Original Art Stories - Xueling Zou

🎨Santa Cruz landscape inspires me, especially when I sketch plein air 在海邊寫生😊.

🎉Happy Lunar New Year! ㊗大家春節快樂吉祥如意🎈🎈🎈 🐔Chinese Rooster New Year starts on January 28, 2017. Traditionally, adults give small red envelopes with money inside for luck to younger generations.  Between January 25 to February 14, you can get 25% discount if you order any prints or products of my original art. This is a limited time offer, simply view my website @ xueling-zou.artistwebsites.com , then enter "MZBPXC" as discount code before your check the order(s) out. 🎨If you interested in collecting any my original artwork, please message me or email me. Thank you for all the support, thank you for viewing and liking my original artwork😊!

There are more than one million visitors that have viewed my art. Have you? @https://about.me/xuelingzou "In solitude the passions feed upon the heart."  - Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton "Art starts alone – and convinces society later." - Douglas Davis Why do I love the old songs so much? Do you? "The Sound of Silence": I first listened to it without knowing enough English words back when I was still in China. It always brings me so many memories, especially during the holiday season. I just love this song, because of the solitude of my life being an artist, and with sensitivity... It takes the courage to be there for sure! Belows are the two links of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zLfCnGVeL4 https://www.facebook.com/maya.huynh?fref=ts Attached the lyrics: Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again, Because a vision softly creeping, Left its seeds while I was sleeping, And the vision that was planted in my br...

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...

Napa Valley is considered one of the premier wine regions in the world, with hundreds of vineyards set amid rolling hills. I have been there many times, but not every time I could capture the scenes I love, sometimes I was in a rush, other time the weather or lighting wasn't right. Just like wine tasting, not each time you could experience the most delicious taste. Autumn is always my favorite season. It is still warm, colorful everywhere with harvest, and I usually can get the most of inspiration. Once I saw a perfect wine country scenery just in perfect timing during autumn in Napa, but I forgot to charge the battery in my camera. I guess it is one of the reasons I have to go back. Ha ha ha... It wasn't easy for agriculture in California since it hasn't rained enough for years. I saw colors are different this year through the incredible scenery, the layering of lines and patterns in the valley. It had built up more ochre yellow all over, especially in those war...

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...