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.