I See The Light, the verdict

After looking at the pinned painting on the wall for a couple of weeks, I couldn't think of what other changes I could make to it.  I personally thought the effect was quite dramatic.  I had mulled the painting from near and afar.  I would look at it from 10 feet away, to see if it hit me in any way.  I would examine it from 2 feet away, looking at minute details and brushstrokes.  I wanted the painting to have a visual impact that could reel in the audience, then smother them with fine details, like reading the pages of a fine novel.

I would walk into the room with my eyes looking away and then turned my attention to the painting abruptly, just to see if I could get a rise out of it.  Some Geek, I know.  But that's the joy of painting, for an amateur like me anyways.

Before I got too indulged in my own work, I decided to solicit the opinion from the pros.

The first pro is a famous artist who studied in China and France and is well versed in both Chinese and Western arts.

The artist did not like my using of the alum, or gouache or gesso at all, which was really surprising to me.
"Dirty" was the comment. It looked unnatural and smudged.  Too much covering up.  Try to paint by leaving voids was the advise.

However this artist really liked my treatment of the trees in the background.  It was subtle, full and yet not cluttered at the same time was the encouraging comment.  Again urging me to rid the contrived highlights.

I took the painting to another professional painter for critique.  This artist studied in China and is well versed in charcoal and oil, doing landscapes and portraits.

I told this artist about my reservation and ambivalence in using gouache and gesso and alum since these are rather unconventional ways for painting on Xuan and the reply was that I need to paint the way I see it.  My only concern should be on how I express myself. There is no right or wrong in painting so don't let my own ignorance shackle myself.

This artist had exactly the opposite opinion from the last pro.

This artist didn't think there was any problem with the alum etc and the painting was not "dirty" as the other pro would have put it.  This artist thought my use of the highlight was quite effective and gets the point across.

The problem however was with the background.  It was felt that my repeated washing and re-adjusting of my black/grey areas rendered the painting too "heavy".  Thus the ethereal feel of ink and water on Xuan was  lost.  I had forsaken the translucent, fragile feel for this heavily caked look.  The advice was to brush up my perception of the values and just do it with simple aplomb and certainty rather than repeated staining.

This was especially refreshing for me to hear, coming from a artist who normally deals with canvas and heavy stock paper, to have such an insight on the feel of the paper itself.

I have forgotten that the Xuan that I painted on is an integral part of the work, and not just a passive substrate.  It too could effervesce a nuance into the overall presentation of the piece.

My saving grace, hopefully, is the fact that I had planned to frame this piece of work using my Suliao Xuan Ban method to allow the painting to be shown via back-lit lighting.  I am convinced that the translucent virtue of Xuan would still come through.

We shall see.

I See The Light, cont'd

Now I needed to tend to the main element of this painting, the light, or beams of light to be specific.

My basic premise was a black and white painting having a diagonal divide, with a darker right lower half contrasting with the lighter left upper half.  The center beam of light would be the most pronounced, hitting the fern plant in the foreground.  Half of the plant would be highlighted, to add to the drama of the light show.

In order to train my brushstrokes to the proper orientation to showcase the rays, I cut out strips of newspaper and placed them in the pattern of the rays.  My design was to have these protected areas be the light beams, thus whilst I could paint in the background, I could just paint over these strips of newspaper, not having to worry about broken or disjointed brushstrokes.  In my mind, the painting would be sliced up by these swaths of void, but I didn't want the piece to feel scrambled.  I wanted that knife edge feel of a search light beam.

The newspaper covered areas would not be totally vacant, since I had started to paint in the background already but using ink diluted with alum.

 Now I would ramp up the intensity of the "dark" areas to show off the voids.  It's all an optical illusion.

The rays of sunlight seemed too staged and rigid in the painting.  This was not unexpected, since I was rather draconian in blocking in my light rays.  Fortunately this offered me an opportunity to gradually change the black or grey values, to make the painting look more pleasing and less mechanical.  That required patience, something I am constantly reminded as a virtue that I am lacking

I needed to manipulate the length, the width, the intensity and the spacing of these rays..

