Atmosphere 2.0

I decide to continue my quest to describe atmosphere with my brush and ink.

I am using the same kind of paper, a semi-sized Xuan.  I am sticking with the basic construct of the composition.  What I have learned from the last exercise is that my technique of using a water brush along with an ink brush seemed a little monotonous.  I am looking for more variations, not only in ink tones but especially in shapes.

I am starting a new experiment by loading the tip of my soaking wet brush with saturated ink and rely on the natural depletion of the brush and the natural dispersion of the ink to effect the change of tonal values.  

Notice that I'm holding my brush flat with the inked tip pointing towards myself.  Thus the subsequent brushstroke will have the dark ink contrasting with the light portion of the previous brushstroke.  This is how I am going to improve on my rather banal brushstrokes from the previous painting.  I find this to be a more expressive method of defining shape and tone, for my purposes anyways.

In short, I am using the dark values of my brush to define and give shape to the voids.  I learned this trick during my days of doing floral Chinese painting.  The example below shows how the dark color of the leaves are used to describe the serrated petals of the flower.

I am glad I am able to recall this time-tested method of painting.  It definitely makes my brushstrokes more lively.  I can actually design the body and shape of my clouds now. 

As I am taking a break from the current painting, my eyes wander to the one I finished a couple of weeks ago, the one that I think looks a bid drab.  Could I change the character of the painting by cropping it?

I eliminated the upper portion of that painting.  The clouds seemed trite and were distracting from the story.  I am liking this new version now.  It is menacing, to say the least.  Not drab anymore.  It packs a punch now.

What if I crop the yet unfinished painting that I'm working on now?

It certainly does not impart the same flavor as the last one.  It needs a lot of work.  I better continue with the painting and see where it leads me.

For the sky on the right side of my painting I shall give the clouds a more compact look, to contrast with the big fat cumulous clouds on the left.

I mean these are still lumpy, but they are more layered.  Almost like dough folding over themselves when being kneaded.  

Of course I still need cloud patches that retain all the tonal values, but garnished with the silver lining. I can't have everything in high contrast.  A few well-placed and diffused dark areas add to the credibility that these are indeed clouds.

I'll be remiss if I don't address the dark bar at the bottom of my painting.  My reason to include that is purely to give anchor to the painting.  Frankly I have problem presenting a story with just clouds.  My vocabulary is rather limited and I do not have the eloquence.  

To avoid presenting the dark strip as dead weight, I used my alum solution to write a few wriggly lines. My intention is to let the alum solution act as a sizing agent, thus help to block out being covered up by subsequent ink brushstrokes.

So how do I account for such void spaces.  

That's up to the viewer.  

For me, I am reminded of waves cresting. 

Under an ominous, boiling sky.

Atmosphere

I viewed a video clip of the SpaceX Starship on a return trip back to earth, re-entering the atmospheric bubble that encases our planet earth.  As it passed through the seemingly invisible air, there was enough friction generated between the Starship and air molecules to produce heat, which was intense enough to make it glow.  I was reminded of glowing crucible from a furnace in my chemistry lab.  Absolutely mesmerizing. 

It is difficult for me to fathom that the invisible air that we breathe everyday is capable of causing such searing heat.  The air looks and feels so innocuous. Of course don't tell that to anyone who has weathered a hurricane, or typhoon in my case.  Or anyone who has gone through severe turbulence during a flight.  Water, we can see and respect but we seem to take air for granted.

An acclaimed quote from my fellow countryman Bruce Lee is "be like water".  I am fascinated by water.  I admire and fear water simultaneously.  The fleeting shimmer, the incessant swells. From the trickling stream to the rhythmic crashes of waves.  Yet I'm not keen to ford every stream because I'm afraid of drowning, even for shallow water.  Incredibly I am a water-sign, I'm told. 

I've done quite a few paintings with a water theme.  Any student of Chinese brush landscape painting has to learn how to paint mountains and water.  The literal translation of 山水畫 is paintings of mountains and water.  Water and air are both fluids by definition; a shapeless substance that moves freely and adopt the shape of its container.  So how do I paint air?

Perhaps I could submit a huge blank piece of Xuan and label it "AIR".  Perhaps some avant-garde gallery would sponsor my brilliant piece of art and it will draw an audience of arms-folding admirers.  Wink. Wink. 

It dawned on me that I don't paint water per se, but the features of it.  The pounding waves, the tremulous ripples.  So I could paint air by it's features, the floating clouds, the veiling mists.  

This new project should offer me a chance for some experimentation.  How to capture the fleeting atmospheric phenomena.  

I'm choosing a semi-sized Xuan for my tinkering.  I wish to benefit from the ability of ink to disperse somewhat before getting fully absorbed into the fibers.  I am hoping that this property will help to bring out the notion of transition, both figuratively and literally. 

I am using two brushes.  One with dark ink, the other just water.  My gist is to write an ink track and immediately apply water to the edges to modify the track and allow the ink to diffuse and disperse under the guidance of the water brush.  My rationale is clouds have dark and bright sides, sometimes defined by bright sharp edges; depending on where the sun is.  I wonder if this is where the term "silver lining" came from. The dark and light sides are not dissimilar to painting lobes of a hill or mountain.  The lobes of clouds are obviously less rigid and more amorphous unless the clouds are those of the anvil thunder clouds variety.  Anyways this is like a game to me.  A game that has a few tenets, but one can wink it most of the time.  

A line is written with ink, and modified with a water brush as shown in the next insert

Subsequent "lines" are written and modified to represent layers of clouds,

Repeating this process to build my atmospheric features,

Here is where I call it quits, enough playing for now.