Chronicle Of Shadows: Coming Full Circle

Forget all the preconceptions of how the painting should look like.  I thought I would take the wait and see attitude.

Since I had memorized the painting now, I knew where everything belonged.  I just wanted to bide my time, follow the basic composition and see how things would develop; by themselves.  I wanted to assume the role of a facilitator rather than a planner.

For this I used the semi-sized Xuan for reasons mentioned before.  I decided to paint with the Je Mo technique.  This translates as the technique of accumulating ink.  The process involved repeated application of ink, sometimes as dry brushes, sometimes as wash and the resulting painting is blessed with intricate depth and intimate details.  I was also hoping that by employing this non-hurried approach, my lines would not be chiseled in stone, but would be a fluid entity and could be modified, revealed or masked as the situation demanded.
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As I said earlier, I was the facilitator this time around.  After the trees were populated, I started to manage which branch would look better as a negative space and which ones needed to be enunciated better.   As I manipulated the background I was constantly changing the position of some of these limbs.  Before I realized it, I was adding hints of trunks and the presence of an orchard in the background.  The execution was almost dream like and I was aware of it, but not noticing.  I tried not to fight it too much.  After all, I could always mask or wash what I deemed bad, but I did not want to discount my vulnerability.

Once I filled the backstage with  muted chatter, I needed the main stage to have a voice too.  This somehow led me to paint in the two paths.  The broad one was in the original painting and survived.  The one in the back was an afterthought.  The kink at the junction added interest to the layout.  It fitted well with the composition.  But then again those need not be paths.  They could be streams too ?  They're whatever you want them to be.

I decided to put the shadows back in, but not entirely, and only in a subdued fashion.   I left the paths clean on purpose.  I suppose this was my way to distinguish this as a painting and not a photographic recollection.

I liked this rendition a lot.  Perhaps it was more endearing to me due to its many distinctive traits of Chinese brush works.  Perhaps I spent so much time evolving with this particular version that we had grown fond of each other.  Perhaps it was the decision to go back to basics.

To chronicle the efforts so far with this subject matter, I've assembled the different versions here

I can't believe I stuck in for so long.    I'm not a persevering person.