Sunrise at Huangshan

I recently took a trip to Singapore.  I wanted to experience Lau Pa Sat (old market) and I wasn't disappointed at all.  But that is not the reason for writing this blog.

As I was packed in the middle isle in the back of the belly of a 777, I pretty much had no vantage point of the view outside of the plane.  Well the blinds were all closed anyways so the passengers could spill "Z"s at 40K feet.  So I wasn't missing much. Then one of the passengers sitting by a window raised the window blind.  The cabin was immediately bathed with a streak of reddish amber light, arcing across the walls of the dimmed economy class holding pen, as the plane floats across the thin air.  

The sun was rising.

I stretched my neck and yawed my head, trying to maintain a line of sight to the rising sun outside the window, sidestepping the dark silhouettes of passengers' heads.  I was trying to absorb that image as much as I could.  I know it would be futile for me to take a picture with my phone, I would probably end up with a little amber oval amidst a dark field of heads.  The glow was so encompassing, I felt its presence more than simply seeing it.  

I found my old "run of the mill" piece of Huangshan after I returned home.  A piece that I did years ago, honing my painting skill.  I wanted to revive that painting by making the sun come up from behind those rock formations.

Yes, that encounter with the rising sun from inside a plane had done something to my psyche.  

Normally a painting done on Xuan paper is not meant to be painted over.  Fortunately I was toying with different ways to present paintings done on paper, I mounted my painting on cement board.  I also coated it with a gel medium to protect the surface, since I intended to display that without a glass cover.

That meant I could paint over my original work.  What a novel idea !  (I am sure oil painters do that all the time?)

I started out by "softening" the scene by accentuating the cloud and mist to make the painting less "rigid".

Then I added the sun, with its rays; as any textbook would have shown.

It looked OK, but something was missing.  I didn't "feel" it.  Perhaps it was too "storybook" like.  Too much like a page of illustration.  Who Knows.  I was just having a soliloquy.  Mumbling, actually.

Somehow I thought of Photoshop, a tool that I often use with my photography.  "Layers" to be specific.

What if I created a layer of the rising sun and superimpose that on the original painting.  Hmmmmmmm.

There's only one way to find out.

First I needed to see the effect of a piece of cicada skin Xuan superimposed on my painting.  I needed to know the degree of transparency I was dealt with.  Unlike Photoshop, I would not be able to adjust the transparency of my "layers" here.

Satisfied that the cicada skin Xuan was transparent enough to not totally obscure the painting underneath, I began to prepare my layer for the sun.

Before putting my feet to the fire, I did a dry run.  I took a picture of the top layer "sun" and superimposed it onto my bottom layer of the original painting.

This might actually work!