My Birthday Present and My Wife's Anniversary Present

My wife gave me an easel for my birthday. It was something that I had been wanting for years, but could not convince myself to buy, because, after all, one could easily do watercolor on any flat surface. An easel is not a must.

But, I so wanted it...

And now I have it. :-)

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I decided that the first picture I paint should be an anniversary present to my wife (our wedding anniversary is 8 days after my birthday).

It wasn't hard to decide what I wanted to paint. It was a picture that I had been having in my mind for a while before that. I wanted the picture to be a promise to my wife, that "this is us; this is how we will still love each other, 50 years from now".


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I started with some bamboos on the upper right corner. I decided that this painting would follow the Chinese painting philosophy of leaving blanks for imagination, so the background would be sparse.


And then I painted a patch of cobbled (tiled?) floor on the lower part, slightly off to the left (to strike a balance against that heavy patch of green on the upper right), again, with the idea of being sparse with the background.


And, as long as I was working with earth colors, might as well work in the skin, too. Skin colors are always a challenge to an artist, and I was told that every artist has his/her own secret formulas. I can't say that I have my own secret formula, but I figured the mixture was close enough to my own skin color, so, up it went onto the paper.


The bamboo chairs. I've always wanted bamboo furniture (hint to my friends out there; if I ever move to a new house again in the future, you know what to do).

I wasn't very happy with how that cat turned out, but, I wasn't really good at painting furry animals, so, it would have to do. And it was gray because I needed gray for the hair on that old couple there anyway. You see, I am quite lazy - and stingy - when it comes to squeezing out more watercolor from those precious tubes (a 15ml tube can cost up to RM50 for the higher grades).


And, talking about color, the picture below shows the palette of colors I used for the painting. The six colors used were (from top): Chinese White, Lamp Black, Cobalt Blue, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Yellow Ochre, and Vermilion (Hue).


And since I wanted the painting kind of Chinese-styled, I added some sort of a poem to it, at the bottom. The title says, "Laughing while Watching the Ocean turn into Mulberry Field".

"Ocean turning into mulberry field" (沧海桑田) is a Chinese idiom meaning great changes that are brought about by the passing of time.


The poem roughly says:

Growing old with you
though there be wind and rain along the way
we shall weather them all with a laugh

Walking with the Lord
though there be changes in life great and many
we shall find peace in God's wondrous grace