The main themes for my Whimsical Watercolours are feelings, memories and dreams. A lot of the ideas come from a need of expressing my emotions in a colourful way.
Art is very healing.
All of my Whimsical Watercolours are painted on watercolour paper. Some are available as Art Prints too!
I saw a pig heart hooked on a butcher’s hook in a fresh market in Tai Wai months ago. I was too shy to be a tourist and take a picture at the time, but the image has stuck with me ever since.
I liked the image, because it represented so well what it can feel like to fall in love. It’s not always butterflies. Sometimes, it’s much more intense than that.
Dimensions: 270 mm x 390 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, rough, acid free)
Banyan trees, or stone wall trees, are the most fascinating element of Hong Kong’s cityscape. These gentle tenacious giants grow straight out of walls, entangling their roots into ever nook and cranny they reach, after dangling gracefully from their strong branches. The epitome of what it is to live in this urban jungle.
Dimensions: 180 mm x 260 mm
Media: watercolour and gouache on paper (300 g/m2, hot press, 100% cotton, acid free, archival)
I’ve left Shanghai almost a year and a half ago, and I still often miss that magical city.
I remember how my breath stopped and my heart raced the first time I caught a glimpse of the grandiose skyline. There’s nothing like it.
My favourite building in the surreal architectural display is, as you might’ve guessed, The Pearl.
Dimensions: 180 mm x 260 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, hot press, 100% cotton, acid free, archival)
I have a thing for adorable sea creatures, and seahorses are fascinating little ocean cutie pies.
It was stormy, and I wanted to inject some colour into my day and create myself a little buddy to keep me company so I wouldn’t get too scared of the loud explosions of thunder. Doesn’t he look shy?
Dimensions: 105 mm x 155 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, 100% cellulose, acid free)
I needed some winter refresh the other day. It was really, really, really scorching hot. The kind of hot and humid that transforms you into a messy sweaty puddle as soon as you take 3 steps outside.
So I pictured the coldest place I could think of. The magical great north and its magical dancing skies.
I’ve only ever had the pleasure of witnessing auroras twice in my life. A magnificent gigantic one in Shiloh, Manitoba, and a small but just as magnificent one in Sherbrooke, Québec.
Have you ever seen the sky dance?
Dimensions: 190 mm x 240 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, 100% cellulose, acid free)
I went swimming a bit in the murky garbage-infested waters the people of Hong Kong call the ocean recently.
As a plastic bag got caught in my toes, my mind transported me to the crystal clear waves and colourful corals of my memories. The peaceful feeling of lazily following a fish through its salty underwater world.
Dimensions: 210 mm x 297 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, 100% cellulose, acid free)
Even when the winds are rough and the clouds are dark, if you just keep going, you can reach a rainbow 🌈
Dimensions: 200 mm x 287 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, 100% cellulose, acid free)
This piece represents a night spent riding a rollercoaster of emotions that left me confused and vulnerable. After chaotic thoughts, as the wine bottle empties and the sun rises, there’s a certain tranquility to be found.
(I know, I know, this is an acrylic canvas and not a watercolour painting, but this is still the category it ends up in and that’s that. 😝)
Dimensions: 300 mm x 400 mm
Media: acrylic on canvas
I was living in Shanghai when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The lockdown transformed me (and everyone!) into a couch potato, but I wanted to make myself feel better about it.
I guess illustrating it made me feel less like a guilty potato, and more like a fancy potato!
I often feel like a couch potato, so this is an ongoing series!
What kind/colour of couch are you?
Orange Couch
Dimensions: 148 mm x 210 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (160 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
Red Couch
Dimensions: 143 mm x 210 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
We always think butterflies are in the stomach, but to me, falling in love feels like my heart itself grows wings.
Blowing on the drops of paint and ink to make the pigments scatter in any which way represents the uncertainty of new heart flutters and all the directions nascent love can go.
I wanted to reference inkblot tests, as falling in love makes people “crazy”, but layered it over an anatomical heart and clear butterfly wings to explore the dichotomy between perception and reality when it comes to relationships.
