A Dog Day Afternoon, the next day

My reason for creating a template is two fold.

The most critical one is that the image must be duplicated without too much fanfare by just about anybody. Since my demo activity is going to be in cultural fairs and I could not pick and choose my participants, I need something that anybody can follow.  I've had kids as young as toddlers ( and most often than not, their parents ended up doing the painting ) and as old as senior citizens.  When each session has 20 or more people, it is not likely that I will be able to help draw a proper outline for each and every participant.  The importance of properly locating the eyes and the nose necessitates a stencil that dictates such locations.  It is my belief that if I can help to place the windows to the soul properly, then the painting is 70 percent complete.  I trust this is the reason why Chinese placed such an importance into painting in the eyes on their dragon boats.

As it turned out, there was a third reason that was not readily apparent to me, and it was a rather serendipitous observation, which I will explain later.

I forged ahead with my stencil design

printed the design on my printer and cut out the location for the eyes, nose and mouth.

With this stencil on my Xuan, I used a charcoal stick broadside to create a silhouette on the paper

I am happy with my progress so far.  Armed with this gadget and methodology I can assure myself that this process is repeatable, and no prerequisite in brush painting is required.

Next on my agenda is to explore how to transform this sketch with the least amount of brushstrokes and shades of ink into a painting.

Notice the void areas in the last example.  The fact that I did not completely filled the template space with ink wash resulted in a back lit effect.  The void space above the head and behind the rear quarter not only suggests back lighting, but also lifted the animal away from the paper and giving the painting a 3 dimensional touch.  By painting in with charcoal around the border of the template, I am effectively defining the contour of the dog without a harsh ink line.  As the ink wash is allowed to dry on Xuan, it bleeds into the surrounding fiber, giving the outline a furry feel.  This is the third reason that the template is a good idea in this endeavor.  I now need to remind my audience to leave those areas blank!

Now that I know what I'm dealing with, I am able to settle down and concentrate on creating a proper painting using my scheme.

The stencil has pupated into a lovely puppy, suggesting an auspicious new year.
I'm looking forward to the demos now.  Let us play!

A Dog Day Afterenoon

I am finally back home.

All the travelling was fun, but like everything in my life I was rather passive about it.  I worry about expenditures, scheduling and travel companions.  Well it  just happened this time.  I wasn't planning on these trips.   Something that didn't "just happen" for a while was my painting.  I was not motivated.  Obviously doing brush painting on the road is not like rendering a pencil sketch.  To be honest, my heart really wasn't in it.  Strangely enough I don't feel too guilty about the hiatus.  Perhaps the stars had planned the absence for me, knowing how passive I am to seek it.

Well someone did nudge me a little lately.  Chinese New Year is approaching and I was asked to do demo again, as a program in a couple of the Lunar New Year celebration activities.  This will definitely help me get back onto the saddle.  The stars will not abandon me!

It is time I fill my brush wash basins with water and cut my Xuan into smaller pieces for my prep works.

This is going to be the year of the dog.  I've tried to paint dogs before I embarked on my journeys.  I was goofing around and tried painting on photo paper.  I quite enjoyed the process and the result wasn't too offending;  I was gratified by how vivid the paintings looked.  Yet I wanted to attempt a more traditional approach, and most of all, something simple.

In order to do a demo in front of a group, chances are 99 percent of the audience are novices.  This is not the time nor place to talk about techniques or aesthetics.  The process needs to be result oriented.
It needs to be fun, simple and guarantees a result; a presentable finished product.  In this case, the painting of a dog.

I thus gathered my thoughts and turned on my TV.  I am one of those lucky people who is not perturbed by noise.  The noisier the environment, the better I am able to concentrate.  I don't know if this is what happens when one lived in an urban jungle, or the fact the I grew up inhabiting a 500 sq.ft. flat with 6 other family members.  I often found myself studying not in the library, but a noisy restaurant; a bowling alley; a mall.  Silence scars me.  My mind wanders in the absence of stimuli.    I hate to admit it, but I sleep with my radio or TV on quite often.

I started to doodle with the TV chattering in the background;  trying to reacquaint myself with my brush and my Xuan.  The result was disastrous.

I had no control of the brushstrokes.  I had no control of the water content of my brush.

I was reminded, and humbled, by the fact that good calligraphic strokes are the basis of Chinese brush painting.  If I am still fighting this nightmare how am I going to sail through my demo and how do I expect the general public to do that?

Then I thought I would do something that employs more of a wash than just lines.  Everybody can splash, right?

That wasn't too bad.  It had spunk.

How about this one?

I was really trying to stay away from painting anything that came close to being a Shih Tzu or a Pekingese because I was trying to get out of the stereotype.  I was trying to not paint something banal.

I picked up a couple of New Year's greeting cards from a bookstore while I was travelling.

I am in no position to comment on the technical meritsof these cards, but I must admit that I was a little turned off by the dogs on them.  They seemed vapid and without a soul.  The same reason I am tepid about my dog paintings in the past blogs.  I know this is purely a very subjective opinion from me, but the question I asked myself would be: do I want this animal to be a representation of the auspicious year to come?

Puppies are so cute and I recall this little poodle mutt that I could relate to.  Perhaps I should paint something with a emotional content.  That is my motivation.  Now I have a beacon to guide me.

Well nobody said it was going to be easy.  But look at those big eyes and the tongue hanging out!
I might be onto something.

But seriously, I began to work on this feeling that I had.

It's going to the the year of the Dog.  Man's Best Friend!  A dog is loyal, trustworthy, always of service.  I need to be able to sell this as the harbinger of good fortune for the year to come.

I know the sketches looked rather haphazardly done, and they were, but I was really anxious to put down what I felt about the personality of the dog.  I could clean up my brushstrokes as I became more comfortable with myself.

Of course the motivation for my painting all these are always on my mind.  I have a job to do, and that is to allow an average person to successfully paint a dog.  I am challenging myself to paint something that can easily be converted to sort of "painting by numbers" and yet possesses a suggestion of artistic merit.  I am sending my hippocampus into overdrive.

What I need is a stencil.  A template.  Something that is repeatable.

I proceeded to work on this premise.  I drew an outline around my animal.

I wanted to explore the feasibility of such a template.