=3220021, and

(Please click the image to enlarge) The magpie, xi que, a bird symbolizing great joy, can appear in these forms: plum blossom is said to be a sign of good luck, friendship and happiness. Two magpies, shuang xi 双喜(囍), symbolized the wish that you find each other in joy. Chinese use both words and a pair of magpies symbols for wedding, anniversary and business success. The rebus of a magpie depicted at the top of a branch has the meaning of happiness before your face," or xi shang mei shao 喜上眉梢. If you would like to know more about magpies, please visit: http://originalartstories.blogspot.com/2013/02/happy-lunar-new-year-painting-with.html

Some people believe that there is no winter in California. Even if it is not as cold as it is on the East Coast, we have less activities during our winter time. There are a couple months of cold raining days, a couple of frosty days, and the temperature can drop down to about 30 F degrees. I was quite lucky to have this opportunity to watch and learn more about how a hummingbird mom raised her little family during May in previous years. After coming back at the end of April last year, I had no idea what happened but only saw an empty hummingbird nest. Was the mom successful raising her babies? Hummingbird mom is the most independent mother I think. She searches for a safe area, builds a nest, hatches her eggs (usually two), feeds, raises and trains her babies all by herself after pregnancy. Finally she has to push the grown-up babies out of the home area at the end of raising them. It didn't rain enough last winter. Not all the autumn leaves fell off the trees and we cou

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.

First, I check my last year's photos, of course there was no way that I could tell if it was the same hummingbird mother.  But I realized that it was exactly the same date- May 20th that I took first a couple photos of the baby birds last year.  What an interesting coincidence! So, I watched them more carefully, found out many differences between those two mother birds. This year's would rest on the potato tree, and spend a lot of time cleaning her feathers.  I didn't think that she fed her babies as frequent as the last one did.  Even the babies behaviors were quite different too.  Like mother, like children! They started to clean their feathers in such a crowed nest, one already flipped its wings, and would stand on the edge of the nest more often.  The most funny thing I saw that the baby birds pushed their poos out of the nest, squirting into the air.  Last year, the baby birds only sat in the nest, sleeping or waiting for being fed, the mother's calling was loud

The weather was unusual this year, the temperature jumped up and down, one week like winter with heater on, the next week felt like summer. We didn't even feel the spring! I had been wondering for a while if the hummingbird mother was coming back to the same nest or nearby to build a new nest to raise baby birds again. It was still too cold for them after April, then I gave up on the idea. Our neighbor has very large potato tree (Solanum erianthum) which blooms with blue flowers all year round. I had noticed that there was a hummingbird hanging on a dead brunch there cleaning its feathers above our fence. I checked the leftover nest from last year, I thought even if the hummingbird comes back, it might not use the same old one... It was perfect weather during the Mother's day weekend. Sunday morning, I saw a hummingbird fly by outside our window. Immediately, I spotted that she was feeding babies at exactly the same nest, but newly rebuilt, and more solid than t