A Quorum of Geese

It is time to get back to my geese project.

While I was preoccupied with painting my horse, the thought of how to create a geese painting was still churning away in the background.  Unfortunately I am no closer to the goal than a couple of months ago.  I can't keep writing off my hesitance as being pensive, so I decided to face my demon....  out comes the paper and brush.

My theory is that despite the absence of a concrete idea as to how the painting might end up, perhaps I have a subconscious impression of my painting to be.  So I'll be a good listener and hear myself out.

I have chosen a paper that I normally do calligraphy on.  It is more absorbent than the regular Xuan and the brush strokes tend not to bleed.  I was also drawn by its native yellow gold color;  perhaps I could utilize that background color.  This piece of paper is 6 feet wide, I decided to use the whole thing.  I was gearing up for failure already.  My rationale for using the entire 6 ft was that if I screwed up I could start all over without missing a beat. This way I could just paint continuously until there was  no empty space left and I could always crop to size only the desirable sections.  Smart decision !


Armed with such a game plan, I started to lay down a bunch of geese:

Then I decided to take advantage of the paper's yellow color and made the scene as if bathed in the glow.  I used gamboge and cinnabar and mixed in some titanium white for the added blocking effect.  I now wanted the geese to look a little hazy.  I also painted in some smaller, blurry geese to the right, to achieve  a little bit of depth perspective.

I blocked in some landscape for depth perspective.  The darker emphasis is on the left side of the painting,  to contrast with the right.

Tidied up the background.  Showed some highlight on a few select geese,  and called that a wrap, for now.  I might not like some of the individual birds, but I have grown fond of the overall mood of the painting.  I'll hang it up and stare at it for a few weeks and see what else comes to mind. 

I decided to add in the white highlight on the butt of the geese.  I perceived that was also a trade mark, just as the banding on the head.  I wonder if I over did it? 

Oh, did I mention this is a six footer? I wonder how I am going to mount it.  If I use my Xuan-boo method, the warm tone would be restored once I applied the gel;  and I do like that warm fuzzy feeling!