We often hear brush artists mention that continuous lines suffocate; that the painting "can't breathe". In my "Don't Cross Me" blog I talked about how to remedy lines that intersect. Intersecting lines take away the spatial arrangement of our painted subjects. Continuous lines tend to foul in the same manner, burying the presence of any third dimension. Demand for such reveal is critical, for example in landscape paintings.
In the following illustration, the letter E written with continuous lines look flat. Two dimensional.
The adjacent E was written with broken lines, strategically placed, and now assumes a three dimensional feel.
In the next illustration, the far left image shows 2 overlapping circles with no spatial definition.
The middle image clearly shows which circle is on top, whereas the image on the right adds a dimension of depth to our visual clues. The gap between the 2 circles creates a thickness. We are more apt to perceive these 2 circles as the top and bottom of a cylinder. The "gap" technique is evidenced by the separation of ridge contour lines by space disguised as cloud or mist, thus pushing back the ridge tops in succession, creating perspective.
Finally I have an illustration of 4 circles, analogous to the 4 geese I was trying to paint in my last blog.
The right image on top row does clearly denote which circle is covering which, but the image on the second row has a strong suggestion of depth; all because of the broken lines. This image can "breathe"!
When I was painting the geese, I was so hung up on the blank bodies and fuzzy outlines that I had totally forgotten about the basic premise of rendering lines in Chinese Brushwork, and more specifically, how to render depth and relationship between subject matters by just paying attention to writing lines.
To break or not to break, that is the question.
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