Explorers

It didn't take too long for me to realize that my Reflection painting was too solitary. I am sure that notion was amplified by the curtailing of social activities and the collapsing of social circles by the pandemic. I have plenty of solitude from being locked up inside my house, and looking at the painting to satisfy my Mindful Moments as dictated by my health apps is a depressing proposition. In fact I had this primal urge to part the shrouded landscape, skim over the water and snuggle up to the branch tips, hazy smoke nothwithstanding. At the risk of being banal, I decided to add a couple of geese in flight for a little movement and drama. Canada goose is a subject that I'm pretty familiar with. I'm fortunate to call them friends, as a nesting pair live off my backyard and always introduce me to their offsprings. I've grown to know some individuals by their manner, or lack of, in taking food. Unfortuanately a bobcat ambushed the couple and I got to pay my last respects by bagging their mangled feathers and entrails. God is flawed; in creating a food chain which predicates on termination of life in order for the exchange of ATP to happen. Anyways I shall borrown them for my subjects. I painted my geese with a few extremely simple calligraphic brushstrokes. The Chinese round brush was the perfect instrument. I was WRITING my geese. I will break down the individual brushstrokes to demonstrate the simplicity of such calligraphy. I started out by writing an upward slant, nudging the round brush after establishing the initial point

Then I extended the brushstroke with a downward slanting one, with a nudge towards the end and feathring out. This formed the wings of the goose in flight.

Next came a side-tip brushstroke, resembling a hook

Position this hook beneath the wing, allowing a narrow slit between them to represent the telltail( a homophone pun ) white margin on the tail feathers of the Canada goose

Gave the figure a little dot where the head should be, and Voila,

The companion goose was painted the same way.

So now my painting has a pair of inquisitive Canada geese, ready to explore their surroundings. The saturated ink tone of the geese helps to create a perspective of distance.

Reflection completed

Forest fires and vegetation fires kept materializing on the map like goblins in a haunted house, a couple of them actually caused my acquaintances to evacuate. The Year of the Metal Rat is filled with so many calamities and I can't help but wonder if there is indeed some validity to Chinese astrology, which foretold a year of unrest. I'm just waiting for the sine wave to reverse its direction. To be candid, I've not been paying much attention to my pinned "reflection" painting on the wall. I seem preoccupied. Everytime I contemplated on doing something with it I stalled. I've been through this scenerio numerous times. I know the contemplation is just the proofing process, leavening my thoughts. Finally the moment came, and I began to paint over the original work. This is in direct contradiction to what I've been taught in classical Chinese brush painting on Xuan, that one would never want to double paint and conceal the original brushstrokes. I didn't care, not now.

This repeated modifying and over painting caused to Xuan to shed fibers, as if an eraser was running over the paper surface. This in effect changed the absorbency of the paper, rendering the Xuan more like a paper towel. With this serendipitous help, I was able to come close to what I had wanted to begin with, a dreamy, hazy look. Perhaps the wild fires had taken more a hold on me than I had realized.

Then arrived the second full moon of month. The Blue Moon was not blue; it was an affirmation that life goes on, and everything will be alright.