Xanadu Part 2

I've decided to revise my Xanadu painting a little bit.  I wanted to see if I could make it less "rigid" and perhaps more impressionistic.  I also wanted a wide angle presentation to facilitate a feeling of not being on a leash.

The above picture is my attempt at that goal.  The picture was taken when the Xuan paper was still wet, thus the colors were more saturated.

The next photo shows the same painting with calligraphy on it.  The writing is better than the original Xanadu, but in touching up a tree in the foreground, I made the lines too busy.  Wish I had controlled my OCD

a little better.

O Well.



As the image of hills and streams still churns in my cranium, I very quickly grabbed my brush and used whatever happened to be in my color dish and plotted out a mountainous mass with flowing lines as the liquid companion.  I basked in the initial delight of painting something altogether different, but quickly succumbed to the O Too Bland syndrome.  Found my split hair brush and started to plant my trees here and there, which ruined the "unleashed" feel of the painting.   This need for decoration caused me to write with more distinct edges in my calligraphy.  The resulting fonts perhaps seemed more curvaceous, but appeared to be anorexic.

Life is a process of reincarnating events.  An initial  attempt in painting a tranquil misty coastal forest led me to a chance encounter of a poem that mentioned Xanadu, and now this poem steered me into extracting another painting.  My lament is that quite often I grasp the light bulb alright but I could not make it shine.  I have maintained that a good painting is the amalgamation of a bunch of good accidents.  Yes I am a disciple of fate, and I shall patiently wait my turn.

Xanadu

20 mph sustained easterly wind.  41 mph gusts.  I kept focusing on the pine tree that is listing at a 60 degree angle in my backyard.   The swaying image of the scaly red branches is morphed by the streaks of raindrops running across my window pane ........ as if watching an old VCR tape with noise on the picture.

I decided to paint something a little more tranquil!

Needless to say, trees became my subject.  A forest of tall firs, punctuated by an occasional alder, bathed in a coastal shroud of fog.  An initial groundwork of laying down the tracks of trees proved to be a little too harsh for my imagination.  The body of trees seemed too concrete.  I had loaded my brush with ink in the belly, green around the torso and bits of yellow on the shoulder for that highlight.  As my brush grinds across the paper, the stops became too labored and the result was not "Xieyi" enough.    Perhaps my stops were too uniform, too calculated.  Something needs to be done about it.

I started to layer more colors and hues onto the green ribbons, hoping to mitigate some of the choppiness.

I have also started to paint in the main harness of some of these firs.  I wanted the shape of my brush strokes to suggest a general morphology, and the specific reveal of branches to affirm the recognition.  I've also decided the painting  is too cold, so I warmed up the fog a bit.

The next task is trying to decide what to do with all that empty space.  In my Serene Lake painting I had left the space on purpose...... in fact the whole painting was about empty space and about day dreaming but this piece somehow is not conducive to that task.  I almost went for the old formula of painting a faint peak in the distance.  For sure K2 would look good.    Here I am appealing  to dare to deviate from the prescribed compositions, from the old decoration scheme.

I came upon this poem in my calligraphy class material, and it was written out in the cursive style.  Both the font and the meaning of the poem mesh well with the painting, so I decided to use it.  A rough translation of the poem is
                   The existence of angels is a myth
                   Xanadu ( or Shangri-la, euphemism ) is a farce
                   But do capture the winding waters and mountains
                   And display their beauties for all to admire

Too bad my calligraphy here sucked, and my Xieyi painting seemed too contrived, but look at this as a down payment for something better.
                 

Southpaw

Have you  played Ping-Pong with a lefty and be victimized by the weird english?  Do you think pitching to a left handed hitter is the same as a right-hander?  Why does sinister mean left?  These are interesting questions to mull over.... until you are faced with it.

My former painting teacher once confided in me his frustration with a student.  He could not get the student to use the correct brush strokes, which is the foundation of Chinese brush painting.  It took me almost half an hour to coax my teacher to tell me that this student is left handed.  So what, you ask.

