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.

Draw from life

 These days I gradually switched from drawing from photos to drawing from life. As the scene id dynamic, I expect it will be much more challenging. But surprised to me, it seems to be even easier. Maybe that is because the target object is bigger and the details are easier to view. As the objects are moving, I have to sketch very fast, but sketching fast normally results in a better picture -- more accurate. I think the hesitation will block the brains flow to function.

It is interesting to note that I've developed my own technique to sketch. I use a fountain pen with solute ink, and a brush that can be filled with clean water.  When I use the brush with clean water to wipe the lines, shadings are generated.

Boys painting

 I woke up early in the morning while everybody else was still asleep. As I didn't want to be just lying on bed boringly waiting the baby to get up. I started painting again. This time I tried to paint the two sons doing arts and crafts at home, as I don't want to just paint one of them, guessing the other won't be happy in that case.

I haven't really finished the details but I had to give up and left it as it was when both kids were awake.

It is still a very nice picture as I can tell. The postures and the skeletons of the children are very vivid. But the colours do not look real. Despite my target is not to make a picture identical to the reality, I still hope I can control the saturates and colours better so that the picture would look more natural. From this perspective, it exposed my limitations of applying colours, which I should enhance in future.

I don't have time to play music these days.

Painting in an A3 paper

 I woke up early in the morning as I didn't want to boringly stay in bed. I got up and painted the picture "A sleeping boy on the seashore" with watercolour. This is the first time I painted a picture on an A3 paper, which is bigger than those I used before. Painting on a larger paper is a great fun, and the result is unexpectedly good. This is by no doubt my best painting in this year.

After finishing reading Elton John's autobiography, I began to read  Sushi's article collection.

I haven't played guitar that much these days as painting has got more and more of my attention.

About realistic paintings

 I drew a picture about the mailbox that could be seen from the window in the early morning. Different pen and paper characteristics require different levels of saturation. To be safe, we can always safe to start with less water.

Since the invention of cameras, many people lost the confidence of the future for realistic paintings, as they thought those paintings would be easily defeated by photographs. But I think the feeling that a painting can give to the people is still very different from a photo. Through examining the scratches and traces left during the creation of the painted picture, you can feel the time and efforts the painter spent to finish it, as well as the learning process and the talent. In addition, you can feel the culture heritage about the techniques that are passed by generations from an ancient time. No two paintings can be exactly the same despite they may reflect the same scene. We can always understand the styles and interpretations of the painters.

Of course, some people love abstract painting more as different people have different tastes.