Original Art Stories - Xueling Zou

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)

There are many beautiful portraits that have visually showed us the subject's personality, history and culture.  I think facial expression is another very interesting subject in art.  That is why I love to study it.  I do it differently than some artists who just copying a photo.  I'd rather to know a little bit more about my subject before I start painting.  Here are some some portraits I painted and the stories behind them.  Please visit my online gallery at:  http://xueling-zou.artistwebsites.com/galleries.html to see more. Lady from Bangladesh was the portrait I painted in March 2011. We used to be neighbors for a short while. Her name is Tahmina. She was the mother of three very nice and well-educated boys, with such a sweet character. One early morning, I saw her dressed this lovely traditional pink/magenta sari in the garden, the morning light went through her veil, shining on her face... I went back and grabbed my camera immediately and took a couple of photos. Aft