Updates from Arena Shawn Watercolor Studio

After a busy day at Filoli, I was happy to be able to still finish this little painting tonight. I used a very limited palette because I was inspired by some Sumi ink paintings and Haiku-like photographs I saw today. When I was painting it I thought about fog gradually rising on empty river surface, a lonely fishing boat anchored near shore, with its fishing-cormorants resting on the long pole at the end of it. The fisherman with a glass or two of hard liquor, resting after a day's hard work... It's a more and more rare scene even in rural China nowadays, the country being so rapidly developed. I know the romance in rural lifestyle is probably exaggerated while the hardship deliberately overlooked with people outside writing or painting about it, but still, born and raised in a mega city, I cannot help but being slightly nostalgia when thinking about such life of the past, which I have never experienced genuinely... :-P Life is full of controversies I guess.