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.