Original Art Stories - Xueling Zou

After a hot summer, suddenly the temperature dropped down, felt like autumn this week. This is scene I see daily. After over a decade I finally decided to paint it. Setting up my workstation, I just drew what I usually saw, then started to paint with watercolors. Because summer was still in my mind, I used a little too much water at the beginning, so the paper kept wet for a long time, especially after sunset. Liked the vegetation over the fence, it was the overrunning green. I thought it could be green plants climbing over the fence. I could not complete the painting, not only was the paper too wet, also I felt cold and it was getting dark. The next day, I did my final touch and finished it. Maybe try another one again in the future, such a convenient spot. (September 19 2024)

Raining season finally has come.  It was the challenging part of Plein Air. Rained over night, a little unpredictable during daytime, not easy for painting outdoors. My husband pointed out the unique clouds outside our home window this morning. Fall colors were still there, also there were cooler colors in the distance with the fogginess. Wonderful for a watercolor work I thought. I brought my Plein Air painting pack upstairs, and started an "indoor" plein air landscape painting. Actually, I've wanted to paint the view outside our front of the window for over a decade of living at here, especially during the winter, when the scenery looks more beautiful after most of the leaves have fallen. There was an orange tree in the neighbor's backyard. I changed it to a pine tree, to carry some spirit of the coming holidays since there is no snow in our location. I enjoyed painting inside, didn't have to suffer from the cold or hot. windy or sunburn weather... but it ...

It is such a beautiful home and garden to visit. We came often whenever we passed by. Hadn't visited it for a long time, probably since pandemic. I always wanted to paint here too, though it was challenging, no matter how much I love plants, my reaction to pollen can bother me for days. Never mind, I told myself that I had to go. Surprisingly, there was no parking left in the morning, so I parked my car in the street. And saw many volunteers working in the garden. Most of they looked like seniors. It was not easy to find a subject to paint. So much variety, encompassing herb & rose gardens, a historic home, a carriage house & a tearoom... I walked around it twice, almost decided to paint the tearoom, because it was my first time seeing the door open, but I was fascinated by the gorgeous lotus glowing leaves in the water fountain under the morning sunlight. Immediately, I set up my workstation and started to draw. A small bird accompanied me less than ten feet away while I...

Good news! One of my original oil paintings on canvas has found a new home.  Today I packed it up  carefully, and mailed it to one of my returning collectors in United Kingdom.   Didn't go out to paint for several days. I told myself that I should paint outdoors one painting at least. But it was a gray day mostly. In the afternoon sun was out for a short while, the light and shadows contrasted and were very interesting at the location. Forgot that my original idea was to paint the water fountain, so I did a quick painting of the house and the front yard. Maybe I will add in little details later, because the watercolor paper won't dry at the location, and it was getting dark so quick... (November 19 2021) This original oil on canvas " Ukulele and Hibiscus Flower on a Hawaii Beach "has found a new home, prints are available.

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...

Planned to go further today, but the news report said that coivd-19 infected numbers increased dramatically. I thought I should stay at home and maybe clean up my garden. Then the temperature went all the way up to 70 degrees, I thought what a waste of a perfect, beautiful winter day for painting outdoors. I drove around and found two almost identical houses next to each other. What attracted me was the shadow from the tree traced on the yellow house as a background. But my painting was not big enough to show the details. Good exercise to paint a residential house. Usually all the leaves on the trees block the full view of houses. Today, I spent a lot of time and tried to understand how each part of the house connected together. In the end, I had to break up the fences to make my painting not looking monotonous. A lovely afternoon being outdoors and painting!  (Jan 14 2021)

2020 Day29 I bought five bananas, only did a watercolor sketch of two of them. It was my first time doing a study on bananas, found they were not as easy as they looked. I am not a realistic painter, no matter whether a simple subject or a complicated one, keep practicing is the only way to become a better artist. Do you agree? Also it took me a couple of tries to display them.

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 ...

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...

It looked that was going to rain again, so I continued my study for the Garden still-life series - another one from my succulent collection, I don't remember its name, but it is already full of buds. I have a couple of garden frogs - those make me feeling happy. I sketched them together. No longer drawing leaf by leaf, this is the way how I expressed my own feeling through my artwork.

Sun came out in the morning, but it was wet everywhere. Painted nearby in the neighborhood. I used to paint loose, I don't have tiny point brush for the edge. Saw this large size aloe vera happily started blooming in the sun, thought that we were very lucky living in California. But why did we still feel cold in winter?

Continued raining, continued painting my new series of garden still life. Not many succulents of mine could move inside the house easily, some of them had grown quite large size, some of them in the pots which were already too heavy to carry. For example, I had brought a baby elephant succulent only a couple of inches tall when I just moved to this country, California bay area eighteen years ago. Now it had grown eight or nine feet tall at least. So I moved this small one under the roof for painting in the rain outside. Didn't do the same way painting leaf by leaf. Did I lose my patience, or just being myself?

Raining again. Brought another potted succulent inside from my garden, left a piece of baby crab shell I had found on the beach next to it, and painted another still life.  I never thought that I could paint a still life, it really challenged my patience. Most of my previous still life paintings were from my memories or imagination. During the recent practice, I started to like painting still life, especially while listening to music on a rainy winter day. Just not sure if it will be the direction for my future paintings. What do you think?

Not a rainy day, sun came out around noon. What attracted to me was the light and shadows of this house. I guessed that there was nobody at home, the dog barked like crazy... Tried a couple of times, I couldn't tell this neighborhood that I just came to paint, so I had to give up. I brought my stuff back to the car, suddenly the dog stopped barking. All right, I painted inside my car, though I wasn't in the right position to paint, but I did it and retouched a little bit more after got home.

Raining Sunday, painted a still-life at home. I am a little crazy about succulent plants and have collected many. Most of them I don't remember the names of. Liked the one I painted today, it grew like a chrysanthemum flower. Do you know this plant's name by any chance? I brought it in from the rain. Used a piece of clothing from my dirty laundry, so I didn't need to do extra washing, just as simple as it looked.

A study of my succulent in the garden. Cold weather, watercolor painting is not easy to dry...

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...

🍋This is my lovely lemon tree of nine years now. I propagated it from a one foot long branch which was in a pile of trimmings from the neighbor's tree. I could not believe that I had gotten 6 lemons at the end of the second year for a couple of following years. I learned how to trim it and changed it into a two gallons container last spring, but there were only two lemons from last year. Now, it is blooming again with a lot of flowers that brings me joy and hope each day.