Buongiorno! This is my latest Venice Canal watercolour painting, and it is the seventh piece in my Venice watercolour series! It is still a work in progress.
Can you guess the colour of the water? The water in Venice's canals can be quite dramatic and full of surprises! Wait until I complete this piece, and you'll know the answer.
As for now, il colore dell'acqua rimane un piccolo segreto veneziano.
The original Venice: A Timeless Passage, soon to be available in my shop!
For more than 20 years, I had never seen a single woodpecker visit my garden, which is like a small forest. Kingfishers and owls, yes—but never a woodpecker.
Over the past few weeks, I have been watching a woodpecker family appear in my garden. They even made a hole in a tree, and I saw young woodpeckers living inside it! It has now been more than a week since they disappeared. I am not sure whether woodpeckers are migratory birds.
To me, being able to watch woodpeckers up close—sometimes only 10 feet away—on many mornings and evenings was simply unforgettable. I watched them fly, cling to tree trunks just as woodpeckers do, and drill holes in search of food. It was a remarkable experience.
The first time I saw one was several weeks ago on a morning when I was not wearing my glasses. I faintly noticed a bird clinging to a tree in my backyard. I immediately thought it might be a woodpecker because I had never seen any other bird pose that way. So I concluded that it must be a woodpecker, and it turned out that I was right! It was a woodpecker family raising their young in the hole they had made.
The sounds of woodpeckers are adorable and also quite loud at times. I have heard three different kinds of sounds from them. One is the soft sound they make while flying, almost like cotton or a cloud moving through the air. Another is a quiet sound, like whispering, as if the bird is talking to itself. The third is a very loud call that almost sounds like a scream. Three different kinds of sounds from a single species of woodpecker! What a blessing it has been to observe and study the life of a woodpecker family!
A new watercolour art print, now available in my Etsy shop.
Venice: A Timeless Passage — original watercolour by Denise Wong
A gondolier on the Grand Canal. Sunlit palazzi in ochre and cream. Water the colour of aquamarine — shifting, restless, alive.
This is Venice: A Timeless Passage, my latest Venice watercolour painting, and it is now available as a museum-quality print in my Etsy shop.
The painting captures a gondola mid-passage on the Grand Canal, with the grand palazzi of Venice rising behind it. I painted the water with a lot of movement — blues and greens that change as the light shifts — and kept the buildings in warm, sun-washed tones. The gondolier and his passengers are silhouetted against all that brightness, which gives the scene its quiet drama.
Shown here framed in a living room setting.
The prints are produced on archival Japanese paper — thick, museum-quality stock with excellent colour fidelity and a subtle texture that suits watercolour beautifully.
Paper: Archival, Japan-sourced · 189 g/m² · 10.3 mil
Sizes: 11.69″ × 16.54″ (A3+) | 16.5″ × 23.3″ (A2)
Prices: $70 | $80
Shipping: Worldwide shipping available
These are open-edition prints, which means there is no limited run — you can order whenever you like. I will soon be making all my prints available in these two sizes at the same pricing, so do browse the full shop if you are looking for other Venice or Italian landscapes.
If you have any questions about the prints, shipping, or anything else, feel free to message me through Etsy — I typically respond within a few hours.
Shop Venice: A Timeless Passage →