Original Art Stories - Xueling Zou

Happy Thanksgiving! "The more grateful I am, the more beauty I see."— Mary Davis Checked my emails in the morning, one of my retuning collectors said "Thanks again! The painting arrived already today. It’s really lovely!!! My husband loves it. We haven’t decided yet where exactly in our living room to hang it but for now it’s visiting the other one (attached)" Wow, it only took five days in the mail for this painting to travel from Silicon Valley to England. I was very happy to see my two old works next to each other.  The small piece was not created yet when the larger one had moved to its England's home.  The larger piece she frame perfectly to fit my vision when I created this contemporary painting.   She reminded me that tomorrow would be the Thanksgiving Day. Decided not to go out painting, though it was a nice day. Cleaned up the house, prepared a duck instead of turkey for tomorrow. Went out and had a simple sandwich lunch with my husband. We chatted abou...

The model was late, so a female artist was managed to be a short pose model for a couple of minutes. Then a young and skinny guy came, he was the model tonight. He was long and slim. I found that it was quite challenging to draw him. But there were two young guy artists next to me drew in a confident and skillful way, quite mature for their age, they looked. They told us that they had been practicing drawing for ten years. I wondered why and realized it is the only way get better, keep practicing! (November 16 2021)

I was tired after driving and painting in Capitola last week, decided not going to Plein Air in the morning. Besides to clean up the house, only went to the 3 hour session short-pose live model drawing session in the evening. I liked this female model, her pose was very classical, wish I can paint her as a longer pose model. Her sweet dog was accompanying her while she was modeling licking her feet occasionally.  (November 9 2021)

It wasn't a perfect day for Plein Air, I brought my work stuff and went to check where I could paint. All just because of my curiosity about downtown Woodside. Not easy to find a parking spot, walked around a little bit. Not sure why it seemed to me that this tiny downtown was so interesting to come and check out. Might be the day I got lost in the mountain for an hour, and finally I found some people were in the town. Parked my car off the street. And I decided to paint the interesting building called the Firehouse Bistro, looked like a historic building to me. But there wasn't anything I could find on Google out, only the restaurant. I spent a lot of time working on the sky, later found out it wasn't necessary since the sky was behind on my painting. Caught up a little sunlight, it really did help me to understand the relationship of each part of building and surrounding construction. Great exercise, would be back on a sunny day to paint! In the early evening ...

Drawing can be fun or painful. My new drawing paper hadn't arrived yet so I had to stick with my small sketch book and found out it wasn't easy to draw on it using charcoals.  There was not enough room to express with that media. I struggled through another 3 hour session on Tuesday night. A male's body is more difficult than a female's. There are too many biological features, like bones and muscles, etc.  Just can't work on small paper for sure!  Can't wait for my new paper +!  (September 28 2021)

COIVID-19 has changed many ways in our lives. I haven't seen my family for over two years, and I don't know when I will be able to get a visa and go back to my motherland for a visit. Especially on the Mid Autumn Moon Festival when all families should be together celebrating the annual harvest while enjoying watching the brightest full moon.   My husband is a Caucasian who understands Asian Culture better than most of Westerners.  He got up earlier and baked a delicious dark chocolate cake for us, because we ate most of the mooncakes earlier.  I was supposed to go Plein Air today.  Might be my nostalgia, I didn't want to go out for an excuse of hot weather.  Didn't feel productive, but I did go to the evening live model drawing drop-in class.   Wow, I wasn't the only one Chinese there!   I guessed that drawing the live model helped us to forget homesickness.  We even went out watching the full moon during the break.  What a great wa...

Close-up sketching is not as easy as I thought, though I had a little bit longer time for working on details.  Actually it was quite challenging!  Not sure how did we start talking about ear-rings. But our Zoom meeting host Doug is a very nice guy.  He really has great people skills on line to make each meeting interesting and encouraging each other sharing our life stories, and we all have fun.  Another wonderful practice morning!  (July 12 2021)

  I was a little bit late this morning. Yesterday was Independence day, the 4th of July. I probably missed some fun stories from concentrating, but always happy to listen and sketch with them. Maybe I could draw better if I focus more. Really I should start to prepare for the Paintout in Alameda that starts early next month. Feels more like I need a vacation somehow... (July 5 2021)

No matter how much I enjoyed listening to the stories everyone shared, I had a lot things needed to be done.  I joined  half way through, really had fun and sketched several people, tried to capture their expression.  Didn't get to share my story with the group. maybe next time.

