Wet mounting my two black and white pieces

Now that I've finished painting the two black and white pieces of works, which began with a notion that I could depict "atmosphere" with an ink brush and a water brush, I need to have them mounted.  Wet mounted that is.  

I keep harping on the topic of mounting works done on Xuan because in my neck of the woods people are still pretty naïve about this practice.  They either don't think that is so different from stretching an oil canvas over a frame, or from plain old matting a painting or picture.  As I had mentioned before, even our local attraction which supposedly promote Asian art and culture would display unmounted works in their office lobbies. I also personally know people who have sold framed, unmounted works on Xuan and are surreptitiously elated because the buyers of their works didn't know better.  Neither of these do justice to works done on Xuan, hence my insistence on writing about mounting. 

Enough soliloquy.  I should take heed of the name of a restaurant here, "Shut up and Eat".

My works are done on cicada skin Xuan and they are extremely fragile.  Great care must be paid to the handling of this paper, either when wet or dry.

The painting was laid face down on a clear sheet of plastic and wetted thoroughly.  Water relaxes the fibers in the paper.  Wrinkles invariably formed and the painting now looked like the skin of an old person.  The trick was to spray more water onto it, such that the paper actually floated on a thin film of water.  This allowed the wet Xuan to move freely on top of the plastic and most of the wrinkles and air bubbles could be stretched out.

Starch was brushed onto the back of the painting.  The stiff brush further pressed out any remaining wrinkles and air bubbles.  A piece of regular Xuan was put onto the back of the freshly starched painting.  Now that the painting was starched to the backing, the two pieces were lifted as one off the plastic and draped onto my wood board to dry.

The photo above showed the wet painting with its backing being hung out to dry.

The drying process renders the fibers taut in the paper.  The starch and the backing Xuan add strength and rigidity to the once whimsy cicada skin Xuan.  Remember the starched shirts and trousers in the old days?  I certainly do.  It's the same idea.  

I would use a double weight Xuan paper for my backing in this setting.  The double weight Xuan is thicker and more durable.  This is a 30 inch painting, so the two pieces of paper absorbed quite a bid of water (and starch).  The weight of all that water could easily tear the wet backing paper when being lifted from the plastic and transported to the wood board.  Try imagining how flimsy a wet piece of paper towel can get.  Now imagine lifting and handling one that is 40 inches long, laden with water.  

I knew I needed to be gentle and careful when doing the mounting, yet I still managed to nick a hole in my paper.  That seems to be my signature move. 

This was not the time to panic.  A very wet brush saturated with water could gently refloat the nicked area and tease the tear back to its original state, or at least greatly minimize the damage.  Never use a tweezer or you would tear the piece off and end up with a hole, guaranteed.   

The other painting, C'era una volta il West was mounted the same way.

In the photo above one could clearly see the white that was painted on the back of a dune and the tree. I used the white pigment to guarantee a solid white background for those two features, without adding distracting brushstrokes to the front of the painting.

The backing Xuan and the painting done on cicada skin Xuan were hung on my wood board to dry.  In this state of dampness, one could clearly see the effect of the white from the back.

This was how the painting looked when dried.  Notice how flat and taut the piece was.  It was like being ironed onto the wood board.

Again, the white from the back revealed nicely, without being obtrusive.  The fact that no visible "white" brushstrokes were seen bestowed a much more natural feel to the painting.  This harmony reminds me of a dark pupil next to the white of the eye.  The pupil is not a button stitched onto the sclera, but a natural looking component of our eye.  The same can be said about the negative space in the lower left corner.  That void was done on purpose, albeit without the help of white pigment on the back of the paper.  That one vacant corner gave room for the painting to "breathe".

LOST

C'era una volta il West

C'era una volta il West

I kept looking at my Painted Hill painting and something did not feel right.

I eventually noticed that my dunes were flanked from the front only, with nothing in the back.  That didn't make any sense.

A horizon was written in.  That was easy enough.  Ink soaked tip was allowed to disperse ink via pre-wetted areas just below the ink line.  The area to the right of the big dune was a little too vast to work this formula, so a few dark dunes were painted in, to contrast with the lighter dune in the front.

It was making more sense.  The painting however was still begging for something.  Can't really put my finger on it.  

Perhaps I could add a few details like some sage brushes, or some Agave plants to give my desert some nuance.  

I picked my horse hair brushes for this endeavor.  

I don't know which part of the horse did the hair come from.  All I could say is that the hair bristles are just that.  They are bristles of thick, strong, stiff hair.  Almost like a wire brush if I'm allowed to embellish my words. 

