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.