Saving Face

I was having fun painting the face of the Dream State piece.

Make hay while the sun shines, strike it while it's hot....... enough of dorky cliches!

I decided to do more faces.

Well, that's one face.  It's a start.

My intention is to paint a few faces on this piece of Xuan, perhaps carrying the same mood or theme.   I'll let that thought brew for a while.

Oil and Water expanded

Knowing that my oil and water method leads to results, I am itching for new experiments.

I recall the picture I took of people doing Tai Chi in a courtyard dotted with sculptures.  In this picture I had the face of a sculpture in focus and the rest of the scene was out of focus.  I decided to paint this scene.

My premise is to create a conflict, or contrast by utilizing focal points and ink tones.

My first task is to paint a face, a face of a statue.  This face is consciously distorted; not only to remove any references or semblance to photography, but also to format it to fit the dimensions of my Xuan.  Bulging eye, fat lips, short chin.  Really complex emotions.  Somehow it seems to work.

I now tidied the shadows of the face a bit, and begin my painting of the Tai Chi gestures.  I am using oil to depict my gestures.  This is set on a red matte board so I can more easily see the figures.

The wet areas around the oil laden figures is a diluted ink solution, ready to reveal the oil slicks as voids when dried.

I took this picture in dim light to better show off my gestures painted with oil, revealed by ink.

I am at a point now where I don't know what my next move should be.  I don't know what else to add to or modify.

At this point, I'm also concerned about whether the oil would go rancid or not in the future and how is it going to affect my mounting.  Oh well, too late to worry about that now.

Good time for a break.

I am calling this piece Dream State, or Der Traum; for now.

Getting down to the nitty-gritty of Suliao Xuan Ban

I See The Light is ready for mounting and framing.

To say that I'm a little apprehensive is an understatement. I' really don't want to ruin my piece in this delicate process, especially now that the piece has been adjudicated into an exhibition.  I need to have it done.

I'm employing my Suliao Xuan Ban method to make the painting appear like a float; to highlight the fragile Xuan and the starkness of my light show. This process involves the dry mounting process, when the tissue paper like Xuan is affixed onto a sheet of clear plastic.  The adhesion is provided by fusing the paper to the substrate with heat transfer fusion paper.

In the wet mount method the starch glued piece can be soaked to rid it of adhesion and begin the mounting from ground zero if a boo boo was made.  This luxury, if one can call that as such, is not afforded by the dry mount. The bonding cannot be reversed easily.

First the fusion  paper is tacked onto the clear plastic. My favorite tool for this purpose is a heating iron left over from my model airplane building days. I used this to iron on the skin to the spars of  the models.

After the backing on the transfer paper is peeled off, my attention turns to the air bubbles.  I burst them with a pin and press them flat using a rubber eraser, avoiding body oil from using my fingers.  I don't know if such precaution is necessary, but I rather be safe than sorry.

The Xuan with the painting is now laid on the bonding surface, and is ironed on through a cover sheet to avoid marring the painting.   The procedure of tacking  in place with the small iron is repeated, followed by using a regular iron for a uniform surface.  The trick in tacking now is to use sufficient heat for some fusion to take place, yet not too hot to allow wiggle room for the Xuan to shed its creases and wrinkles.  This is where tender loving care comes in. The big iron is used only after I am satisfied with the quality of the painting's surface.

A blank piece of Xuan is then bonded onto the opposite side of the plastic for white balance.

Here is the finished product in the custom frame I made,

The white border around the painting is not matte board, but rather the wall behind the frame.

It's Like Oil & Water

I've been struggling with my lines.  The quality of lines.

I seemed to be sketching and tracing, rather than laying down decisive, strength laced calligraphic brush strokes.

I know I must practise on my calligraphy, there's no two ways about it.  Somehow I resent such exercises.  I feel restrained, contrived,  trying to copy all the nuances in each brush stroke precariously, all the time wishing that I could just write like that.    My frustration is that I never seem to be able to lift any benefit from this arduous task.  Whatever I learnt from  brush calligraphy somehow defies to be translated into painting.

No I'm not having the blues, I just happen to find my old Tai Chi painting from the pile in the corner of my room.  I have the urge to revisit that subject matter, with a twist this time. I'll side step the lines. Find an easy way out.

I shall do the gestures in forms and not line figures.

Since I've been doing black and whites lately, I shall continue my pursuit in this vein.

Instead of using alum to block off my forms, I decided to experiment with using oil.  My theory is since oil and water don't mix, perhaps the space occupied by oil will prevent water or ink from seeping in.  So goes the experiment.

The following is one of the gestures done with just plain cooking oil.  I let the oil dry overnight before I attempted to do anything more to the experiment.

I found out that the oil patches could be overcome if I used concentrated ink.  So I throttled back and started out with a more diluted solution, subsequently building up to the desired degree of blackness.  The oil laced gestures actually helped me tremendously in deciding which part should be filled in with ink or not, and also allowed me some freedom as to modify the boundary between oil and water.  I found myself morphing the figures as I went along and it was quite exhilarating.  Almost like chiseling out a marble  figurine.

Then this idea suddenly crept into my consciousness.  I've been leafing over pages on acupuncture books and I was in the process of trying to understand the 12 main meridians and the organs they are associated with.  Why don't I illustrate my gestures with these meridians.  Who knows, they might be educational, for me at least.  My plan is to gather them into groups of Hand Ying, Hand Yang, Foot Ying and Foot Yang, plus the Du and Ren (Governor Vessel and Conception Vessel).  This should account for the twelve regular meridians, plus two of the eight Vessels.  That's a plan anyways.

Here I painted in the three Foot Yang meridians (Stomach, Bladder, Gall Bladder) in red

I also experimented with depicting the meridian (Foot Bladder)  from a second sheet on the bottom, since the figure part is quite translucent

Foot Kidney meridian (Ying, in blue)

I've been ruminating.  Had my command of brushstrokes been better, I would never have thought of all these "tricks" to experiment with.  I suppose if everyone was naturally beautiful and perfect, the hair dye, mascara, lip stick industry would not have existed.  Necessity is the mother of invention.  Just saying!

Before I segue too far from the topic, I just wanted to say that I'm not too happy with the portrayal of the meridians.  I shall look for a more artistic way to depict them.  I am hoping for a way to combine science and art into one.  

In this particular instance anyways.