Updates from Arena Shawn Watercolor Studio

"Crystal Springs Sunset" started out as an exercise in Stan Miller's workshop. Using a black-and-white photograph as reference, Stan asked us to use any colors -- arbitrary colors even, like green for the clouds -- to paint each shape, mostly wet on dry, soften edges as we go. The only requirement is to get the shapes painted in color as close in value as the black-and-white reference photo. It was a very valuable exercise, teaching me the importance of value to create a believable illusion of three-dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. As long as the value relationships are right, almost any color [...]

Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" Challenge for this September is officially closing, and I sort of fell off the wagon again in the past few days due to preparation for the start of my atelier's new semester. I will be starting to paint in oil this coming semester! I am so excited and terrified at the same time... Luckily, I have you guys -- my wonderful artist friends who are veteran oil painters! Well, be prepared... I will be bugging you guys with tons of questions (many of which very silly I'm sure... :-P) I experimented with this water lily [...]

​Second day's painting for Leslie Saeta's September 2014 "30 Paintings in 30 Days" challenge - I've started a couple of landscapes today but only finished this one. I have not painted this wet for a while - with paper dripping with water and the painting elevated at a steep angle, every passage is an exhilarating yet scary race against time. My aim is to finish the entire painting in one wet-to-dry cycle, getting the background mountains in when the paper is soaking wet so that the colors would run and diffuse smoothly, then putting in the fall foliage and darker shrub [...]

​This is the first one of my attempt to Leslie Saeta's yearly "30 paintings in 30 days" challenge - how wonderful it is that Leslie takes the trouble hosting this event twice every year! Although I have quite a few family and school-related obligations this September, and may not be able to complete a painting each day, I will definitely try to get as much done as I can! I think the whole spirit is to try to commit to painting every day, and not linger on a piece for too long so that the freshness could be kept (which is [...]

(See a Larger Version of this Painting Here)   A while ago (yes, in the last 30/30 challenge!) I've explored this theme and really loved the composition. Back during my trip back China visiting my parents, I've got the opportunity to sketch out some old fishing boats and dingles that are common sights along the river ways of populated historical cities and towns built on the fertile delta of Yangzi River, so I thought I'd do a series of painting featuring various interesting ancient boat designs. I also wanted to try out different materials and this is the first time I painted on a hot press [...]

Today is a good day at the studio in terms of actual work that's been done: I have laid out different maker's different surface-finish of paper, tried all of them out by starting a new landscape wet-in-wet on them. So... There were a lot of messy starts -- not one of them finished since a quarter-sheet soaking wet requires some time to dry naturally, hence I was running between projects. For wet starts like this I also stand up and paint, which means at the end of the day, my legs are about to give out. But it was exhilarating, since [...]

Well... I have been brave (bragging, bragging... :-P) to take up artist friend Leslie Saeta's "30 Painting in 30 Days" challenge, and this is one of the first few pieces I have managed to finish. I was hoping that it could help me wrap up some difficult projects that has been lingering in my studio for way too long. So far it has been good -- I've managed to make paced progress on a few of such projects. In the mean time, I have also realized that the reason these project have been lingering without much progress is that I have [...]