Plein air ending 2009

Dec 31st, and Jan 1st are national holiday in Thailand. So today my plein air/sketching friends got together and we roamed another area along Chao Praya River to celebrating our end of year 2009 sketching. We had a great fun, this time there were seven people in our group in the morning with two new friends: an eye doctor & a furniture designer. One more member joined later in the afternoon. I was very lucky today as one of the young friend, Khun Nest, an architecture student had helped carried my painting bag. He kindly told me that he know I have already been carrying a six-month baby. So my outdoor painting trip, which involved quite some walking had went much more comfortable than I expected. I truly thankful for his kindness.

We gathered around 8:30 and had some breakfast at Taksin bridge along Chao Praya river, then we started our day at Bang-Rak Chinese Shrine I got one painting done before one of senior shrine care taker arrived with a negative message to our painting group.... May be only in Thailand.. that location care takers do not welcome painters. A similar thing had happened to our group before at the other Chinese shrine. Around 10:30 we walked along Charoenkrung road to the near by Yannawa Thai temple. This time things went smoothly and around 12:30 we had a group lunch at the near by chicken-rice food shop. It is simple but great, especially, I never have any painting friends who would go paint out with me in Thailand for years until this year that I got to know them. I love my Wetcanvas friends but the face-to-face interaction with other artist friends do enrich my painting experience tremendously. Later in the after noon, we got in the express boat for a short hop to Kalawar church to end the painting day at around 3:30 pm. I had a great fun and could not think of a better way to spend the last day of 2009.

Happy New Year 2010 -- May 2010 be a better painting year for you !!!.

Boat & Buoy#2 -- for Rose

This is a watercolor ATC size 2.5 x 3.5 inch done for Wetcanvas Fall/Winter project. The Ref. photo was from Flickr. I apologize for not remembering the photographer name.

Boat & Buoy#1 -- for Joan

This is a watercolor ATC size 2.5x3.5 inch done for Wetcanvas Fall/Winter exchange. The ref. image was from Flickr. I apologize for not remember the photographer name.

World-Wide Sketchcrawl#25

Well pardon me for the late blogging of this article. The event took place in late November but as a mother-of-the-2nd-child-to-be I was too overwhelmed to keep up with blogging. But finally, today I have some more energy to get around to do this so here goes:

This time, our Bangkok friends are mostly busy with their business, so I set out to do a solo crawl in the morning and later I met two other Bangkok sketchers in the evening. In addition, my babysitter could not make it, so my DH and my 4 year old daughter, Iris, joined along with me from 8:00 am - 4:30 pm. I was afraid that my daughter would feel boring and uncomfortable to have to tag along mommy sketching. Luckily, we got cool weather, and we minimized walking and only using Tuk-Tuk or Taxi to hop from one spot (cafe) to other spot (cafe). Things went well and we all have fun. It is too bad that Iris did some sketching of the sculptures at the sculpture garden but she later destroyed it unintentionally. She did it her way, the stick-figure style but she quickly scribbled many colors over it before I can take a photo of it.

Here are the summary shot of my locations:


#0 Warm up, my neighbor walking her dog.


#1 In the morning, I had to pick up my baby health check report from Siriraj hospital, the biggest state hospital in Thailand. Before I left the place, I stopped at the hospital plaza where Thai people went to pay respect to The King's father monument, who also the father of Thai medicine, and Thai people also gathered to write well-wish messages to our beloved King who resides at the hospital at the moment.



#2 We crossed Chao Phraya River to Tha-Chang pier, heading to the sculpture garden of Univ. of Fine Arts. Iris, did some sketches of the sculptures with me here. In the middle of sketching, one bug landed on my sketchbook, so I sketched him in my left corner of my sketchbook, that is why you see the big bug on the left top side of the building.... not that the bug is that huge.






#3 We walk 100 yards, down to a cafe opposite the entrance of the Grand Palace, we call this gate "Wiset-Chai-Sri-Gate".


#4 After our lunch, our family moved on to sketch in a cozy cafe, "Passport Cafe", in the vintage district of Bangkok. This is the spot where I later met with two SketchCrawler, P'Asnee, and K.Nate. We had some talks and sketched some scenes in side the cafe. I ended my SketchCrawl there, but P'Asnee and K.Nate were meeting up with two more Thai sketchers to cover more of Bangkok vintage landmarks.

2009 Scavenger Hunt Sketches -- Part1

Well, this year I have been more active in sketching things around me with the help and encouragement of my art friends on Wetcanvas Scavenger Hunt forum. Every nine days or so, we will get a new list of things around us to do a life-sketch. Some weren't that good but all of them really allowed me to enjoy my little art moment, one item at a time. So here are a few highlights. Among items below, I think I like the "non-art-brush (the toilet brush)" the most. It seemed to stir up quite some nice words from my art friends.

Merry Christmas

Dear friends, I hope you have a great Christmas and a great year. We are very happy and humble to have a great simple life that we have. Our second baby is about 3 months to due date. I have not painted big format as often as usual but more of sketching and small format works. Even then, I am fortunate to know several new plein air painting friends and some of the works that we went out to paint old architectures along Chaopraya River together in July got in architecture group shows at Siam Center mall and recent venue at Bangkok Art and Cultural Center. I am very proud that someone see the value in our preservation effort. Besides, I also get reconnect to music: taking piano lesson again since April 24th. Life is sure more hectic with adding music practice on top of art, career, and family but I would not drop any of this. I get to take a lesson with a wonderful piano teacher. That sure makes my year a very blessing year. Iris is also doing great with a new school, a more relaxed kindergarten very close to our home so we have a much simple and relaxed day comparing to the previous school. Tone also has a great year: visiting his family in the US. and back to see the US. Thunderbird air show at Don Muang Airport, the first Thunderbird he ever saw in his life.

For many of you who I have not yet meet face to face, I hope one day I get to do that, in the mean while I am sending you my holiday spirit vibe your way via this message. Merry Christmas 2009.

"Holiday spirit", 8x10 inch watercolor&ink, from a public photo on Flickr by DigitalImageFan. It is done as a part of Wetcanvas Xmas card 2009 pen & ink forum exchange.