Watercolor Paintings of Aso landscape

Aso is a beautiful countryside area in Kumamoto prefecture, Japan.

It’s famous for its caldera.

A caldera is a basin surrounded by a ring of mountains. 

Aso mountain itself is an active volcano and around the time of painting these pictures (2014) it erupted. 

Luckily, it was just a minor eruption and spewed out only a few small stones. These small stones smashed the windows of a nearby school. 

There was also a lot of dust. And for miles around Aso volcano everything was covered in a thin layer of dust.

This is quite a big painting.

I think it was done in February 2014.

I know this because that was the date given on the image file of this painting. It could possibly have been painted at an earlier date and then photographed at a later date. This often happened in the past as I used to be extremely unorganized.

I’m happy to say I sold this painting.

And this next painting of Aso was a surprise even to me. 

I painted this picture around 2013 or 2014.

I originally intended to throw away this painting because I remember that I wasn’t very happy with it. But I kept it because there is another painting on the other side that I was quite happy with. 

Ironically, my opinion of this painting has now changed. When I looked at it this year, 2021, I actually thought it was quite good and I’m quite happy about showing it on my website. 

This painting brings back happy memories of a family trip to Aso. 

I think my dad from England came so it was also a happy reunion. 

And I remember looking at the horses with my daughter. We really enjoyed looking at them. 

It was especially fun because you don’t see a lot of animals in the Japanese countryside. And animals in the landscape can really make the scene come to life. 

That’s all for now,

Gareth.