Dimensions: 180 mm x 260 mm
Media: watercolour and ink on paper (300 g/m2, hot press, acid free)
Blind to climate change or constantly silenced about humanity’s horrible impact on the planet, is it a good plan to keep treating Earth like a toy globe while scanning the cosmos to find a replacement planet? That’ll work out well, right?
(I know, I know, this is an acrylic canvas and not a watercolour painting, but this is still the category it ends up in and that’s that. 😝)
Dimensions: 300 mm x 400 mm
Media: acrylic on canvas
Dandelions are enchanting. How they suddenly transform from pure sunshine into dreamy white fluffy clouds is pure magic. They’re my absolute favourite flowers, in both iterations. Blowing on the delicate spheres to help them spread their beauty by floating in a soft breeze always makes me feel poetically happy.
Dimensions: 180 mm x 260 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
Meat hanging to dry is a common occurrence in Shanghai. Whether it is in a window, on the street, in an apartment compound, or anywhere.
These two chickens looked liked they were dancing in the doorway of my friend’s lane house, and it was too beautifully creepy not to paint.
Dimensions: 210 mm x 286 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (160 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
I’ve been feeling pretty blue these days, and decided to remedy that with some silly, cheerful art.
I was inspired by an awesome 10-year-old artist that came over for an intro to watercolours class last week. She was really creative and we ended up painting some watermelon cats together, which inspired this colourful Kitti Tutti Frutti piece.
Veggies next? 😜
Dimensions: 210 mm x 297 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (180 g/m2, medium tooth, acid free)
After the fruit come the veggies. I couldn’t resist.
Isn’t the broccoli fabulous? 😜
Which one is your favourite?
Dimensions: 210 mm x 297 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (180 g/m2, medium tooth, acid free)
Sometimes, illustrating something scary makes it less scary! (Even though it was – and still is – super scary!)
(GET VACCINATED!)
Dimensions: 210 mm x 286 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (160 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
My parents lived in Magog when I was born, but moved to Farnham when I was only 1 year old, so that doesn’t really count.
Then I lived in Farnham, in a beautiful house with an infinite lawn in a dreamy tiny town for the most idyllic childhood ever (minus the nightmares, of course).
I lived there for a blissful decade before being uprooted without my consent and forced to move to The House Getting Eaten By Plants in Sherbrooke. I stayed there for about 9 years.
Then 2.5 years in Montreal, ~6 months in Tanzania, about 8 months back in Sherbrooke (most spent on a sickbed – totally unrelated to the trip of a lifetime I had just come back from), 6 months in Dublin, 3 years in Ottawa, 3 years in Montreal, and back to Sherbrooke for about 2 years, with a couple of trips to the Netherlands squeezed in there to be with the new hubby.
Then Shiny-Shanghai for almost 3 years. Before moving yet again, this time to Hong Kong.
So here I am, feeling kinda lonely.
Because I’ve abandoned too many friends and some have rightfully abandoned me back.
And if loneliness isn’t feeling like you’re roaming around an empty, desert-like landscape, then I guess I should go back to the drawing board.
Dimensions: 180 mm x 260 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
I will not even try to explain the stories and legends surrounding the Mid-Autumn Festival because I am a silly laowai/gweilo, but they are fantastic and please look them up if you don’t know about them!
The short version a local friend told me is that the moon is at its most round that day, and this big, plump shape in the sky represents an infinite circle that means unity and connexion. That’s why the snacks of the festival, Moon Cakes, are perfectly round and meant to be shared between loved-ones under the moon.
I love that festival. And the delicious Moon Cakes that come with it!
Dimensions: 210 mm x 286 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (160 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
I took this picture while my husband and I were enjoying decadent beignets in City Park, New Orleans, on the one and only day of our honeymoon.
It was an incredibly romantic day and I felt such joy immortalising this snapshot in watercolours!
NOT FOR SALE, BUT AVAILABLE AS PRINT
Dimensions: 210 mm x 143 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (160 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
Funnily enough, I sketched this years ago when I was really sad. It was missing the last step when I first drew it and definitely not looking very joyful.
I repainted it to transform a sad moment into a happy one.