To those of you who have toyed with the Speedball nibs for calligraphy, you would understand that the natural right-handed slant of the pen, plus the nib's plane, makes the fine and thick lines of the alphabet . A left-hander would be unable to scribe these letters without turning the page 90 degrees to align the slant of the strokes with the slant of the nib.
As I ruminated on the implication of that awkward scenario, my first impression was that the brush should be exempt from that.  The brush possesses no rigid plane, thus it is free to script whatever it wants to.  There is nothing farther from the truth than this assumption.  If we take a look at my last blog; at the picture where it showed a transition from center tip to side tip as one writes a "7", this task is done with ease for a right handed person.  The brush would indeed assume a natural right slant, and we would move in the east-west axis to start out with.  For a left-hander, the brush assumes the opposite slant, and would be rubbing against the direction of travel, i.e. reverse tip.  The last blog "Ridgetop Explained" also suggested that the vertical "side tip" contour line describes the thickness of the object and thus for a right handed person, this is accomplished with flowing ease.  For a southpaw however, this is done against the orientation of the brush hair.  For a left-hander to do what we do, this person must turn the wrist completely inwards to cradle the brush, in order to achieve the same brush alignment  and slant  as the right handed person. 

(right handed body segments)

To better illustrate this point, I used the painting of a shrimp as an example.  The body of this arthropod is done with side-tip strokes;  as if drawing a fat arc, with the longer radius to the right. 
When I asked a left handed person to do this, the arc is painted with the opposite curvature, i.e. the longer radius now on the left side, despite the same body orientation.

(left-handed body segments)

I must say that I was ecstatic when I observed this.  It validated my theory, and vindicated the left handed persons.. ....... the teacher was frustrated because he did not understand the mechanics of the hand .. ...the student was frustrated because she was either blamed for not following directions, or was told to turn the paper upside down just to comply.

What is the remedy??  The southpaw should still learn the basics  and be able to execute the different brushstrokes, but also understand that most of the paintings that we take in are done by right handed people, with a right handed bias in their strokes.  My solution of teaching the southpaw is that as we learn from emulating the works of ancient masters, we could flip their works along the vertical axis.  Thus our right becomes their left !!    I am encouraging left handed people to digitally flip the masterpieces, and then learn to paint with the same strokes.  In essence, a center tip stroke that started from the left to right, turning downward and transitioning to a side-tip would now be a center tip stroke from right to left (aligning perfectly with the natural left handed slant), and transitioning to a side-tip down stroke. 

Confusing?  Only for a right-hander.  I think the southpaws know what I am talking about.

Ridgetop Explained

Now that I am done with the Portland Open Studio event and my son's wedding, I have a little more time to write my blogs. Having a student or two to teach has actually taught me a few things. The task at hand now is how to convey in a clear and succinct manner so there is an actual transfer of knowledge. We often harbor a notion, a concept that we somehow intrinsically know, but are unable to verbalize. Since so much emphasis in Chinese brush painting is placed upon Bi-Fa (method of the brush), the "don't do what I say, but do what I do" doctrine becomes an exercise in frustration.

Case in point, when painting rock formations, hilltops, mountain ridges, the beginners often copy the shapes without understanding the structure of the lines. It is not unusual for a range to look like a row of staples or horseshoes. I have sat in on classes where the instructor is unable to convey the concept of "contour" lines.

I am sure most of us have seen and understood what elevation lines represent. When we look at a topography map the elevation lines give us a description of the shape of the land. We know where the ridges and gullies are, and the relative steepness or flatness of the land. In painting a mountain range, we are just tilting the map on its side, so the elevation becomes not the height from the horizontal plane, but the distance to where we stand.

To illustrate my point, I've chiseled out a wooden block into the shape of

a mountain range. Now I have painted the " contour lines " on this block, and these lines describe the shape of the mountain ( as elevation lines describe the heights at different points on the map). When we paint these contour lines in succession, we are in effect transcribing the mountain range.

I have sliced through this block of wood into slabs to illustrate this point.  The more slabs I create, the more information I am able to draw ( i.e. more contour lines ), this is akin to having more "pixels", or watching a 1080p HD program vs. the 480 lines old programming.  The "chuen" lines that I have discussed  in the past i.e. hemp "chuen", is merely a sliver of such a slab; thus showing just a partial contour instead of the entire shape.  Therefore one can use a few strategic contour lines to describe the main shape of the range, and the "chuen" or "texture rubbing" lines to describe the minute details of the topography.

