Looking up the sky

I thought there were quite many artists submitted to the street banner competition. But turned out only 7 submissions by the artists plus 13 elementary school students. And I wasn't even chosen top 3, either.

 I found the winner's design in the newspaper and I think it's far better than mine. So I was able to accept I wasn't the winner without upsetting. 

After the EXCITING(?) street banner competition, I felt a little empty and didn't know what to paint.  But one day, I was walking my every day route in the nice day and just looked up the sky. Here, there was a blue sky and beautiful clouds and shadow of the dry trees.

I went home and took out one of the "demolished" canvases. Demolished means I often put the solid colour of paint all over the canvas in the middle of the painting when I feel this painting will never get better or something so wrong. And hide it under the bed. I always keep some of those canvases under the bed. And I don't feel like using a new canvas, I take it out and start painting on it pretending this is a "coloured" new canvas.

Took me 3 weeks to paint this "LOOKING UP"painting.

Street banner design competition

It's been a exciting, frustrating and disappointing weeks. But also a very good experience.

When I found "Call for Artist" for the street banner competition, I was SOOO excited. I submitted the same competition 3 years ago and ended up the 2nd place. So my design has never flown in  the  Squamish sky.

More over, there were several confusion for me to submit this competition. First I received the old guidance for submission and that wasn't effective for this time. But I recognized it long after I've sent my submission.

Even my submission wouldn't go through to SAC by e-mail as they wanted me to do. So I tried to send it from 3 different account including from my husband's e-mail account. But never accepted. Each one came back.

At that point I was panic. Then I decided to follow the older guidance for submission and sent my original design paper to SAC knowing the newer guidance said "don't send in your original design".

Then I could contact the chair person of SAC and she was kindly accepted my submission to her own e-mail account. This time it went though. STRANGE?????

Yesterday was the day the winner should get the contact from SAC or DOS. No one contacted me, of course. My dreaming day is over...... Well, it was something wrong at the begin with.

The 4th painting of sunset from my window

I painted the first "sunset painting from my window" more than 2 years ago. I had so much trouble to make bright clouds. I wasn't so happy for the result but I couldn't make it any better.

The second one was painted last year. I used vivid orange almost whole canvas. Because I couldn't make nice soft orange clouds that I wanted to paint. But I liked it.

Then, I tried and tried and gave up several times and left it some time. Finally the 3rd one was done used rose violet colour. Titled "Rose Violet Sunset". I wanted to paint that beautiful soft purple clouds for long time and I think I did it. I liked this one very much.

After that, I wanted to try another orange sunset again. I had to repainted the canvas 3 times but I could finished it at last.

I don't think I'm going to paint sunset a little while.

Blue and green again...

Another 24"X12" painting has done and turned out my typical "BLUE and GREEN" painting.

I never intended to use only blue and green in my painting but my landscape always turns out blue and green. Now I'm even curious about how far I can go.

Another painting for the next exhibition

Always difficult for me to follow the theme. I think my imagination is so limited.

But I've just finished another painting for Visuals next exhibition " Home for Holidays" at Foyer Gallery next month. I don't think there is any necessity to paint this scene using oil paint and it may be better using acrylic or something, but only this image came up to my mind.

Now I'm going to start painting whatever I want!

Painting people...

I've been thinking for two years to paint this one of the scenes of Alta Lake. Why it took me so long? I was afraid of painting people.

I've painted some paintings with only one woman in my painting like self-portrait. But never done people in. I always find it so difficult. But I tried this time. And didn't turn out excellent but I did it, anyway.

Along the theme...

I often feel it's very difficult or frustrated to paint something along the theme. My imagination is quite limited, also I'm not good at painting anything I  want,either. Very rarely, as soon as I hear the theme, the vivid image comes up in my head.

I've told there is a theme of our next Visuals exhibition in November a few months before.
" Home for Holidays". At first, nothing came up to my mind. So I even asked some of the artists to give me a hint. But finally I've got an idea and finished painting a few days ago.

Nothing but weed...

Last couple weeks, I couldn't decide what to paint next. Just playing with paints with brushes and painting knives on canvas. And here is the result.

I found this 2 years ago and I'm impressed even weed can show us such a beautiful scene. Well, I felt so, at least. I took some pictures of them and waited for the time to be ready to paint.

Back home!

After for 2 months staying in Japan, finally I made home.