Somehow the painting still looked odd to me.  I couldn't quite tell what was wrong with it but I knew something was missing.

After I got tired of scratching my head, and some other parts of my anatomy, I cheated by digging out the photography again; just to see if the picture could help me re-live the moments when I snapped it.

What was missing became imminently apparent.  It was the details at the upper right hand corner.  What I had now was a huge hole.

I was thinking beams from the sun, all the while forgetting that the light squeezed in through spaces at the tree tops.  That little bit of detail at the upper right corner made all the difference.  It defined the portal where the beams sneaked through.

A lighthearted and well placed smudge by the brush fixed that problem. 

The painting looked finished now, all pieces were accounted for.  While I was plugging up the hole on the upper right, I also added some finesse to the painting.  I added some highlights to the tree trunks and branches.  I mentioned that I mixed ink with alum solution to hopefully get some clear margins on my brushstroke edges.  Well that didn't happen as I had hoped, so I did my own garnishing.  I used a watered down white gesso as my pigment.  I was just experimenting and the results were fine.  These seemed less luminous than the gouache and showed the highlights in a subtle way.  Definitely not overpowering like the fern leaves.

I See The Light

I recalled a photography I took while walking in the woods.

It was a foggy kind of morning and the sun was out.  The beams of light from the sun were piercing through the tops of tall fir trees, and wiggling through leaves and needles of cedar;  illuminating the morning mist as they descended onto earth, turning the space into an outdoor cathedral.  I could place myself in a dim duomo,  the swirling smoke from the burning incense being caught by the light coming in through the stained glass windows.

I wanted to paint this.  In black and white, with ink and Chinese brush, on Xuan.

Immediately I was faced with a challenge.  How would I portray the fern that caught the light?

In traditional Chinese painting light value is seldom an issue. The emphasis is always on brushstrokes, whether they possess rhythm, strength and if the composition is ethereal.   Here my emotional connect was with this theater of light beams, and I am using ink to establish my values; to set my stage.  Traditions out of the window.

I would normally use the unpainted areas of my Xuan as my reference for white, but that seemed inadequate in this setting.  In my mind the untouched areas are "neutral", and I needed a way to depict "brightness" beyond neutral.  I needed to find a way to go into the "positive" values.  I wanted to be able to show that the fern was in the lime light, its fish-bone like leaves were emanating the reflected solar energy.

I called on my old trusted friend alum, exploiting its sizing quality.
 
I first painted the lit areas of the fern with a saturated solution of alum and allow that to dry completely.  This process helped to protect my fern from future staining by ink, as long as the ink was kept light.  In other words, if I could paint  in the surrounding spaces judiciously, I could stay away from the brushstrokes laid down with alum.  This is sort of similar to using masking fluid in watercolor painting,   Masking fluid could not be used in conjunction with Xuan because the paper is so fragile,  Imagine using masking fluid on toilet paper!  I would not be able to erase or peel off the dried mask.

Because the alum could not shield ink completely, I chose to go over my brushstroke with titanium white or white gouache again.  So why did I not just do the gouache in the first place?  That would save time and effort.

By adding a real opaque layer on top a semi translucent layer of alum, I was having 2 overlapping white ( or void ) layers, slightly juxtaposed, creating body and thickness.

I had to insert a colored under-pad to see my white brushstrokes, since the white wool pad that I normally used did not help to create a contrast.

I then painted in some of my background firs.  Here I diluted my ink with alum solution.  The purpose was to laid down tracks that were semi impermeable to subsequent brushstrokes, such that it could be seen as vague and solid at the same time.  I was concerned that any future staining, washing of the background could render these stands into oblivion; into an abyss of darkness.  I wanted the outlines to be discernible at the very least.  I wanted to create an air where one senses the presence of the trees, but is not aware of them as individuals.  Also I was hoping for some of the alum would migrate to the edge of the brushstroke before drying, thus forming a thin clear margin, representing the lit edges of the trunks.  Hopefully that would happen serendipitously.