As we paint the lines with the Chinese brush, we are naturally in a "center tip" form as we traverse horizontally on paper, and as we turn the corner onto the vertical lines, the natural angle of inclination puts the brush in a "side-tip" mode automatically.  That part of the line describes "thickness" of the slab that we are painting, thus unknowingly giving a 3 dimensional appearance to what we have painted.

top photo is center tip( tip is aligned with direction of  travel

bottom picture is side-tip (tip is pointed at an angle to direction of travel)

Hopefully these little hints will help us attain a better understanding of Chinese landscape paintings.

Scatter Brain

In this painting I wanted to paint a bridge next to a lily pond.  My original premise was that the bridge is almost silhouette like, swallowed in rolling fog, like a ghost ship in vast sea. It is the lily pond in the foreground that shall work as a lead-in to the scene, and sent up the perspective and the contrast to the vessel in the back. 

An issue that I have considered in painting the lily pond is that if I had painted all the stalks of  wilted lilies and reeds, the viewer would be bombarded with so much information and will make the scene quite messy.  This is along the same vein that I have alluded to in my Feng Sui blog.

Went back to my playbook and deployed my old trick again.....Ancient Chinese Secret Solution (alum solution).  As you recall, alum solution is used for sizing paper, works like a resist in watercolor works.   I therefore proceeded to paint with this alum solution to form most of the wilted lily stalks and their reflections.  After the wash is laid on it, the painted alum shows up as void spaces that hints of the presence of stalks, without these discrete black lines to jam your visual cortex.  What I was able to do was to create a "presence" without the usual boundaries, or harshness.  I picked a few strategic locations in plant my foreground, my vivid lotus stalks.   I thought that worked rather well in this setting.

What I have not followed through was the original premise.  Where was my Flying Dutchman?  I was too carried away in laying out the dead sticks in the pond, that my fingers took on a life of their own and started to paint a setting sun, and trees, and a cow and .......

Before I realized it, I had embellished too much onto my painting.  I got off on the wrong ramp, and how do I extricate myself now ?  This is when I decided to put in highlights on some of the foliage and the back of the cow herder to playoff the setting sun.  I can only lament.... what a scatter brain.



DON'T CROSS ME

I was showing a beginner how to paint bamboo.  This person painted quite a few vertical stalks of bamboo, consequently a lot of them crossed each other, and the painting looks like a wire mesh (exaggeration)!
 The remedy is to control the angle where the stems intersect.  Make those angles acute, and as far away from 90 degrees as possible.  Another remedy would be to hide the point of convergence with leaves.

I then used my Blue Heron painting as an example.  The blades of grass are bound to intersect with each other.  What I did was to deliberately wet that juncture with water to cause the ink to bleed.  The diffused ink helps to soften those corners.


To show the effect without the diffused ink, I used "PAINT" program to erase the bleeding ( I don't know how to Photoshop that out).  Hopefully you would agree with me that the one with the bled ink looks better.

I then totally erased the grass to see what the painting would present itself............................ well, what do you think?

Ghosts From Yesteryears

I decided to clean out my pigsty in preparation for the upcoming Portland Open Studios tour and came across some stashed away Opus Magnums from my past.  Oh my gosh these were done in 2003.  I remembered buying a box of water color tubes out of the blue and a booklet of papers and ventured into the world of painting. It appeared that I made no attempts to mix the colors, not surprising since I did not have a color pallet. It almost seemed like I painted straight out of the tubes.  Interestingly I was using aluminium foil as a surface for mixing colors when I first took lessons.

These images are like your baby pictures.  So untouched and natural.  You can tell that they are infantile, and yet soooooo innocent

Calligraphy and Painting

There are people who asserted that calligraphy is the basis for all Chinese brush work, including brush painting.  For me, this statement is quite true, especially now that I am attempting to teach people how to paint with a Chinese brush.

I had done some form studies on heron, and I've decided on adding calligraphy to  them.  The calligraphy will be used not in a narrative sense, i.e. telling a story about the herons, nor is it a poem about herons, but is used as a complementary tool to inspire and to augment the form of the heron.

