Paint Out at Woman's Forum State Park

At the location paint out, I was demonstrating how I do my drafts with ink.

The points that I emphasized were that we did not have to paint everything we see in the frame, and conversely we could add objects to the frame, as per our mantra gather what you see, note what you know and paint what you like. In this sketch the trees on the left were borrowed from another frame, and the rocky cliffs were presented at a different angle from the real scenery.
I wanted the trees to frame the left side of the painting, and I wanted to
give more weight to the rocky cliffs. My drafts were to be done with medium light ink, but for the purpose of demonstrating, my lines were way too dark. I painted in the rocky surface to show the group how to render a 3 dimensional feel using the Chinese brush, and how to lay down contour lines. I did the trees this way because I was trying very hard to steer the group away from painting fine needles on the firs, as was usually done in class. My mission was to show the group what Xieyi style painting was about....( paint the meaning/feeling), so we could dispense with a lot of details. The distant ranges were all done too heavily...but that was good too, gave me an opportunity to show how to amend an otherwise failed painting.


Traditional Chinese Brush Painting does not place too much emphasis on
light values, and here is how I differ.
I use shading to augment the "chun"
I rendered on the cliffs to give it that 3-D look. I wanted to leave the tree trunk and the cliffs light to create perspective.
The "way too heavy" lines were remedied by painting in mist using the wet wash technique. I've lengthened the small flanking tree a little bit. Notice the upper trunk is not done with solid lines. They were done in an interrupted fashion, and yet one could clearly make the visual perception of the trunk. It is important because the smaller tree is farther away, and clear solid lines would not have shown distance between the two trees. This "broken line" technique is very important in Chinese Brush painting, and is considered one of the virtues of this art form. This is what Chinese meant by " broken lines, connected meaning/images"

One thing I needed to point out is that the addition of color helps to integrate the painting, but color itself cannot cover up flaws. In all my paintings, coloring is the last step; after all the contour lines, "chun" lines and shading is completed.

I shall go over more in the next posting with the finished painting