I used these brushes because the stiff hair made the brushstrokes more forceful and resolute in appearance.  Perhaps one's wrist wiggles and wanders less with a stiff brush?  Thus I thought my sage brush and whatnot would appear less wimpy?  Since they were in such a harsh environment?  That was the idea anyways.

Something was still amiss.

Perhaps my mind was too keenly focused on the two melodies, that of the sky and the desert.  I sensed a certain alienation.  Perhaps that was the notion that I was looking for all along.  Yet I was not liking it when I looked at the painting.  The sky and the earth should be one.

I kept referring to the clouds in the sky as a melody, and the dunes of the desert as my counter-melody.  If this painting was truly a musical interpretation, then I needed a resolution to tie the two melodies together.

How about a tree in the near foreground.   

The tree could steer the line of sight from the ground to the sky, and also helped to extend the scenery even farther away.  

I had intended for the small dune on the left to assume the darkest tone.  I felt that the large dune on the right was too dark for a proper separation.  But how do I lighten the value.  This was not an oil painting or something that I could overpaint on.

I turned to the back of the translucent Xuan.  I used titanium white on the back of the large dune.

The idea was not to "lighten" the dune per se, but to ensure that I had a solid white background to define my tones in that area.  Thus the light and void areas would absolutely look brighter and lighter with a solid white backing from the titanium white.

Had I used the titanium white on the surface of the paper, the occlusive paint would impart a different texture and reflectiveness to the surface of the painting.  The effect would be an unpleasant one.  Whereas the color on the back of the paper would do its job without any fuss.  The coloring-on-the-back of Xuan technique is commonly employed when we do leaves and flower petals.  Often a color of indigo or yellow (a difficult color to master) would be painted on the back of the paper, and the intended color would be painted on the top side.  The combined effect of the two colors from both sides of the paper is delicately elegant.  

The same technique was applied to the tree.

I used the stiff horse hair brush to write the tree, so the brushstrokes were streaky with lots of void space showing in-between the bristles.  The titanium white on the back made sure that the voids in the brushstrokes showed up, giving a knurly character to the branches of this dead tree in a forsaken place.

Perhaps the painting now looked somewhat cliché, but it most certainly made sense.  Without color cues to describe the landscape, especially not knowing a thing about the striated claystone layers, the menacing clouds and the bleak landscape spell doom, not beauty.  I suppose the dead tree is the epitaph in a sense.  It might as well be a cross. What if I painted a cross and not a dead tree?  That would be a lot more theatrical.  I wonder if the sky was painted blue and the dunes were given stripes of gold and black and rust, would the painting assume an inviting and adventurous persona, and not one of desolation?

The painting was inspired by C'era una volta il West. (Once upon a time in the West)

Wild Wild West-Painted Hills

It is time to compose my counter-melody, i.e. the bottom half of the wild wild west.  This is the part where the desert scene of Painted Hills in central Oregon would fit in.  

There really is a place called the Painted Hills in central Oregon.  The spot is actually not a desert so to speak, but a gathering of dunes of claystones that display stratified layers of different colors, from rust to gold to black.  I picked this theme as my counter-melody because I think the stripes are very different from the clouds.  The exception is that they are both layered.  Yes clouds are amorphous but a sea of clouds certainly has structure.  In my painting they are layered.  Thus I believe it would be visually stimulating to compare and contrast the clouds with striped dunes.  

I started out with a small dune.  I needed this to be a reference point for my darkest tone for this half of the painting.

I then painted in the foreground.  A nondescript stretch of real-estate.

Chuen are brushstrokes used to describe the texture of the soil or rocks.  I've touched upon techniques like the axe-chuen, hemp chuen in my past blogs, and I had also alluded to the dot-chuen.  This is done by writing dots in strategic areas; either to help with shading, or to hide mistakes.  In my case, I used this technique to texturized the entire foreground.  Sort of like pixels from yesteryears newspaper print.  Or perhaps what the western world called pointillism.  Isn't it interesting that the East and the West are really not that different.

 

My next chore was to construct the main theme of this counter-melody; the main dune that occupied the greater portion of the lower half of the painting.

I had written in the shape of the dune, and the contour lines of the lopes of the dune.  Thrusting my brush backwards such that the brush tip lined up with the contour line was my way to achieve the proper shading.  This was done in lieu of the traditional chuen technique because I found shading to be more effective in describing the lobes.  A void in the middle of the lobe suggested a bulging structure.  My goal was to create these fingers running down the slopes of the dunes.  

Stripes were written to illustrate the striated features of these painted hills.

