Yellow Bird and Pink Flowers and Labor Day Weekend Sale

My husband is away for a long business trip for several weeks. Without his "disturbance", I can paint in the weekends as well.

My husbands is overall supportive of my pursuit of art. But sometime, when things go wrong, such as my baby is sick, he will quickly tell me that you should not spend so much time on painting, being a mother is your first priority, bla bla. ...

To be more relax, I pick some cute subjects and small size to paint in the weekends.

The Visual Art Street Team of Etsy which I am a member of is having a Labor Day Weekend Sale. I am also participating. Buy two of my prints, you can get the third one free. Please do visit the sales of the team members at:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=4449

and
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=4619

Watercolor on paper
Size: 6.5" x 9.5", $40 + $5 S & H

Monardas or Bergamots Ilustration Prints

I am very interested in the intricate structure of this flower Mondardas or Bergamots. When I saw some photos of them, I think I have to make them into my art.

To reflect the structure, I use illustration. I think illustration is the best way of showing the patterns and complicated structures.

All of my prints are Giclee print with Epson printer and its pigment ink on heavy archival paper. The size is about an A4 paper size, just nice to fit into a standard A4 frame.

Print size: 8.5" x 11.5", image is about 8" x 10.5", $18 + $5 S & H

Daisy

This is a daisy in the daisy land. Every flower is so beautiful. It is so satisfying to paint them and see the bright colors coming out from the paper.

Watercolor on paper
Size: 6.5" x 9.5", $40 + $5 S & H

Autumn Garden

This is a larger painting that I worked on today. It is 16" x 20". I am extremely careful when I paint large paintings. I painted it in a very controlled way.

first wash

I normally try to make color to be final at first wash. But it is not possible most of the time. The colors are just not strong enough for the darker ones. But two to three layers of colors will be maximum for me. I don't like to lay many layers because colors tend to loose their vibrancy after three or more layers.

Some people can produce beautiful colors with many layers. I guess you need to do it very carefully and use very high quality colors, paper and soft brushes. Most important, you have to wait till the paper get completely dried.

I really love the colors in this painting. You can only paint well when you get excited about it.

Something to note about the painting techniques used:

1. The black is produced from mixing phthalo green with cadmium red. It is really great to produce a greenish black
2. I used masking fluid to mask out the tree.
3. Tissue paper is used to create the texture of the purple flower.

Watercolor on paper
Size: 16" x 20", $350 + $12 S & H

Owl and Pink Poppies

These two are ink drawing with watercolor painting. I bought some color ink pens. I draw first the outline of the objects and then apply the watercolor. After that, I may outline more on some objects to emphasize them. The left part is a bit faded and that creates interesting contrast.

Watercolor on paper
Size: 7" x 10", $40 + $5 S & H

Orchid and Quinacridone Colors

I went to the town yesterday. I normally go to visit the town around the famous Singapore orchard road area for dinner, meeting friends, buying art supplies or simply to take a walk. It is very good sometime to get the modern and metropolitan feeling. The creativeness seeping from everywhere in the town reminds me that whatever I do, I must try to learn to do it in an innovative way.I am so excited that I bought a tube of Quinacridone Rose yesterday. I always want to try the Quinacridone colors because they are very bright, but cannot find any in the shops. This is the only tube I can find. I should try to buy them from Internet next time because it is really good. Look at the orchid with quinacridone rose, it is so bright.
This still life is inspired by a photo of a women with a red Chinese Cheongsam in a fashion magazine. I like to put orchid with an oriental structure such as the window.

Watercolor on paper
Size: 10" x 14", $135, $7 S & H

Port on Table

Shadow is something very interesting in a painting. In this painting, the shadow plays a big part of the whole painting. It consists of different colors blue, gray and purple.

Watercolor on paper
Size: 10" x 14", $60 + $7

Red Poppies

I painted this poppies while I was waiting for the hydrangea to dry. This one has not much detail, just by placing colors in a big brush. I love the black and red combination.

Watercolor on paper
Size: 10" x 14", $60 + $7 S & H

Hydrangea

Hydrangea has many small flowers to form a big one. It is quite difficult to paint if you want to paint each of them. I am not a patient person to do so. Thus I only paint some of them. The good thing of human eyes is that they can visualize others in the same form as well even if you don't paint them out. Just like if you paint some apples correctly and place some other apple like objects between them, people tend to think they are apples. This is good for me.

Hydrangea is something I love to paint. I also like to paint orchid which is the national flower of Singapore. Others like Peonies, poppies, plum flower, magnolias,.. There are so many more that I haven't paint yet. It is good that I won't have no topic in future.

Watercolor on paper of 180gsm.
Size: 10.5" x 14.5", $60 + $7

Spring Time

I have never tried using ink drawing with watercolor painting before. Today I really wanted to do it and came up with these two small paintings. It is very interesting. It allows me to paint patterns of flowers, but with nice flow of background.

Watercolor on paper
Size: 6" x 7"