 

 

 

In this work, the calligraphy which is in the cursive style  is done as a very faint background, so as not to distract from the main pictorial outlay, but its subtleties help to bring out the dance form of the herons.  Notice the single leg stance of one, and the ballerina like stance of the other.  The motion and energy of the main characters are derived from the calligraphy, and vice versa.

Wanderlust

Songs and Hymns
soar to the Heavens

This moment fills me
intoxicates me

I surrender myself to wanderlust




The above is a rough translation of the Chinese writing in the painting.   This style is called  the "grass style" or "sloppy style"  of the Chinese cursive writing.

This flowing style of calligraphy matches quite nicely with the very raw and bold form of interpretation of a bird.  No attempt was made to hide or ameliorate the brush strokes.  This really is the essence of the Xieyi style of Chinese brush painting......concrete thoughts, but free brushes.  

Good or bad, let it all hang out

Calligraphy

translation:

If
LIFE  is not witnessed by the present moment
then
when does

Living
is
to be able to
Do As You Wish

Isn't Being Cute Enough?

In the routine of preparing materials for tutoring, I have to answer a fundamental question about Chinese Brush painting, and that is "Isn't being cute enough?"

The word "cute" can embody a broad interpretation, but I shall use it in the context that it attracts an audience. Case in point is some of the so called Chinese Brush paintings one sees on the net or fair vendors are often crowned with the verbage "Isn't that cute?". I shall use paintings of bamboo to illustrate my point.

Bamboo is one of the 4 required proficiencies for people studying the floral theme in Chinese Brush painting (the others are plum flower, orchid and chrysanthemum). Bamboo is a study of many virtues in the Chinese philosophy. It is stiff, yet flexible. It bends but does not break. It is strong, yet hollow. It symbolizes an ideal personality, being forthright, without being conceited. Being flexible without being manipulated. Appears to be hard and cold, and yet has the room inside and the capacity to accept.

Thus the proper way to paint a bamboo is always straight up, stern and yet not overbearing. It must show the virtues, then one goes about the business of composition, where to park the leaves and the branches. Bamboo is a plant of the grass family, and yet the branches and the main stalks are always straight or bow like, ready to bounce back, and never bend and twist like noodles. The segments are usually painted using the bone method, usually using straight tip. The rings around the segments are very specific in the sense that it shows the remnant of the sheaths of the shoot. It also tells you whether you are look up or down the bamboo by whether is arch is an upward bow or a downward bow.

My experience with painting bamboo is very limited. I've only done my obligatory homework pieces when I was taking lessons. I used bamboo as a teaching subject because it truly is the most fundamental way to learn Chinese Brush strokes. It teaches one how to hide or show the points, straight tip, twisted tip, press and lift and all that jazz. In essence, one does not "paint" a bamboo, but "writes" a bamboo, because it requires the application of all the basic methods of the brush. Every segment of a bamboo painting can be broken down and reassembled in some Chinese calligraphy. It is like a basic Kata in martial arts. One has to learn a few basic moves to execute the Kata.

The left picture is the "cute" visualization of the bamboo, but is very unbecoming of the brush art because it answers to all the bad qualities of a bamboo painting. The branches and leaves are twisted, looking more like true grass than bamboo. The segments are not done right and the rings are feeble attempts to point, press, draw and lift. Yet these types of bamboo drawings are quite prevalent in greeting card stores, book markers. Yes they are cute, albeit not done correctly with the Chinese Brush strokes.

The picture on the right is the more accurate way of painting a bamboo using the Chinese brush. It showed the bone structure, the correct brush stokes and a gradient in ink tone. However it also has a lot of boo boos, i.e. the thin branches failed to separate and the nodes fused together, looking like a rope with knots on it. The leaves on the left hand side should be pointing downward instead of up.

So the six million dollar question is..... can "cute" and "proper" co-exist? I suppose this is not necessary an ideological debate. In our vernacular, does the word cute mean more than being pretty and fetching? More importantly I suppose, is "cuteness" what an artist seeks?

I suppose this is my fervent attempt to bring to light what Chinese Brush painting is about and ask all of us to be a more educated audience, so that we can all truly appreciate the art form, without the facade of being "cute".

Artist Trading Card

Part of the upcoming Portland Open Studios experience involves the creation of artist trading cards. I have done those before but I stopped short of affixing the image onto the card itself. Duh!! Trading cards without the cards, rather innovative!

