Finishing my mountain painting

One of the unforeseen merit of the Covid-19 lockdown is that I have less distractions while confined at home.  I could only watch so many movies or run in place for so long without getting utterly bored.  It has given me a great opportunity to do the post production after the painting is done.  This is all technical and craftsmanship, nothing artistic, so to speak.  Yet the concentration it requires is a great respite from the hounding news I hear everyday.

I decided not to mount this piece on plastic or canvas.  This piece is 4 feet wide and frankly I am running out of room to display and store these larger pieces.  Mounting it the traditional Xuan on Xuan way allows the finished piece to be rolled up for storage, or displayed in a frame if needed.  It offers versatility.

Xuan on Xuan mounting involves starching a backing to the original painting.  The resulting bi-layer is then glued to a flat surface.  The process adds rigidity and provides a white balance to the painting.  The wet, starched bi-layer is allowed to dry slowly at ambient temperature and the drying process shrinks the Xuan fibers.  The backing and the painting thus pull themselves taut during the drying process, returning a perfectly flat and wrinkle free painting. 

If done right, that is.  And this is where technical know how and craftsmanship come into play.

First of all, I needed to find a large enough flat surface for me to hang and glue the 4 feet long wet painting.  I recruited a door for this purpose.

I applied masking tape on my door, around the destined parameter of my painting.  Since the painting and its backing will be glued to the door for drying, I don't want my door to be defaced by the glue, or starch in this case.  The masking tape shall form a removable barrier between the starch and the door .

My painting sat face down on a flat piece of plexiglass, starch solution covering the entire back surface.  A blank piece of Xuan, slightly larger than my painting was used to cover the starched painting.  A stiff palm husk brush was used to brush on the backing and helped to eliminate wrinkles.

The backing Xuan was wet with starch from the painting and turned transparent, revealing the painting it covered.

Layers of newspaper were then placed on the starched layers.  They served to soak up excess water from the starching process, and to protect the layers from the hard pressing and pounding by a beefier palm husk brush.  The pounding was performed to guarantee good adhesion between the painting and the backing and to pound out air bubbles and small wrinkles.

Peeling back the moist newspapers to reveal the totally flattened and well adhered backing and painting

Starch was applied along the border of the backing, and the entire assembly was taken to the prepared door, glued in place along the edges of the backing and allowed to dry.

Notice how saturated the painting looked while wet.

After a day, the backing with the painting was totally dried and appeared totally flat, as if ironing was done on it.  Now it was just a matter of cutting the painting loose and releasing it from the glued edges.

The door was left with the remnants of the backing and the masking tape.  Peeling off the masking tape revealed a totally unmarred door.

At last I have something to show for my weeks of laboring.