Rooster and Hen

Happy New Year!

My family zodiac painting still needs two more inhabitants to complete, two chickens.  In Chinese zodiac, the translated word should have been the gender non-specific "chicken", and not "rooster" as what is popularly referred to.  I suppose the "Year of the Rooster" sounds better than "Year of the Chicken" in the western society.  In this particular case, there happens to be a male and female chicken in my family zodiac.  

As in the case of the Rat, I've done a painting of the rooster for the Lunar Year of the Rooster, so I proceeded with not much planning or plotting.  Perhaps it was more like uninspired; I had done this before. This was not my first rodeo, right?

I kept looking at this and I really didn't like it.  There was something wrong with my painting but I couldn't put a finger on it.  It was just a feeling. 

Perplexing!

Today the fog finally lifts.  My rooster looks frazzled.  

The tail feathers just don't look right.  The brushstrokes of the black feathers are nowhere near the quality of the lighter brown ones.  They look thin, dry and malnourished, like the hair of someone afflicted with terminal illness.  Definitely not befitting a proud rooster.

I'm trying to recall the way I painted those black feathers.  I recall that I was really concerned about the silk that I was painting on; it didn't disperse nor allow bleeding like a normal piece of unsized Xuan paper would.  I was also concerned about the backing paper might separate from the silk itself, since I had absolutely no prior experience with this craft "silk" and I didn't know how much abuse by wetness it could take.  Thus I was using a brush that was perhaps too small and too dry for the required brushstrokes.  The result was a bunch of overlapping black streaks, each brushstrokes attempting to hide and modify the previous one.  They were very different from the blades as described by the brown ones.  I was no longer "writing", but sketching! Compare the black brushstrokes with the brown ones, and my analysis should be quite evident.  

I am hoping this can be ameliorated by using a bigger brush, and better ink.  This requires some bold moves on my part.  I am using the "blackest" ink in my inventory for this attempt.  This is an ink that I normally shun, due to the "shine" it imparts.  It gives the brushstroke a glossy finish.  Maybe I can exploit this, as heathy feathers are shiny?

I am also pre-wetting the destined brushstroke with a clean wet brush first.  I am hoping that the wet track would make the subsequent dark ink flow a bit, perhaps bleed a little, so that it is more in line with the Xieyi style of Chinese Brush. 

Much better!  That's more like a rooster.  More forceful and calligraphic brushstrokes, and there are actually natural areas of voids or lighter ink within the brushstroke, thanks to the pre-wetting by the clean wet brush.  The brushstrokes are now alive with nuances, and no longer just dead markings. 

Onward with the Rooster's partner, the Hen.  Having enjoyed some success with correcting the Rooster, my brushstrokes enjoy a moment of unrestrained zeal.  They appear and feel much freer, with more aplomb.

I am so happy that the straight-on perspective turns out to be sufficiently convincing.  

Here comes the Hen.

Water

I did something quite different with my "tedious project", and that was trying to paint with a Gongbi style workflow.  That involved drafting a copy of outlined objects and then filling in the blanks with color.  That tedious project had to do with reflections and ripples in a duck pond.  What made that particular project tedious and perhaps unique ( different from your typical everyday Gongbi style paintings of birds and flowers ) was that my painting had a mosaic appearance to it.  Quite impressionistic to say the least.

So I am going to visit that format again and try my luck.  With nothing but ripples this time as my subject matter.  I am hoping to digitize if you will, the analog experience of constantly shimmering ripples.  Forever morphing and yet appearing so orderly as to be cavalries swarming across the surface.

I am starting out by defining the bright areas of the water first.  Typically these are the fronts of the ripples.  Thus these areas might seem random but they actually remind me of U-shaped staples arranged in rows.

There are going to be tons of these bright spots and I really don't want to confuse myself by all these wriggly lines.  After 5 minutes of this I could no longer distinguish which areas are bright and which are dark.  To help my ailing cognitive brain I am cheating by filling in the dark areas as I go.

In a typical Chinese Gongbi style painting, the quality of the brushstroke for lines is of utmost importance.  They need to be evenly applied, like the gold rims around a fine china plate or cup.  My brushstrokes here really do not pass muster.  My excuses are that I am preoccupied with the expressiveness of the shimmering water, and I am eager and anxious to lay down the next piece of the mosaic before I lose my train of thought.

So there is order in my madness.  The red lines in the following photo show my perception and identification of the ripples as they dance on the water. 

This is more tedious than I have anticipated.  Time to pin this up on the wall, allow myself some distance from this mess of untidy lines and reassess this project.