Red Parrot in Chiang Mai

This is my second submission to Virtual Paintout July 2012 Thailand challenge. It's oil on 9x12 canvas panel.

I saw this parrot on the side of the street around Chiang Mai (ref). Not only did I like the color of the parrot, I also liked the shadows casted on the bird by all the branches and leaves. I also decided to change the background to black, as opposed to white, to bring out deep rich color of the bird. 

Heidi in Rice Field

This is for Virtual Paintout July 2012, Thailand. It's oil on 10x14 canvas panel.

There are lots of nice scenes to paint in Thailand. The first one I've chosen is a rice field scene just outside of Chiang Mai, which is basically a combination of this scene (ref) and this one (ref).  I like the shadow from the tall trees plus the layers of rice fields. I also wanted to use the purple / yellow green color combination. 

I painted this painting while staying with my relative in the San Francisco area. I decided to paint in my little four year old niece Heidi walking down in the path. Everyone got a nice kick out of it.

Daisies in Clay Pot

This is for Still Life Workshop July 2012 challenge. It's oil on 9x12 canvas panel.

The summer has been busy with so many trips, family visits, kids camps etc. It's been hard to find time to paint, but I thought I had to do this nice exercise on daisies in clay pot (ref), plus I get to try out some new colors I bought from Blicks a few weeks ago.

I wanted this little painting to have some contrasting colors, such as blue vs orange (background cloth vs pot), and yellow vs purple (warm color daisy petals vs those in shadow and the lavenders). For the flower petals, I used palette knife to put in heavy paint to make the flowers stand out more.