The air in Squamish is so nice and no crucial high heat! Osaka is the worst place to stay in summer. I was raised in Osaka and I thought I could still deal with the hot summer. But I'm used to this Squamish "temperature" for 8 years. No way to go back over 35C + high humidity !!!

Started painting a couple days ago, but not specific images are coming out yet. Just try to move my painting brushes back and forth on a canvas until "something" coming up to my HEAD.

I DID IT!

It's been almost 5 months since I first started this "purplish pink " sunset.
Once I ended up "Orange" sunset which is displayed at Portico Gallery now.

But I couldn't give up to paint purplish pink clouds in the dark blue sky. I kept challenging it and stopped a little while and painting again and even ruined 2 canvases.

Then, finally I finished painting it today except putting varnish on after it dries. I son't want to say this is the exactly I wanted to paint, but 85%, I feel comfortable with it.

Now I'm ready to swich my mind to going to Japan at the end of this month and staying there almost for 2 months.

9th painting has done!

I'm still working pretty hard on painting every day and 9 paintings have done so far in this year. And this is only in the middle of April.

I'm working on the 10th one now and possibly will start one more before going to Japan at the end of May for 2 months.

The one I'm working on is another sunset scene and it suppose to be finished a long time ago. But I wasn't satisfied the colour of it. I've repainted it over 10 times and even gave up to continue to paint 3 times.

I think I finally figured out how to make the "purplish pink" clouds in the dark blue sky which I really wanted to paint, I guess. But takes a little while to finish it.

The 7th painting...

I've just finished the 7th painting of this year a couple days before. I don't know why I'm still in really "painting mode" so far.

When I painted " Undergrowth", I didn't think it ended up very different than my ordinary works. And I quite like it. After that I'm trying to paint something
different but it's not so easy to change my style even I want to.

Practice makes perfect. Practice and practice and practice.....

More than ever...

I've been painting more than ever in my life for last 3 months. And the result is I've finished 6 paintings including the largest one and the smallest one.

I've tried to concentrate more where the"light" comes from, which I've been ignoring or haven't been paying enough attention before. I think some part,not all of them, looks better because of it.

All these paintings are not ordinary landscape I painted before,either. Those are much closer look of trees and bushes.

One of them is a sunset from my balcony, but I had to confess I enhenced the orange sky a lot. And I only saw such a great sunset only twice within last 7 years.

I'm going to start another new painting tomorrow.

Painting painting painting....

One more painting has done. This is another "GREEN" painting.

I finished "Undergrowth" last month, which is an image of standing in the middle of the trail. And I painted another one, my good friend, Margreet took me for a walk with her last month and I took many pictures during walking.

Some trees are falling down and making arch. That makes me very interesting and covered with moss looks very beautiful.

This time,I concentrated more than before where the light comes from. I often forget to pay attention to the light. I hope it looks all right.

A hint of painting

Going for a walk for over an hour every day, but not in the rain, is my "routine".

A couple of weeks ago, it was just gorgeous day and I happened to see a flock of birds singing in the tree. They looked so happy and enjoying wonderful warm weather.

It turned out a small but the newest painting.

SOLD

One of my paintings was sold this morning. This is the second one in Canada. Thank you very much "someone" who bought my painting.

The first one was sold to the service Canada office in Squamish a couple years ago. I was so excited about it. I keep painting by now, then it happened again.

Yes, it's a big news of my life when my painting is sold. But I'm enjoying painting itself, so selling paintings is not only my purpose to paint. I love the moment just thinking about what to do next on my painting. That is one of the happiest moment of my life. Thanks to my husband's support, I'm a happy person to be able to have such a great moment almost every day.

I also enjoying walking almost every day. I walk over an hour including a little running between when I feel like it. After painting ,walking and a little running, I always feel great. Especially such a gorgeous day like today.

The largest painting...

The first and the largest painting I've ever done in Canada has just finished today. It's 24"X30".

I got this canvas for over 2 years but I couldn't figure out what to paint. Then finally I started painting last early October, a little stream n a middle and many trees around.

Then all the sudden I lost passion, I left it until the end of November. Since then, I painted almost every day. It turned out no stream but a stump covered with moss and a lot of trees around.

This is one of the scenes I saw when my good friend, Margreet, took me for walk with her and her dog in a trail close her home. If she didn't take me, I've never seen this beautiful scene. Thanks to Margreet, I still have a lot of scenes I want to paint.

Now I'm working on the next show in Whistler. But it has a theme "Mother of Wind". I still can't figure out what I can paint... time is ticking..........