Exercised profile sketches on Zoom this morning, never thought it could be as difficult as it was. Felt like I drew slower than usual, and had difficult time to capture the shapes, etc.. Everyone had a story to share. I shared the movie called "Goya's Ghosts", which was a very disturbing especially watching it before bed last night. Whole sleeping dreams surrounding the movie, felt very tired in the morning...(June 21 2021 )

As usual, we had great time together sharing our stories, wondered why there were fewer people on Zoom today, might be on vacation... Anyway, I talked about how much I enjoyed Zooming with them, I stopped painting outdoors since they are my favorite part of  Mondays now!

 Many stories about grandparents, mostly about grandmas.  I was busy sketching while others were telling the old day's stories.  Some of them had photos to share.  How grateful we all have had a lot of memories, hopefully them are always sweet and stored away in our brains.  Another great day to meet with others and practice drawing.

  Monday Sketch on Zoom has become one of my favorite activities since the pandemic. I always enjoy drawing people's faces with different characters. One good thing about a professional model is that they are trained not to move and can stay super-still, including their facial expression. But it isn't easy to express their characters through drawings. That is one of reasons that I love drawing regular people, especially with their emotion showing while talking about their life stories. The challenging part is that they cannot stay still, always move around, and minute drawing doesn't allow for too many mistakes, it has to be done correctly in a very short time. That is another reason why my visual brain and listening part need to be better connected.  (May 31 2021)

Another wonderful Monday morning doing sketching and listening to each person's story. Not everyone had a story about uniforms, but it was nice to see others and get to know them more each time we meet on Zoom. I still keep learning how to sketch and listen to the talking at the same time. I missed some part of the stories, just because my sketching brain and listening part are not connected well yet, but I enjoyed it a lot for sure.

Never thought I would love Mondays, but it has me changed after I started drawing with this group of friendly people on Zoom. Today our topic was pets. Everyone shared their stories. One lady had got an adopted shelter dog birthday present from her sister - a couple of month old Husky. We all felt she was so joyful and exhausted taking care of the new baby dog. Another guy shared his sad story that his beloved 15-years cat just past away. I really enjoy listening each of the stories, very hard to focus on drawing.

  Yesterday was Mother's Day, today we shared our mothers' stories during the Zoom meeting. I believe that we all love our mothers, though we all know that no one is perfect. The topic brought many of us emotional feelings, some sweet or bitter... I was quite busy and tried to sketch each one of their special expressions. Just love it, and I could not believe that I had already forgotten what our topic is for next week. Hope it only was because I was too focused and not due to getting old and forgetful, hahaha...

Always feel welcome and encouraged in this friendly group, drawing them was fun and frustrating at the same time.  We shared our pets' stories today on Zoom.  Each one of had stories about their experiences and personal love and care for their beloved pets.  It was so interesting that I could not concentrate drawing well. I had pets back when I was in China, and continue to have interesting experiences and connections with wildlife in nature and even in the neighborhood.  Only several minutes to talk, I only shared the most current story about my hummingbird neighbors. I keep watching them growing, will share the story later.

A couple of months practicing sketches at the Monday Zoom meeting. Now, I feel that I've gotten a bit better at managing time. At the beginning, I was always worried to draw people wearing glasses, because every second counted when sketching a portrait, put a glasses in the right position for each drawing took about a minute. Now the glasses don't take extra minutes to draw, they all have become part of the sketching process. And I feel happy to be participate, still learning how to concentrate on drawing with listening other people's chat though....

(April 19 2021) We decided to celebrate the Earth Day two day early today. But I was more interested in studying the  expression on all the faces. Several minutes were not long enough for capturing and drawing the uniqueness of these individuals, I tried. Happy to catch up with them each week, we talked about a lot of things, mainly focused on Earth Day.  I organized my paintings for the rest of day...

Got on Zoom for a minutes sketch - one of my favorite activities since COVID-19. Sketched in this small group of nice and friendly people, I enjoyed the conversations and had fun just being with them through Zoom. Though I have not improved to the level I want. Sometimes I might listen or chat too much and easily forget what I'm doing, and slow down my sketching speed. Really want to learn the new combinations - listen, chat and sketch all together at the same time, hahaha...