Anyways now that I've been set straight, I applied gesso onto the back of the cards and all of a sudden they have a life of their own. They curled up like cooked shrimps.

For ease of application, I used rubber cement for paper instead of my starch concoction. This procedure did not correct the shoehorning of the playing card.
Fortunately a rolling pin did. I used a wooden rolling pin on both surfaces of the cards and this was done when the cards were almost dry. I then slapped on a thin coat of satin varnish to protect Xuan paper surface.

Classical Landscape

This landscape painting is portrayed in a rather minimalistic fashion. The lack of color forces one to devote all their attentions to the composition and the line structure.

The painting is inspired by the Columbia River Gorge. The work was first done last year but I needed to change a few things. The opposing walls of the gorge is characterised by the 2 rows of serpenting land masses, obviously an exaggerated vision; nonetheless sets the stage pretty well in this application.

The trees in the foreground are painted in the classical sense of tree representation. Thus the leaves are circles, horizontal lines, and slashes of various shapes. This is very common practice in describing a mixed species woods.

The little skirts at the bottom of the hills is decorated with dots. These are there to represent shrubs, structures like posts, boulders, but the main function is to break up the lines so that they are not continuous ropes....... a no no in Chinese Brush painting. The "churn" method is the hemp line style. Churn lines are used to describe the texture and the topography of the hills.

Perspective is achieved by the obvious fading out of the land structures, with no discrete brush marks of whether it is water or fog or whatever. This is the all important "blank" space in the painting. Perspective is further achieved by the relative saturation of the ink. One can tell very easily that the near subjects are much darker than the distant destinations.

The one big failure in the painting is the bottom boulder, which assumed a different persona from the rest of the painting. The lines are too entangled, rendering it much more jagged than the others. The dark lines also give it a dirty/solid look, which is very uncharacteristic of this painting.

A painting like this is quite easy to consume, I think. Right off the bat you know that it is Asian. The downfall is that it pigeonholes what Chinese Brush painting should look like. This is due to the fact that all these "classical" rules or methods of painting is followed and it is easy to give the impression that all works have the same look and feel to it. This style of endowment have been around for at least a thousand years. Whereas it is important for us to study the techniques and basics of the Chinese brush, it is not necessary to keep on repeating or try to reproduce the styles that was popular way back when.

Evolution of a Heron

Months ago a giant array of feathers visited my backyard. As it descended it momentarily interrupted the rays filtering through my window; that was how it caught my attention.
So I wanted to paint a heron.
The photos tell the story of my attempt. I started to draw out what I recalled as a heron (top photo).
Obviously it looked rather awkward, in fact I had problems deciding what length of its legs should be; hence the two different lengths. As we go down the line, I was trying out the brush stroke styles and the ensuing image takes on a better resemblance of a heron. I have a little bit of practice now. I must point out at this point that my failure in depicting a heron not only lies in the fact that I knew very little about the bird, but I really did no know what I wanted to paint. I was more like a field biologist, wanting desperately to record its features. What grabbed my attention were those seemingly long legs and that gaze.
As the bird frequented my place more often, I realized what made it a heron was not its features, but its poise. The heron's neck seemed to tell all the stories.
With this new understanding I arrived at the third photo attachment.
The outlined drawings (4Th and 5Th photo)are perhaps more "classical"; in the sense that it is how most herons are painted. A smattering of colors, correct proportions to say that this is a heron and not a goose.
Last week the heron stayed for over an hour and was almost oblivious to my presence.
I decided to try my hands again in painting, this time using the brush to paint the forms, rather than relying on lines to define the boundaries. My emphasis now is totally on the neck, which narrates the heron so eloquently. The bottom picture is a record of that encounter. I like the motion and the energy this painting emits.
It seemed raw, but is so honest!

Bi-Fa (pronounced B-Fa)

A reader was a little taken aback by my comments in "What Brush Stroke". The quibble was about my tone of the language. I seemed to suggest that only Chinese Brush Painting pays attention to brush strokes. Whereas I know very little about other brush works, i.e. watercolor, oil, acrylic etc, I do know that Chinese Brush Painting places foremost emphasis on Bi-Fa, the method (discipline) of the writing instrument. Calligraphy and painting is about the same foci, Form and Bi-Fa (brush strokes). In fact, many teachers in Chinese Brush Painting would insist that students "write", and not "paint" the lines.

