Karen hill-tribe lady

This is a 10x14 inch watercolor on 140 lb Lanaquarell coldpress block of Karen hill-tribe lady, who lives in either Thailand and Burma mountain. The ref. photo is kindly provided by Patty on Wetcanvas.com.

Happy 4th of July !!!

This year we celebrated 4th of July plus two family birthdays: Grandma, and Iris. I cooked up a big lunch meal at my home and let Iris, Grandma and Tone blew the candles together. Tone represented Uncle Sam did all cake cutting, especially the part that he had to cut into the American flag. We all have a good laugh. Grandpa got to see baby Lily too.

Unofficial Piano Recital

Well, Thailand is full of surprises... and lately they have come in many great stories. The past three months I have taken maternity leave from university teaching. One day Tone told me that while I was gone, the Univ. main library has done extensive renovation to one of their wings and add more R&R space for Univ. people. One of the addition is adding a grand piano in the main hallway. I was so thrilled and also did not fully believe that story until this past Saturday, Tone and I stopped by the library. We both gave our unofficial recitals to passersby. This is my first time playing in public so I totally shaken. I did attempt to play two songs: Canon in D major and Ballade pour Adeline. I felt so good to play it I hope they keep that piano for as long as possible and I hope to practice more and come back to play it more often.

After Tone and I was about to leave, another young Thai mathematics major student sat down and played Beethoven Sonata No.8. He blew us away. It is like you will never imagine in a million years that a young man in a t-shirt and jeans will be able to give a concert hall quality classical music. I am sure that this piano will bring many great stories to the campus.

The Wild Pair

Here is what I did today for the WDE on Wetcanvas, a 10x14 inch acrylic inks on background and the watercolor on the swans. I have not used acrylic inks for almost two years, and the last time I used it on a tiny ATC card. So this time I find it difficult to handling the acrylic ink background as wet-on-wet since the ink dried up super fast. Anyway, I am happy with the result. Photo ref. is from http://morguefile.com/archive/display/92960

The High Life

This is a 5x7 inch watercolor (Holbein) & India ink on the back of 140 lb. coldpress Lanaquarelle block. Ref. photo by TheDesignspace.net.

The Nutcracker

I have been very busy these days due to my 10 Wk old baby. I have not had a chance to do a big painting yet. I am glad to be able to do small sketching or drawing here and there. Here is my pen & wash experiment, which is a quick 30 min. pen & wash size 3x4 inch in my Thai 80 grams. sketchbook. I use Faber-Castell 0.1 Ecco pen and Holbein watercolors. The ref. photo is provided by ArtbyJune on WDE of Wetcanvas.

I found the book "How to Keep a Sketchbook Journal" by Claudia Nice very informative for me to get start in pen and wash.

Wat-Arun and Wat-Pho

These are life sketching done as a part of our Bangkok Sketchers group outing on May 30th. We had three artists from Penang, Malaysia to join our trip. Wat-Arun (shown in the first two sketches) is also known as Temple of the Dawn on the west side of ChaoPhraYa river and Wat-Pho is CheTuPon Temple on the opposite east side of the river. Wat-Arun is famous for its tall stupa, which makes its grand statement against the morning sky of Bangkok. On the other hand, Wat-Pho is famous for the reclining buddha, and the first place to teach Thai traditional medicine and Thai massage. We had fun that day and it had been quite a turn out with so many Thai sketchers.