Original Art Stories - Xueling Zou

My last one on the last day of the Strada Easel 31 Day January painting challenge. Yes, I did paint every day, and finished 27( 8"x 6") Garden Still-life Series, plus 4 (11"x 14")landscapes. Not sure how do the other artists feel about it? But it was a great help to me as a self-taught artist, my first time to focusing on a series and painting from life each day, mostly outdoors. I could not imagine after leaving my painting comfort zone that I would draw or paint so many still-life during such a short time period, and it was a big challenge to me! So I think to keep learning, practicing, growing, creating and improving are the goals for my artwork.

Lovely weather on Sunday, painted this cacti in my backyard. I think that it is called a cucumber succulent. Continuing painting one series is not very easy. But we all know that artists have to practice each day to become better ones. And since I want to get better, I have to find a my own way to get myself into one kind of subject study. Wish me luck please!

Today I continued painting the garden series worked on design. This succulent was blue color, it looked very interesting when the light and the shadows there. Of courses the light was gone after I had finished it.

What I like is the winter light that makes the shadows longer and bigger, gives a dramatic look. Sunny day, I still felt cold standing in the shade and painting outdoors. Today I painted this sick succulent in my backyard, which I had been watching for a while, not sure how long I could have it. I didn't want to paint the hanging chain in too much detail, the focal point was the plant. Good benefits of painting at home or nearby are don't need to waste time on the road and paint familiar things or environments.

Gorgeous sunny day, painted in the backyard. It was so cold, and I had to put more cloths on, changed to wear my warm boots too. What I worked on was the contrast between the light and shadows. Winter light is precious, it passes very quick. I found out that there were certain patterns of the succulent growing interestingly, and I had spent an hour working on... Realized that too much detail only made my small size painting looked messy after I did. So I had to erase most of them. Good exercise with a good lesson to me today.

Beautiful day, but only stayed at home cleaned up my studio spending most of the day today, before Lunar New Year. Just realized how much I had done. Now, I got an answer why I was always busy, and felt that there was not much room left too... lol. Before getting too dark, I did a quick watercolor sketch in the backyard.

Quite dramatic weather today, windy, raining, sunny, cloudy... I know that I can not paint well some days. This was one of those days, no matter how hard I tried, everything seemed not in a right direction. Well, hoping tomorrow is a better day!

Nice and warm day, really felt like spring. Saw this common plant which I don't know the name of next to a parking lot nearby. I was attracted by the light and shadows. Also there were many different colors I don't know how to describe it in written language, so I had to paint it using my visual language.

Not raining today. The sun even came out in the afternoon. I spent an hour to clean up the back yard since my back had improved a lot. I painted nearby in the neighborhood, used wet into wet technique. It felt warm and like spring coming. I expressed my feeling into today's exercise.

Recently I am focusing on my garden still life series, not only because it is the rainy season, also it is a good exercise to do so. Honestly, I won't paint still lives if I could go out to paint landscapes. The current situation happened to me for a good reason, I have found out that it was a challenging subject. I have kept doing it, just because I love my plants, watching them grow, and they are part of my life, right? And I remembered that my first drawing lesson  was outdoor drawing peonies in a park in downtown Beijing when I was about ten years old in primary school. There were so many people in the park enjoying the peonies, I had no clue what I was doing, my one to one "teacher" was watching me, my hand was shaking and sweaty, the drawing papers were all wet, many people passing by, most of them thought my drawing was terrible... My younger age confidence might have been damaged by that experience, and that could be one of the reasons I never was interested in...

Living in California long enough, we all know how important rain is. Actually, I feel excited each time it rains. Continued painting my succulent in the garden during this rainy day. This is a type of aloe vera, maybe native in California. Moved my decorative mushroom nearby the plant to help the contrast on such a gray day. Challenging part of painting was the white dots on the leaves, first time I used the wax technique.

My back is getting a little bit better today. Continued painting my succulent in the garden. If I remember correctly, this type of the succulents is called "Ghost Plant". Though it was wet, but I enjoyed painting in the garden under the roof, listening to music, my plants and the frogs surrounding me. Challenging to paint in a raining day there was not enough light and contrast, everything looks gray.

I couldn't go too far to paint these days. First my driver's license expired, just received my renew one last Saturday. Then I hurt my back trying to clean up the garage yesterday morning. I didn't think it was serious, so won't bother to see a doctor. But it was swollen, not easy move around, sit down or get up, etc... Raining today, and it stopped for a while, the sun came out from the clouds. I am so glad that I have many plants to paint at home. I am not a realistic still life painter. Staring at my succulent, drawing stiffly, though I kept telling myself that they were only shapes. Later felt much more fun playing with colors. Painting really is my nature pain killer. Try it if you don't believe it.

It didn't rain on Sunday. I hurt my back while just starting to clean the garage this morning. So I decided to paint. This aloe vera was located nearby, which is one of the very topical succulents growing in California. I had been thinking how I could paint a regular thing into a creative work, though had to be done in Plein Air way... During the painting, my back hurt and bothered me, also I kept thinking that I really should start painting in oil, etc.. Really it looked very different than I usually painted in watercolors. Is that interesting?

Very nice day, continued painting my garden still-life series. Haha, I remember this succulent is called "fishbone succulent/cactus". Could you see where my happy frog hidden in the painting is? My fault that I didn't take good care of my succulents. I thought that they were easy to care for. I spent a little bit time in the garden recently, and found that half a dozen of them died because of too much water, and they were my favorite ones. Wish I had painted all of them already...

Today the morning light on my little cacti with shadow grabbed my attention, here is my sketch. I never thought I would like sketching or painting plants. Now, I have found that I actually enjoy watching and drawing them. Painting outdoors is great, but it takes extra hour(s) on the road most of the time. I've noticed that there are so many subjects I could do just surrounding me in my daily life. I don't think I would run of painting ideas for sure, not mention my endless imagination... Paint daily is a necessary exercise, and it is very important for being an artist, don't you agree?

I've started using a new sketchbook this year. I was interested about the shadows on the staircase so I thought I'd focus on for today's subject. Did a quick drawing, then painted over with watercolors. I thought it was not a good watercolor paper, had forgotten I was only sketching, lol...