The Chinese Brush owes its characteristics to a round body with a pointed tip. I am told that there are 8 basic techniques in applying the brush on paper, utilizing not only the tip, but also the belly of the brush. Couple this with various speed, angle, degree of dampness, and whether the point is split or solid, the permutation on the possible ways to reveal with a Chinese Brush is endless.

The picture insert shows the start of a line with a point at the top line. The second line started with a rounded stroke, which is accomplished by travelling the brush in the opposite direction to begin with.





The importance of understanding the basic premise of the brush, is to understand how to take advantage of the brush. In this example I am trying to paint a "line" of various thickness. As I traverse the brush across the Xuan paper, different pressure is exerted, and the brush responded by spreading( or condensing ) its coverage.




Now we shall see how this "line" applies to painting. In the example, I am painting a dragonfly.

The picture on the right shows the result done with this proper technique. The "wing" is a line written with various thickness. It is all about the control of the brush. The wings look natural, and possess "Chi" (energy) and have "Li" (strength)

The picture on the left is done with the wrong technique. I blocked in the color. You might say that I "painted" the wings instead of "writing" the wings. Upon close examination, one can observe the border that I had painted around the outline of the wings, and then filled in with color. Obviously they look like wings, but they are devoid of the "Li" and the "Chi" shown on the other dragonfly. Perhaps it is the small imperceptible irregularities in the brushed shape, versus the static intentionally painted outlines that bestows the energy. I suppose this is the argument about hand tailored suits and hand stamped Ferrari bodies.



One might argue that to the casual patron of the Chinese Brush Painting, what is the big deal. The big deal is whether it matters to you or not. If you accept the premise that Chinese Brush Painting is about Bi-Fa, then you must learn to appreciate that.

You can play a G arpeggio on a violin using all 4 strings, but you can also play the G arpeggio using only the G string. To the untrained ear, they are the same notes. However a violin patron could tell the difference in the timbre of the notes and appreciates the skill level of the performer, lest not forget the composer's expressive intent in having all the notes played on the one string. Same dictum can be applied to the understanding and appreciation of Chinese Brush painting. It is not necessarily a matter of whether my art form is better than yours , but where the emphasis lies.

To Be or Not To Be

In a perfect world, under ideal conditions, we work on a painting, from start to finish, everything as planned, eyes to the heaven, say THANK YOU.

Reality is, we often sway from our original sketch, be it conceptual or physical.
Artistic expression, or any expression for that matter, is a dynamic process. This light might suddenly pop up in our head, or our own tentacles of curiosity might drag us into saying...WHAT IF ?

I usually resort to one of two ways of deciding which path I should follow.

The first one involves a transparent sheet of material... could be a plate of glass, acrylic, overhead projection transparency or a sheet protector. I would then lay this transparency over the spot where I am dubious as to what should be done, and I would do a rough sketch on it. Thus I am able to see the effect of before and after, without ever committing myself.

In this example, I have a painting of 2 fishermen working at night. I was trying to capture the reflection of the lantern and the moon in the water. Where I failed was the composition... I had the fishermen and the Beacon Rock all lined up in a straight line, and this is visually awkward. So I wanted to see if I could cover up the bottom fisherman with silhouettes of tree tops. Well, the jury is still out on this one.



The other trick I use is to just paint it out in plain water. Xuan paper is so absorbent, plain, clear water will leave its' traces, long enough for us to consider and reconsider. Note of caution, the brush should be on the dry side.... just wet enough to leave a mark for us to see the spatial relationship. In this example, I am trying to see if there could be a dialogue of trees and the bridge.

Since any brush mark on Xuan paper is almost indelible, the above tricks are most useful before you attempt on that part of the painting. It does not bode well if your intention was to totally change or substitute something after the fact.

Gesso Tricks

One of the attributes that I can exert some further control in working with my Xuan-Boo, is the matter of white balance/contrast.

