Original Art Stories - Xueling Zou

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.

I knew that it was going to rain today, so I was well prepared. I couldn't paint standing up as I usually do, just because it was windy. Arrived earlier, got a chance to sketch the boat and had some wash with watercolors, then it started raining. I painted inside the car for a while. Came back home to finish this rusty fishing boat painting.

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