Geese In Flight

Feeling a little more confident about the brush strokes involved in painting Canada geese, I ventured to do something on a larger scale.  Armed with a large and a medium size brush, and sheets of 4 ft. Xuan, I went to work.

Goofing around on scrap paper is one thing, but trying to paint something for "real" is another thing.
I've told myself a million times, it's only paper..........go for it.............the waste basket is only a few feet away........I could always practise my finger tip release and see if I could create a back spin as the wad of Xuan flying  towards the can.  Only to freeze up when I perceived that something might be at stake.  Fear of failure!  I can only blame my parents, my teachers and any one who dared to place expectations on me.

Anyways, here are the results.

My next challenge would be to incorporate these into a background.

Goose Me More, Canadian Style

Happy New Year!  2012 is here, let us all stay healthy, body and mind.

I want to start the year off with a flighty agenda.  No, nothing capricious, just trying to pick up  painting Canada Geese again, from where I left off last year.

First allow me to show you an image below:

Before I would comment further on this image, let me also show you a picture that I captured:

As part of my new resolve, I decided to get out more and observe more.  Around Oregon there are innumerable parks, preserves, wetland habitats to keep a person busy all year long.  I decided to take advantage of what the state offers.  This crisp winter morning at the Jackson Bottom Wetlands, I inadvertently came up on a Canada goose and the startled bird took off without uttering a single word.  I was pretty quick with my lens and captured the above picture.

I've been trying to document the neck and postures of the Canada geese, but so far my renderings had been of the static variety.  As I said before, it was the black and white contrast of the bird, and the feasibility of depicting the bird as a calligraphy character that intrigued me.  This is the first time that I am attempting to study the bird in flight.

What struck me was the simplicity of the form.  A V-shaped pair of wings anchored on a bowling pin with black neck and a white band.

We start out with the body,

The neck is a combination of strake A and stroke B.
The letter V describes the wings:

With that interpretation of the bird in flight, and the picture as a reference, I attempted to create my
Chinese Brush painting of the Canada goose.

This one looks like a sea plane;  I had placed the V-assembly too high on the body.

Here is a rendition of the bird with wings in the down stroke.

So what is the deal with the first image I posted on this blog?

If you look closely, you could see pencil tracings on the Xuan paper.  I did that deliberately to illustrate a point.  That painting had a perfect image, a perfect likeliness because I traced it from my photograph.   A few dabs of the brush to delineate feathers and walla.....a Chinese Brush painting of a Canada goose.  This is something that
a person who has gone to the Dark Side would have done.  A stenciled drawing filled with a few half hearted brush strokes passes off as an attempt at Chinese Brush works.  Instant gratification.

It is my sincere hope that by posting the 2 versions of painting, that you will agree with me that there is no quick shortcut to this art form.  There is something tangible in Xieyi brush painting, however subtle that might be.  The energy is just not quite the same when we trace.

Speaking of birds from the North, I had the pleasure of a Tundra Swan (Whistling Swan) visiting my place.  I had mistaken it for a snow goose but thanks to the United States Geological Survey, I learned otherwise.  I am posting the video here for all to see.