Bamboo Tutorial continued

The painting I took to class was very two dimensional and lifeless.   Somehow it looked like a manikin.  I suppose it was sufficient for instructional purposes.  I figured since I do not paint bamboo that often, I needed the practice.  I ended up with the one shown above.

I attempted with different ink tones to show the spatial relationship of the different stems and leaves.  The bold ink color of the lower vertical stem gave anchor to the painting and helped to defuse the parallel lines.

My painting colleague had this critique............. a weak left flank.

But I had already mounted the painting.  Any alteration now will disturb the sandwiched starch layer and cause the paper to warp.   Oh what the hell, it's only a piece of paper.

Armed with concentrated ink right out of the bottle, and a very dry brush ( really too dry to paint bamboo leaves, but I had few options), I attempted to build on the left side.

One thing is for sure, this painting has more spunk than the one in the last blog.

I had to do another class demo, so I tried my hands at bamboo again.  This time paying a little bit more attention to contrast and harmony.  The more noded stem has denser and adhering leaves, versus the less noded stem with sparse leaves that hang away from the main stem.  More or Less.

Finally, the painting is cropped and mounted on canvas, and I even made a frame for it.

P.S.  For more material on bamboo leaves, please watch video on my blog on Bamboo Leaves and Pronation published on Oct 29, 2011.