Practising in the new year

From the beginning of 2026, the painting activities have been a bit slow down. The summer school holiday has given too big a challenge to a parent of two young kids. Thinking of ideas to prevent them feeling boring, I've suffered from some knee injuries and sleeplessnesses. But I still have drawn a few pictures. The most recent one is a watercolour painting about two boys playing water tap in a seaside park. This is the first time I haven't used a pen to draw before applying colours. Instead, I directly painted the picture with watercolour pigments.

I think my progress of classical guitar playing is well this month. But it is still too boring for me to practice the classical exercises. I am more keen to play songs that I've been familiar with. Nevertheless, I've begun to practise Spanish Romance, which is one of my favourite music.

But after paying too much attention to guitar study for a time, I feel I miss the sounds of xiao flute. I began to re-pick the xiao flute as my major instrument recently. I've found that I sometimes feel xiao flute to be more attractive but sometimes the classical guitar. I'm pity that my time is limited as an amateur musician and also I like to spend some time to painting as I am also an amateur painter.

Guitar practice progress

Recently I practised playing two nursery rhymes on classical guitar, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Row Row Row Your Boat". 

Yesterday I filmed a performance of playing "Greensleeves", which sounds much better than the previous recordings of the same piece of music. Practising really helps. I think I need to build up my confidence as an adult learning to play guitar.

The following days, I want to stick to Jerry Willard's Fifty Each Classical Guitar Solos. I've finished practising the first six. I like the seventh piece, which is Carulli's Waltz. 

A guitarist on the Beach

The recent finished watercolour painting, "The Guitarist on the Beach", is beautiful but still not stunning. I think there are two points I haven't done well.

The first is the foams on the waves. I still could not successfully paint the forms. Next time when I try to paint ocean, I think I need to rethink of it. Maybe I should use a drier brush with deep colour (using the light colour making the contrast not obvious), or I may try to use something to cover spots on the painting paper and remove those covers later.

The second is the lawn. How to make a lawn looks like a lawn in reality? How to let people easily distinguish the far away patches and those close to the view.

Nevertheless, many people expressed their appreciations to it. My mother asked me to give her to decorate her bedroom. I of course am very glad to do that.