The lower left portion of the landscape was left open on purpose.  This is what we Chinese brush painters called "breathing".  It helped to open up the scene.  Had that void been filled in, the painting might look somewhat claustrophobic.   

Wild Wild West

I am a fan of Ennio Morricone.  When The Good, the Bad and the Ugly came to the silver screen there was no internet to search for information.  I was also too young to want to dig up where the music came from or was it original music.  All I knew was that it was great music.  It wasn't until much, much later that I found out who the composer was.  Gabriel's Oboe made my eyes swelled up.  His C'era una volta il West is the epitome of songs without words.  The angelic soprano voice has no lyrics, yet it says so much.

Recently I found a documentary about Ennio Morricone on my subscription and I finally had a chance to learn about this great composer.  I learned that he loved to experiment with sounds made by playing musical instruments in an improvised, non-traditional way.  I suppose he was much too playful for his conservatory trained background and his colleagues and that his association with the so called spaghetti westerns costed him the proper respect he deserved. He was not looked upon as a serious composer.  He was nominated for numerous works and movie tracks and was always snubbed.  In fact the Academy presented him with an honorary award thinking that he might never earn a real one.  He finally won his only real Oscar 4 years before his death.   I suppose if one is in the business, then the Oscar is possibly the most significant thing that matters, like it or not.

His life story gives solace to those of us who like to be experimental or prodigal at times,  The different drum beat we follow often rub the establishment the wrong way. The heart of the matter is, he absolutely enjoyed what he was doing.  He would often times turn down different works only to acquiesce later because he found inspiration and he wanted to leave his marks.

The documentary on Morricone made a lot of references to the Westerns.  The wild west backdrops of these movies remind me of the cloud pieces that I've been playing around with.  Borrowing from his theme Once Upon a Time in the West, I am inspired to do a painting with big sky and expansive landscape.  I am aiming for my own painting without words.  Let's see if I can deliver that notion.

I sketched a roadmap of what my piece might look like.

My clouds on the top side.  There would be more void spaces on one side, to make the arrangement look more interesting.  I wanted a couple of dark clouds in the middle, not only to create contrast with the rest of the sky, but to give perspective of distance.  My theory was that the darker clouds would appear denser and more suffocating, thus should be closer to the ground than the rest. I sort of wanted the clouds to radiate from the center of the painting, utilizing them to define the vanishing horizon.  

I would use a landscape from the central part of Oregon to complement the sky.  Central Oregon is known as desert country and we have a geological feature of dunes with strata of different colors from different minerals.  One such spot is called the Painted Hills.  I picked this feature because I needed a desert for my wild west scene, and I thought it would be surreptitiously funny to name a black and white painting Painted Hills.  I can see people scratching their heads.  That's what I like about black and white paintings.  They force us to let go of a lot of foregone conclusions of what different objects are being described.  We have to read the painting to get the context.

I suppose I could call the dramatic clouds portion of the painting a melody. The two dark clouds could be the main theme of the melody.  The abandoned desert would be the counter-melody, to borrow a musical term. 

That's the plan anyways.

I sketched in the borders of the two center clouds.  I was concerned about their "silver linings" effect, or the absence of.  The pencil marks helped me to visualize the clouds better against the white paper, especially before the darker contrast of the next cloud was painted in. 

I then moved on over to the right portion of my clouds.  I loved doing these clouds because I felt more spontaneous.  I could feel that freedom in my brushstrokes.  It was also gratifying to see the cumulus clouds cumulating and being sculptured by each successive dark brushstroke, like lava oozing out from fissures.  At the same time it was challenging for my brain to identify and define the void areas by using ink.  It was almost like backing up a trailer on a hitch.  One needs to steer left to effect a right turn!  It absolutely took practice.

  

My intention was to make the sky very dramatic and haunting.  A white sky did not convey that feeling.  My dirty ink rag under the paper gave me an idea.  Paint the sky black to allow the clouds to shine.

So was this too much?  It was too late to change anyways.  I could not undo or lighten the dark ink.  Besides, I said that one needs to let go of their foregone conclusions when reading a black and white painting.  So the sky doesn't always have to be white, or light.  Right?  In any case, the "silver linings" really popped now.  

Actually I liked the drama.  Loved the drama.  

Speaking of drama, I wasn't sure that the "silver linings" were grandiose enough.  Then I realized that my translucent Xuan was sitting on my felt underlay which was not white.

So this would be the appearance of the painting if it was mounted on a white piece of Xuan.  The proper white balance would be restored.  This is a great example of why we must mount our paintings done on Xuan paper.  There is no two ways about it.  

