Happy Birthday To me -- Request your 40 yr old wisdom

Well I just turned forty year old today. I am now in the last stretch of pregnancy so I did not celebrate any thing much, just bought myself a small bunch of orchids, my DH bought me a Winslow Homer watercolor book. One of my buddy called and my mother also called. I can always counting on her to remember my b-day... ha ha.

In a way, I don't feel old but I feel a bit kind of strange feeling of missing my best 30's but I think I am doing great as is: decent family, friends, finance, career, art, health, and other passion. I hope I get to stay healthy longer on this earth to explore more life adventure and the awaiting unfulfilled personal wishes, which include several painting trips abroad.

Any thought on turning into 40's, pls. kindly leave me your words. Thanks a lot.

PS. My photo, courtesy of K.Kwin Krisadapong

Wang-Trakrai Waterfall

We just came back from a one night camping trip to Wang-Tra-Krai waterfall park, 100 miles northeast of Bangkok. It is one of the nearest mountain we can go from Bangkok. We stayed in a simple but decent cabin with a simple equipped kitchen. So Tone and I got to cook our own breakfast this morning and I got to sketch them. I did bring along a big sketchbook for Iris for her to draw as you shall see one of her drawing.

#1 trees -- a plein air of the stream and the mountain backdrop in the evening last light, watercolor


#2 treat -- When we arrived to our cabin, they put a simple glass bowl with wild yellow flowers in the room to greet us, watercolor & Stabilo brown pen


#3 breakfast -- This was what we cooked. Poor Tone had to wait a few minutes for me to sketch before he could eat, color pencils


#4 public space -- Done by Iris to depict our rental cabin with our car parked near by, the right most were Tone and I busy cooking. The middle green face was Iris. Color pencils.



Here are some highlights of the trip:

Fruit bowl still-life

I am trying some digital with my fruit bowl still-life set up using TwistedBrush freeware (combination of oil-paint strokes and blending tool). This is quite fun. The best part of the session is that I ate my fruit models afterward.

Paint out -- Klong Bang Luang

Y esterday I went out for 3 hours with my plein air group to another Bangkok canal community, called Klong-Bang-Luang. So here are the two plein airs were done using Holbein watercolor paints on 9x11 inch Bockingford 140lb CP block.

Aj.Chumpol is the owner of the canal-side gallery/cafe that let us hang out to paint. He has put a tremendous effort to rally the local people think of how the preserve the old Thai way of life along the canal but yet sustainable for the modern economy. Some of the nowadays passing by long-tail boats are bringing foreign tourists to see the canal-traditional life. Sometimes, these boats stop at Aj.Chumpol's gallery and buy his paintings or postcards, to give him sustainable income. Some houses also are converted to a charming canal cafe, which sell Thai handy crafts. Now all the houses can also be accessed from the road on the back, so to keep the community to actively use waterway and boats are quite an effort of sustainable preservation of traditional Thai life.

After -- Winslow Homer

Well, I guess, a new year deserves a new endeavor. So I am attempting to copy the Master, Winslow Homer. I was in awe last weekend when we went to the best bookstore in Bangkok and they displayed a book of Winslow Homer watercolor works. So that is my inspiration that I hope to continue throughout the year (... we'll see how I do with my art after the baby comes out in late March). All I can say is that it was a tough 2 hours for me painting this small one, I wish I could have a time-machine to ride back to observe Homer live during his session.

Here is my take today, a 9x12 inch watercolor on Canson Monval 140lb:


And here is the original on the cover of the book Tone just bought me as an early gift of my B-day in a few weeks.

Scavenger Hunt#160 -- Part2

I continue with Scavenger Hunt's challenge: trying to use the medium I am not familiar with. So I did these from life using a 2B pencil.
#8 leaf -- our butterfly plant
#9 series -- of terracotta planters
#10 berries -- blackberry & mulberry
#11 soft -- gladiolus petals
#12 crunchy -- Japanese rice cracker
#13 hat

Scavenger Hunt#160

This new year, one of my artistic resolution is to do more life-sketching in pencils or other mediums that I am not familiar with. So here are some sketches in an HB in my 8x10 inch Japanese sketchbook.
#4 brush
#5 file -- my thumb drive
#6 light
#7 heavy