Dance Movements

I tried painting my hero's journey with dancers but I botched the work with ill placed streams of ribbons.  Conceptually I was trying to narrate a development of the journey but aesthetically it was a miserable display of disingenuous afterthoughts.

But the inclination to paint dancers never left my mind.

Every time I practiced Chinese calligraphy, especially with the walking or grass script, I invariably think of the written characters as dancers.  I pretend that each brushstroke describes a pose or a transition to a pose.  I am leaning on this thought as my inspiration to do the opposite; perhaps I can paint the dancers with the idea that each pose somehow transforms to a Chinese character.  Is it possible to use the dancers as a reflection of written words?

So I decided to paint dancers again.  I decided to paint them like stick figures, to dispense with the banal requirement to paint faces and expressions and costume.  I shall focus on the placement of the bodies and limbs of the dancers and their postures instead.  Just like a well written calligraphy which possesses balanced form and proportion and energy, I am hoping to emulate that with my dancers.  Since Chinese calligraphy is more than just an arrangement of sticks, as some store signs with faux Chinese styled bamboo alphabets would suggest, I shall paint my dancers as silhouettes.  I trust the Chinese round brush for calligraphy is perfect for this task.  With the correct amount of pressure or lift the artist can modulate the shape of the brushstroke.  These brushstrokes should be rather useful in depicting the expressiveness of the forms and the profiles of the performers.

I started to paint various poses, and whatever came to mind.  I didn't have a grand scheme of where to place my dancers or how many dancers would I be painting.  I left everything to the whims of the moment.

The brushstrokes are treated as calligraphy.  The shape of the brushstroke can be altered with judicious nudging or lifting of the brush.

The thought of treating the dancing profiles as part of the brushstrokes in the assembly of a Chinese written character helps to exude the expressiveness of the moment.

With this exercise I hope to extol the virtues of the Chinese round brush, and why the need to master the round brush is so critical, not only in Chinese calligraphy, but in Chinese brush painting.    How the buttock could be written by folding and nudging the brush to initiate the brushstroke, or leaving the brush tip exposed to form the phalanges.  There is a je ne sais quoi difference in forms painted by filling in the spaces vs that written by nothing more than a brushstroke or two.

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I would be less than honest by not pointing out all the posers that I encounter in this town.  Typically these people learned a little bit about Chinese painting and then claimed to be experts and started to teach Chinese brush painting.  Whereas they totally lacked the Ji Ben Gong (fundamentals) they drew up something that looked a little exotic and passed that as Chinese painting.   I suppose one can play a lot of songs with just chords but if that's all one knows, then this person shouldn't be teaching music.  The image of Chop Suey was seared in mind.  To me that was and remains the ultimate cultural shock.  

Creating my own cloud nine

I am now ready to fill in the space above my landscape done in lotus leaf chuen.

I want to continue with my observation of contrast, especially with light values.  I am looking for a subject matter that will allow me the greatest freedom.  The logical choice for that vast expanse above the mountains is cloud.

But how do I make clouds pop on a white piece of Xuan?

Paint the clouds in various degree of grey, or black.  Or not?

I am going to be bold and unconventional.  If I can paint snow with the help of alum solution, why can't I do the same with clouds.  Obviously I need a dark sky to reveal the white clouds.  It is worth a try.

Using a clean brush, I paint in the cloud pattern with alum solution on the back of the Xuan.  I want to paint in the cumulus clouds.  Heaps of lumpy white patches.  I am trying to avoid the cirrus clouds, which will be more difficult to describe, especially with my present skill set.

Patiently waiting for the alum solution to dry, I apply a light ink wash to help reveal my alum tracks.

The top side of the painting now looks like this when dry

From this base value, I begin to darken the sky a little more to create a more pronounced contrast with the white clouds

So the darker sky definitely adds more drama to the painting.  I know a black sky is against the common wisdom but I use that to make the clouds pop.  I might have overdid it in the above example and I have obscured some of my alum tracks with the darker ink.  In retrospect I think the initial lighter sky is more interesting, with more clouds evident in the sky.  In fact the clouds look more like cirrus cloud in the lighter version, and perhaps more expressive.

Well it is a little too late to cry over spilled milk, so I double down on it by making the sky even darker, and also the right side of the mountain range a little darker, to be in complement with the darker sky.

The painting looks a little rough around the edges upon close examination.  The ruggedness however seems to have added tension and raw emotion to this work, especially when viewed from a distance, and under the right lighting.

Like any proud, new parent, I only see the good sides of my newborn; even if he/she is ugly.

This painting has contrast, has drama, has the tension of East versus West attributes.  I have tried in earnest to apply what I have learned from my previous snow paintings and stay on my path of experimentation and discovery.  What more can I demand.  I am allowed to be narcissistic and indulge myself a bit.

I am on Cloud Nine!