Sunset in the Park

 

My toddler has become rather tired and sleepy after spending a day in the childcare. In the late afternoon after I finished work, I put him to the pram and push him to have a walk in the park nearby. The sunshine from the waning sun had dropped through the gaps among leaves of trees to the ground. What a beautiful sunset view, with a moving melody of light and shadows. Soon the little child had fallen to sleep.

I pushed the pram back home, put the child to the bed, and later started to paint the sunset view in the park. I've admired art works of Claude Monet at and J. M. W Tuner for a long time. Both of them are among my favourite artists, and had strong capabilities to paint light and shadows. I first drew an orange sun in the middle of the paper. I applied water on the paper, and then slowly applied colours for the sunshine and clouds, allowing the colours flow on the wet paper freely. I dipped a bit of blue pigment for the top of the paper to draw the sky. 

After that, I painted the trees and the ground. I am grateful to live in a location closed to this beautiful park. I have once written a song called The park near home", which is for the park I painted today, and its name is "Burnie Brae Park".

How Do I Compose AUTUMN BREEZE

I started to compore music in the late 2024. At that time I was studying an online course on Udemy about music theory, and had just known the music editing software Musescore Studio. On November when my baby’s birthday was approaching I tried bo write a song for him as a special gift. From them on I continued to write music pieces that most played by flutes or bamboo flutes.

In around April or May of 2025, 1 composed the tune Autumn Breeze. using a lullaby style. It is a small piece of music without lyrics. Imagine that now autumn has come, with its breezes blowing away the heat from summer, shaking the branches of trees, and causing rattling sounds. The rhythms are gentle. But sometimes they are faster cousing some surprising excitments on the pitches, as if a stronger wind bursts out the laughters of children. The tone is warm, as the breezes should be only gently cool. Under the shadow of a big tree, the baby has fallen asleep while listening to the rattles from the leaves.

 Autumn is my favourite season. I like to use it to express something that is precious but doe not last for long. But of course, as a piece of music without lyrics,  everyone can have their own interpretation, and this is the flexibility of the instrumental music.

 I woke up in the early morning, and opened the window of the bedroom. The sun had started to rise. This was the most precious time of a day for me. Everyone else of the family was still asleep, and  It was still too early to be busy to prepare for work. It was  the only moment that I could have a full degree of freedom. I brought my watercolour painting set and started to paint a picture about the two boys playing piano in the lounge. I used a dip pen with very light brown colour to draft the layout, as I thought the using of a dip pen with light watercolour watercolours was better using a pencil or a black pen. I was keen to draw with a partly loose style, as the partly loose style means that some parts will be painted with much details while some other parts will only be filled with light colourful patches. I view painting as just a visual way of communication. Just like when we are telling a story, not every part will be talked with the same level of completeness. I had to be fast so that I could finish it before anyone woke up. While I finished the last stroke and thought they were still sleeping, I found my toddler had been sitting on the bed and quietly watching me painting.

After a few hours work in the garden, I am grateful that my wife had successfully soothed the little brother to sleep. She asked me to be along with him after I had dinner. As usual, I brought my watercolor painting tool set to the bedroom and painted a picture about the elder brother learning to brush teeth. Accidently I drew the leg and feet a bit too large, making the ratio among different parts of the body not looked as real. I don't mind that much. I just enjoyed the process of using my painting brush to draw the persons and objects that I liked, the landscapes that I admired, and the places that I had memories on, with sentiments flowing along the pigments on the paper.

These days I have given up playing my plastic flutes and my metal made concert flute. Instead, I dig out my old bamboo flutes from the cabinet. I felt the tones and timbres from bamboo flutes were much natural and pleasant. Yeah I agree that from the perspective of tone accuracy, the plastic or metal made flutes are more advanced, whereas from aesthetics perspective, the bamboo flutes carry more individual characterises as each piece of bamboo is unique, and so is its player.

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.