Ripples and waves

I think I have a pathological fear of water.  Some people call that a phobia.  Chinese astrologer has cautioned me about not messing with water, yet according to western astrology I belong to the water sign. Go figure! 

Water to me is the fluid that runs over my head in a shower, the shimmering substance in a river, and the infinite mass of motion and energy out in the ocean.  I still don't understand how water changes its shape to fit into anything, and how it heals itself even when something pokes through it.  I am afraid of it, yet I wish I could live in it, like a fish.  It gives life, and it also takes life; for us terrestrials anyways.  Perhaps I've listened to Rusalka's Song to the Moon too many times.

So I am going to attempt to paint my fascination, water, again.

I will try my luck with alum solution.  Alum is used as a sizing agent to treat Xuan paper, rendering it less absorbent.  It is this particular quality that I am trying to exploit. So I am using un-sized Xuan and paint lines with alum solution.  I mixed in a tiny bit of ink with the alum solution to help me see the stripes better.  I am visualizing the ripples, or little wave fronts as I paint.  I do this on the back of the Xuan paper.  When the paper is turned over, one can see a clear margin forming around the lines painted with alum.  This is the effect I am after.

I then fill in the space between the alum solution drawn lines with ink.  Taking liberty to cover up more or less as desire, and adding new shapes as I go.  After all, water is always changing its form and the ripples are always marching on.  Who is to say that a certain shape or line is correct or incorrect.  

I now have juxtaposed lines of black ink and clear alum, suggesting ripples on a body of water.  I am also painting in some form of a shore or land mass for this body of water.  All these are done on the back of the paper at this point. 

Now I flip over the paper to the right side up, and continue to correct and fill in the ink lines, based on what the paper reveals from the other side.  I am using the backside of the paper as a road map and the top side of the paper for the actual painting.  Notice how the blob of ink on the right is now on the left.  That's because I have flipped the paper over.  I am also giving the shore some structure and texture by amending it with some wild brushstrokes.  They are meant to be ambiguous.  They could be highlights, mist, water, or any combination thereof.  I am rendering the background with slanted brushstrokes, to make the composition more interesting.

Somehow I think the painting needs something to shore up the right side.  I am dabbing in some rough brushstrokes, reminding myself that these are flowers branches from a crabapple tree from my backyard.  I like the interplay of the dabs of petals with the black and white stripes of the water.   That little bit of color is like a garnishing.