I laid a piece of white matboard beneath part of the painting to further illustrate my point of the necessity of mounting.

Atmosphere 2.0

I decide to continue my quest to describe atmosphere with my brush and ink.

I am using the same kind of paper, a semi-sized Xuan.  I am sticking with the basic construct of the composition.  What I have learned from the last exercise is that my technique of using a water brush along with an ink brush seemed a little monotonous.  I am looking for more variations, not only in ink tones but especially in shapes.

I am starting a new experiment by loading the tip of my soaking wet brush with saturated ink and rely on the natural depletion of the brush and the natural dispersion of the ink to effect the change of tonal values.  

Notice that I'm holding my brush flat with the inked tip pointing towards myself.  Thus the subsequent brushstroke will have the dark ink contrasting with the light portion of the previous brushstroke.  This is how I am going to improve on my rather banal brushstrokes from the previous painting.  I find this to be a more expressive method of defining shape and tone, for my purposes anyways.

In short, I am using the dark values of my brush to define and give shape to the voids.  I learned this trick during my days of doing floral Chinese painting.  The example below shows how the dark color of the leaves are used to describe the serrated petals of the flower.

I am glad I am able to recall this time-tested method of painting.  It definitely makes my brushstrokes more lively.  I can actually design the body and shape of my clouds now. 

As I am taking a break from the current painting, my eyes wander to the one I finished a couple of weeks ago, the one that I think looks a bid drab.  Could I change the character of the painting by cropping it?

I eliminated the upper portion of that painting.  The clouds seemed trite and were distracting from the story.  I am liking this new version now.  It is menacing, to say the least.  Not drab anymore.  It packs a punch now.

What if I crop the yet unfinished painting that I'm working on now?

It certainly does not impart the same flavor as the last one.  It needs a lot of work.  I better continue with the painting and see where it leads me.

For the sky on the right side of my painting I shall give the clouds a more compact look, to contrast with the big fat cumulous clouds on the left.

I mean these are still lumpy, but they are more layered.  Almost like dough folding over themselves when being kneaded.  

Of course I still need cloud patches that retain all the tonal values, but garnished with the silver lining. I can't have everything in high contrast.  A few well-placed and diffused dark areas add to the credibility that these are indeed clouds.

I'll be remiss if I don't address the dark bar at the bottom of my painting.  My reason to include that is purely to give anchor to the painting.  Frankly I have problem presenting a story with just clouds.  My vocabulary is rather limited and I do not have the eloquence.  

To avoid presenting the dark strip as dead weight, I used my alum solution to write a few wriggly lines. My intention is to let the alum solution act as a sizing agent, thus help to block out being covered up by subsequent ink brushstrokes.

So how do I account for such void spaces.  

That's up to the viewer.  

For me, I am reminded of waves cresting. 

Under an ominous, boiling sky.

Atmosphere

I viewed a video clip of the SpaceX Starship on a return trip back to earth, re-entering the atmospheric bubble that encases our planet earth.  As it passed through the seemingly invisible air, there was enough friction generated between the Starship and air molecules to produce heat, which was intense enough to make it glow.  I was reminded of glowing crucible from a furnace in my chemistry lab.  Absolutely mesmerizing. 

It is difficult for me to fathom that the invisible air that we breathe everyday is capable of causing such searing heat.  The air looks and feels so innocuous. Of course don't tell that to anyone who has weathered a hurricane, or typhoon in my case.  Or anyone who has gone through severe turbulence during a flight.  Water, we can see and respect but we seem to take air for granted.

An acclaimed quote from my fellow countryman Bruce Lee is "be like water".  I am fascinated by water.  I admire and fear water simultaneously.  The fleeting shimmer, the incessant swells. From the trickling stream to the rhythmic crashes of waves.  Yet I'm not keen to ford every stream because I'm afraid of drowning, even for shallow water.  Incredibly I am a water-sign, I'm told. 

I've done quite a few paintings with a water theme.  Any student of Chinese brush landscape painting has to learn how to paint mountains and water.  The literal translation of 山水畫 is paintings of mountains and water.  Water and air are both fluids by definition; a shapeless substance that moves freely and adopt the shape of its container.  So how do I paint air?

Perhaps I could submit a huge blank piece of Xuan and label it "AIR".  Perhaps some avant-garde gallery would sponsor my brilliant piece of art and it will draw an audience of arms-folding admirers.  Wink. Wink. 

It dawned on me that I don't paint water per se, but the features of it.  The pounding waves, the tremulous ripples.  So I could paint air by it's features, the floating clouds, the veiling mists.  

