ACEO Landscapes

It's fun to paint landscapes. It doesn't require much of my brain juice to do the detailing *at least not for me...* I just have to paint what I see and the picture is done in few minutes especially in ACEO. Painting landscapes gave me peace in mind. I just love the solitude feeling in the painting that only Natural Scenes, no people, no animals. Very peaceful.

My first "Fairy and Horse" Series

I've been thinking of painting something in series as a set since long time ago. There were some weird ideas: Tarot series, 365 days of birds series, Zodiac series or random animal series. I'd thought about painting series of fairies before. But sometimes I found the subject has been painted too often. However I still love it; so I'd added the horse element into the painting. My daughter said that it looks like "my little pony" XD. *I thought about that too after I finished that painting... haha. * Anyway, this is my first painting series. Enjoy~

Fantacy painting

I love painting fairy. But sometimes it's hard to find the right subject to paint. I always want to paint something with a story in it, not just portraits only. My goal is to illustrate a story book of any kind or my own.

In this picture, my favorite part is the sleeping little fairy girl~

Sleep tight~

Exotic theme painting

I always want to try the bright color painting, but sometimes I'll be afraid that if the color crashes each other and it will look weird. But this time, I just use all different kinds of colors to paint this one and result is not bad~ Enjoy~

Contrast in Watercolor

One of the problem in painting watercolor is to create the right contrast. The watercolor color is usually soft and more transparent look. Sometimes it's hard to create the right Darker tone to make the painted subject "pop up" of the picture. The main text to learn is NOT to be afraid of using the colors, especially the strong colors. Also utilizing the black paint to create the proper contrast is very important too.

Details about painting animals

I will have to say that the hardest part to paint the animal is to paint its fur. Especially in painting ACEO animals, it required fine brushes and extreme concentration and patient to finish the job. I personally love watercolor. The watercolor is easy for me to get the details. Acrylic ACEO is my dead spot, which needs a lot of practice to achieve the flowness like watercolor. Usually the paint just stuck on the brush and won't let go on the paper >_<

I really admire the ACEO works of a few artists (on eBay) who can paint the details of the animals so fine with acrylic. Again the golden rule... Practice and More Practice! And don't forget the fine brushes that won't have split hair... *the split hair on the brush drive me crazy...*

Portraits

Just want to practice on painting "human"...

Sometimes I feel it's kind of odd to find the right poportion for human Eyes. Since I'm so used to draw people in comic/anime style ---> Huge eyes... XD It's kind of challenge to "shrink" the eye part into the right size without making it so "Comic" look. Most of time I'll just find the pictures from random magazines to practice on the pose and try to draw or paint it as similar as possible. Practice makes perfect I guess~

* cough *

Flu season is here. I "almost" get sick from my family since three of them are sick including my little boy. Best to wash my hands all the time and be strong... (although I start to feel my itchy throat...)

Valentine is coming soon~ Good thing about this year is that I don't have to kill myself working like a dog in my flower shop... Usually starting from end of January, the orders are coming in like crazy and two weeks before Valentine, I never get to go home early. Few days before Valentine, I never got to go home till 12 midnight... (someone got to cut the roses, flowers, pack the order and do the arrangements... @o@ drive me nuts...) I never get to celebrate Valentine anymore till this year. Looking forward to it. I created 4 special ACEO cards with watercolor and ink for Valentine and thinking of printing them out for my kids' Valentine cards for school. I kept drawing penguins. Not sure why. I guess they are too cute XD

Happy weekend!

Life is full of surprises~~~

It's fun to see that my penguin painting became more like a character now. Before the penguins feel like they are still models with not much of the interaction. It has to do with the natural environment of the penguins. It is in such a place that not many of other animals live around there... *ya...south pole, who will live at south pole besides scientists and penguins... XD*

Well, if I'm going to set my character as a realism natural animal painting subject, it seems there isn't much room to create. So I started to look at the other way when I paint my penguin character. Maybe one day I'll make it into a story book... XD You never know. Life is always full of surprises!

New Zazzle Store

Just opened up a gift shop promoting some of my custom art gifts through Zazzle! It was fun creating items although I think it will take a lot of my time just to play around in the website. It it does open up a wide variety of product as a freelancer can sell, not just prints or posters, but T-shirts, key-chains or many other promotional items.

One good thing is the store don't have minimum to order!!! And you can create as many as you like~ Yup! More Art is More Sale... XD *just joking*

My arms are dead... XD

Holiday is finally over. All little kids are back to school. I bet lots of parents are glad in a way that the routine is back and start to find some peace while no children are fighting for video game remote controls or TV channels... Anyway, I got some time to paint this penguin ACEO in the morning before picking up my JK boy~ It's purely watercolor and with some experiments on the background textures.

(*And finally got some time to work on the Wii Fitness program. My arms are pooped!*)

I love penguins! They are the cutest animals on earth! Too bad that the scientist saying that they may get extincted in the future due to the severe weather change in south pole. Maybe one day they will become like Panda - Zoo Animals only... Kind of sad the know the fact about the endangered animals that they cannot survive through the environment they were born into. What should we do in daily life to change the fate of these animals?

New way of recycle?

Just a thought of saving this ice wine bottle turn into this landscape painting bottle with acrylic paints. I personally think it's a great ideal for home deco XD instead of buying expensive glass vases... I can use these empty wine bottles for art! I'm sure there's lot more out there and I'm not a drinker at all... In the whole year, I only drink maybe 2 times... a few glasses... My personal experience for the ice wine is... taste like apple juice... although it says 6% alcohol, but don't feel anything in me. However, the slim look of the bottle is beautiful~ Cheers!
ps. Thank god my kids are going back to school XD some quiet time in the house ^O^ hahaha

Last get together for holiday...

It's finally New Year! YA! Kids are going back to school on Monday and we all can have our schedule back to normal... No more eating out anytime soon. My tummy is getting irritated since the diet hobbit changed so dramatically over the holiday seasons. even my daughter complaints about tummy ache after we had dinner at so many friends and relatives' houses. Good thing is no body drink and drive and even they went drinking at count down, they all took subway. I'm not in the age for New Year count down out door. No motivation to freeze myself at the crowded downtown~ Just not with my little ones. They all crashed at beds by 10pm... No counting down for them either... We drank a couple bottles at home, I washed one bottle and wanted to experiment the painting on it. Hope it will turn out good~ Cheers!