Depending on the type of Xuan paper one uses, the "white" ( or blank space ) space is anything but white. While it is not necessary, nor is it critical, for me to display true white, nonetheless I would welcome the opportunity to modify my shades of white if possible. On top of that, my style of Chinese Brush painting requires the help of shading quite a bit.

Work done on Xuan paper loses its vividness once the pigment dries and before it is mounted. The depth of this brilliance is restored once the paper is wet. It is therefore paramount for a Xuan artist to not correct his/her work when the paper has dried up. I always wet my work first before I tidy up my work.

To facilitate in varying the contrast in my work, Xuan-Boo offers an unique avenue.... I can manipulate the gesso. By laying down a differentiated map of gesso, according to my needs, I can accentuate or tone down a particular area or color of the painting. I can actually affect the overall presentation of my mounted Xuan.

Example on the bottom picture shows the dried painting before it was mounted. To the left of that painting is the canvas with my custom gesso. Notice I painted the gesso in a gray scale according to my need.

The picture on the top shows the finished work on Xuan-Boo.
One can observe that the hill on which the gazebo sits on is now more 3 dimensional, thanks to the increased shading offered by the custom gesso. The staircase shows off better because the tree to the left of it is now darker and offers better contrast. The black roof tiles on the house is now more saturated.

Granted all these changes are subtle, but nonetheless palpable. I think it can be a very useful tool to remedy a "flat" painting.

Presenting my Xuan-Boo

As a kid I remembered looking up at the radio that perched on top of our 5 drawer dresser. Each time my dad would put his fingers on one of those big black knobs my breathing would stop for a second. I wanted to catch the magic. The magic of the front glass panel on the radio lighting up. A few minutes later I could hear high pitched whistles rising and ebbing, and then music or voices would be discernible amongst the interference. Turning another black knob left and right brings the program into clear. "Where did the voice come from?" I would ask. "There is a man inside the box!" said my father.

I remembered climbing on a chair, behind the dresser, looking through the perforated backing on the radio, to find that "man". Instead, I found several "light bulbs" inside the box; I could "smell" the heat emanating from these bulbs. As my dad turned the dial knob, I could see a string hooked up to a spring, which was attached to a slider on a track, and a needle moved. The whole thing was so mesmerising.....I can still smell that heat. I can still feel its radiance.

As I grew older, there is a new addition to our family. A much larger cabinet with a tiny gray window in the front. After the black knob was turned, this cabinet gave out a extraterrestrial high frequency hum, and after what seemed like eternity, a gray and white picture appeared. It took a another life time for the picture to get brighter and became "watchable". We had television. Again I somehow managed to get to the back of the cabinet, looking through the perforated backing, to look for the bulbs, and to "smell" the heat. The moments of anticipating an image appearing on the screen, and to have events happening in expected sequences,from the transformers humming, the capacitors charging up, to the flickers, and finally having my senses satisfied, are moments that I still cherish today.


Painting for me is very similar to the experiences I just described. There has to be awe, curiosity and appreciation. I paint because it is not instantaneous, no immediate gratification at play here. There is a process of going from conception to finished work, all the while filled with anticipation.

When we paint on Xuan paper, the overall appearance of the work changes as the work dries. Wetting the finished work restores most of the original saturation, hence mounting Xuan paper on another piece of Xuan paper is mandatory not only to give it stiffness, but to restore the brilliance and color accuracy. After days, sometimes weeks of working on a piece, we then spend hours on affixing it and hanging it up to dry. We really don't know what our work looks like until it is all mounted and dried.

My curiosity led me to explore new ways of mounting. Hence I invented this process/medium I called Xuan-Boo. Along with this new platform comes new challenges and that led to my making my own frames. I kept thinking how turning the knob made the dial move. Perhaps that is why I am not satisfied to just paint, but I want to be involved in as many facets as I can. I enjoy the complete process from laying down the first stroke, to hanging the work up. Today I am presenting you with the first batch of Xuan-Boo.

Of course the end is gratifying too, sometimes. There are some works that I would really hate to part with, because I had invested so much of myself in them.... "Every time you go away, you take a part of me with you!"

Every so often, after the National Anthem has played, and the TV station has signed off, I would still be watching the Station Calibration Wheel. There is nothing to anticipate now,nothing to be awed about, but at least I know the damn set still works.