This new project should offer me a chance for some experimentation.  How to capture the fleeting atmospheric phenomena.  

I'm choosing a semi-sized Xuan for my tinkering.  I wish to benefit from the ability of ink to disperse somewhat before getting fully absorbed into the fibers.  I am hoping that this property will help to bring out the notion of transition, both figuratively and literally. 

I am using two brushes.  One with dark ink, the other just water.  My gist is to write an ink track and immediately apply water to the edges to modify the track and allow the ink to diffuse and disperse under the guidance of the water brush.  My rationale is clouds have dark and bright sides, sometimes defined by bright sharp edges; depending on where the sun is.  I wonder if this is where the term "silver lining" came from. The dark and light sides are not dissimilar to painting lobes of a hill or mountain.  The lobes of clouds are obviously less rigid and more amorphous unless the clouds are those of the anvil thunder clouds variety.  Anyways this is like a game to me.  A game that has a few tenets, but one can wink it most of the time.  

A line is written with ink, and modified with a water brush as shown in the next insert

Subsequent "lines" are written and modified to represent layers of clouds,

Repeating this process to build my atmospheric features,

Here is where I call it quits, enough playing for now.

Gone like a yellow crane

"去如黃鶴 "  for those of you who doesn't read Chinese, that means "Gone like a yellow crane".

Legend has it that some scholar was visited by a crane-riding fairy.  The fairy and the crane departed after a few drinks and no trace could be found of the encounter.  Thus the phrase "gone like a yellow crane" suggests something or someone is gone for good and never coming back.  

Sometime ago I painted a rather dark piece, a figure head with eyes closed and an enigmatic expression on the face.  There were also nondescript people in the background, seemingly ready to vacate the scene in unison.

It was a setting of emptiness, departure, abandonment. 

I don't know why I had painted it the way I did.  I just remembered that I wasn't feeling happy, per se.  I've attached the labels of "Zen" or "Meditation" to the painting, but somehow these labels don't really address my feelings when I painted it.  I just employed the catch words of "Zen", "Meditation" to satisfy the masses.  Pretty stereotypical or perhaps even fashionable for some Asian fellow to exploit or appropriate eastern ideals of Zen and Meditation, right?

Perhaps it is a personality flaw of mine.  I like to paint when I'm not feeling "right".  I like to paint when I am upset.  I like to paint in cramped quarters.  I like to paint when surrounded by noise.  Only then can I translate the swells in my thoughts into something perhaps only I can comprehend. 

I painted this female drinking by herself, her face manifesting an introspective and less than jovial expression.  Perhaps touched by the music from the guitar and lyrics from the singer. 

Could it be that I was painting myself in that picture.  I was in an introspective and less than jovial space myself when this painting was done.

Anyways one day out of the blue I added a crane to my dark painting.  Flying away from the scene.  Right away I knew that was the missing link.  That had always been the story I was trying to narrate.

Aside from being the topic of a legend, the yellow crane happens to be included in the lines of a famous poem.  

I am going to showcase just the two pertinent lines from this poem.  It is difficult for me to type the whole poem in Chinese because I don't seem to be able to learn to type Chinese on my keyboard, despite my younger brother's relentless efforts.

黃鶴一去不復返

白雲千載空悠悠

My English translation is:

The yellow crane has left, never returning,

All is left are white clouds, emptiness, for millenniums.

I felt so much better after I added the missing crane to my painting.  My painting had finally unveiled its true meaning.

I had wanted to write those two verses onto the painting but I didn't feel the urge at the time.

I was at a happy place, at the time.  I was too busy being a narcissist, enjoying myself.

Well today is one of those days that my emotions get the better of me.  My buddy whom I've known for almost 5 decades is now taking donepezil, a medication used for treating cognitive issues by preserving the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.  I desperately need something positive to steer me into the clear.

There is no better time than now to finish my painting by putting down the calligraphy.  I have always confessed that my calligraphy leaves a lot to be desired.  In order to not deface my painting, I need to make an effort to practice my calligraphy first.  People might frown on me for needing to practice for calligraphy before I pen, or brush in this case, something.   I don't see them frown on musicians rehearsing before a concert.  

One of my go tos is a fa tie that transcribes a thousand characters into different font styles 

Mine happens to include 6 different fonts,

So I start to practice on the two verses of the poem that I alluded,

All that culminates in this

I am in a good place, again.  For now.  Such a catharsis.  I have words to guide me now, GPS for my thoughts.

This all seem anecdotal I am sure.  To me it's more like the chicken and the egg argument.  We paint to express something inside of us, but that "something" might not be lucid in the beginning.

I'm ready for my vision.