Dimensions: 180 mm x 260 mm
Media: watercolour and ink on paper (300 g/m2, hot press, acid free)
I needed a bit of cheering up after breaking my leg at the end of last year, and this is what came out as a celebratory welcome to a fresh new year, hopefully with no broken bones.
Cheers to all the fucking fabulous ladies out there 🥂
Dimensions: 180 mm x 260 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
My friends used to say my childhood home looked like it was “getting eaten by plants”.
My mom and her excessively green thumb moved out, and, living abroad, I never had the chance to say goodbye properly.
It broke my heart in a strange way, and I didn’t know how to process it. So, I painted it as a self-art-therapy session, and it actually helped a lot to process my grief.
There were some tears involved, but I definitely felt better after painting!
Dimensions: 210 mm x 286 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (160 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
My very first bedroom was gorgeous during the day.
But at night… The lamb skin beside my bed, the clown wallpaper, the fine white veil curtain billowing in the breeze and the tree branches scraping on the window…
My fertile imagination transformed it into a total nightmare factory!
The clowns doing cartwheels on the band of wallpaper would jump out at me in the dark.
I often got completely petrified, and certainly couldn’t put a foot on the ground – what about the monster under the bed?!
I would pretend to be thirsty and softly call out to my mom for her to unknowingly come and rescue me from my own imagination.
Sweet dreams, sweet child.
Dimensions: 180 mm x 260 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
When I say that the idea of going back to work in an office feels like my aura is turning dusty grey… I worked in endless seas of cubicles before, and I don’t want to turn into a robot!
Dimensions: 180 mm x 260 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
I took a photo of the front of our apartment building the morning we left Shanghai almost a year ago, on February 14th, 2021. I loved that place. We had made it our cosy little home, with the kind neighbours and peaceful surroundings. I still miss it, and it only felt natural to me to paint it as an hommage to the beautiful memories we left behind.
NOT FOR SALE
Dimensions: 190 mm x 240 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
Sometimes, a favourite song of mine shuffles into play and an image just appears in my head. With being confined inside for so long, sometimes it feels safer to just stay in and the outside becomes a scary place. And sometimes, “my blues don’t fit through the door anymore” (Offenbach).
Dimensions: 180 mm x 260 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
In case you haven’t been keeping up to date on pandemic news from Hong Kong, some poor hamsters caught COVID and faced a sad fate when it was deemed safer to kill many of them. To honour the fluffy friends, I decided to give one of them a beautiful resting place.
Dimensions: 180 mm x 260 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
We visited a small water town, Zhujiajiao, on the outskirts of Shanghai where we saw huge crickets for sale hanging in tiny cages. I watched them for a while, blown away by their colourful patterns and creepy limbs.
That night, I dreamt about a huge king cricket laying on our bed with a full royal court of bugs creepy-crawling around. I was his servant, running between the kitchen and the bedroom all night to keep feeding him all sorts of fruit. All the while, the regal cricket was lounging on my bed. On my pillow!
I couldn’t get the nightmare out of my head until I sketched it.
Dimensions: 148 mm x 210 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
I am fascinated by how the Fibonacci sequence, or golden ratio, appears everywhere in nature. From seashells, to plants, to curly chameleon tails, this perfect spiral makes mathematics come alive in a way none of my math teachers ever did.
Dimensions: 210 mm x 286 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (160 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
I wanted to experiment with greyscale and I was feeling naughty that week.
Isn’t art sexy?
So, sooo sexy!
Dimensions: 180 mm x 260 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (300 g/m2, hot press, acid free)
During the confined times, I followed a 30-day art challenge and became a member of an amazing art group that kept doing weekly challenges after the lockdown.
I missed out on a couple of challenges after the 30-day marathon (refer to Feeling Like A Fancy Couch Potato!), so I mixed 4 themes* all at once to catch up and I ended up actually loving the result.
I miss my cat 🙁
*The 4 themes were: nature, green, 4 styles, and passion!
Dimensions: 210 mm x 286 mm
Media: watercolour on paper (160 g/m2, cold press, acid free)
More to come!
To order a whimsical watercolour, just send me a message!
Please click on the yellow envelope to send me an email directly.
You can also contact me on my social media platforms – just click the Facebook and Instagram icons below. Don’t forget to follow me! 🙂