A Diary of Watercolour and Bamboo flute

On the day of New Year of Horse, I attempted to paint a horse based on a few photos of a horse race I took during last year's EKKA. The first picture I created was beautiful, but the horse was ridden by a woman, which was the same as the photos'. But then I quickly realised that a horse controlled by a human being was not what I wanted.  I repainted another one with only the horse so that it had its freedom to determine its destination. I slightly drew the legs to be longer than the real, so that it could run faster, while this also made the horse looked thin. I don't mind it to be thin as a horse in the wild should not be as fat as those raised in stables.

The following few weeks, I painted some pictures about flowers and landscapes, as I had been a bit weary for drawing human beings. I tried different techniques. Not all successful, but I gained some experience. The mistake I frequently made is to use too strong colours at the beginning. Though in reality the colours of the object may be heavy, but in watercolour paintings, it is hard to show the skeletons of the objects clearly if we use the same heavy colours as real. To some extent I need to adjust the layers of the colours, as I don't have to make it identical to the real, but have to make it beautiful and understandable. I felt I was a better landscape painter than flower painter.

I re-picked up my transversal bamboo flute (the bass dizi flute) in these days. I tried not to blow the notes for a too long duration. Instead, it is easier to break the musical sentence into small parts. As long as it is separated in the correct locations, it does not really damage the flow of the music. In addition, it sounds even better as the performer is more relaxed.

Not Every Attempt Can be Successful

 I finished a painting about two boys playing piano yesterday. I was not satisfied with it immediately after finishing it, but I still shared it online. Mum said, if you were not so happy with it, why did you still upload it online. I thought a little while, and decided to leave it as it was online.

Painting is just like many other activities in life -- not every attempt you've made will achieve a positive result. As uncertainty is the nature of attempts, failures and sufferings are almost always accompanying with successes and joys. I chose to leave the unsuccessful painting online, so that I can record the full journey of this art adventure. 

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.