Reliving The Past

With Covid still unabated I needed to find something to do.  Something useful, something stimulating to do.

I saw the pile of old vinyl LP records leaning haphazardly on my bowing plank shelves and decided that perhaps I could digitize them so that I could have them in my music library and stream them at my leisure.  My records are 20 to 50 years old.  I still have a few that were my dad's.  I have my nice "audiophile"  turntable and my computer has the Audacity program installed.  Should be a walk in the park.

I eagerly cleaned off the dust collecting on the lid of my record changer.  Hooked up the RCA outs from the turntable to a 3.5mm stereo adapter and plugged into the headphone jack of my computer.

I acknowledged to my computer that I was plugging a line input; not a microphone; not a headset.  I then opened the lid to my turntable and pressed "On".

Nothing happened. 

My turntable is from the 90's.  At the time it could be considered a nice turntable and had the touch sensitive capacitance buttons for changing play speed.  I so loved this piece of machinery.  It was so futuristic.  It has not been powered up for at least 20 years.

So I had a failed power switch.  Removing the bottom of the turntable confirmed my diagnosis.  The plastic casing of the switch succumbed to the pressure from the spring inside.   I fired off an order to procure a new power switch that would fit my machine.

The new switch came.  I installed it.  Powered my turntable on and the capacitance buttons lit up.  I was almost like a new parent.

I pressed the "33" play button and it flickered for a bit and jumped to the Stop button; all by itself.  So this happy new parent grew very concerned.  My new baby was not healthy.

A quick research online revealed that my vintage turntable was prone to capacitor failure and described some of the problems I was witnessing.  I had tinkered with soldering and building my vacuum tube  radio when I was a teenage so I decided that replacing a few capacitors was not beyond my abilities.

One of the casualty of Covid was that a huge chain store which sells electronic parts for hobbyist closed its door for good.  I had no choice but to buy parts online.  I couldn't buy just one.  Capacitors came in strips of 5 or 10.  I suppose that was the price to pay for wanting to relive the past.

While waiting for my parts to arrive I decided to practice my Ji Ben Gong ( basic skills ) by painting orchids.  Orchid paintings are favorite subjects for Chinese brush painting and they require exquisite brushstrokes to emanate the beauty and the reclusiveness of the plant.  Strictly speaking the so called "painting" is actually a collection of calligraphy writings, and these calligraphic brushstrokes bestow the abstract and impressionistic qualities of such paintings.  

My training in orchid painting, like most of my Chinese brush trainings, is by rote learning.  Almost all my teachers demanded repeated studying and emulations of known paintings, and rehearsing the necessary brushstrokes to acquire the skill of orchid painting; all in the name of developing Ji Ben Gong.  Obviously the downside of this practice is that all orchid paintings look alike, since the same brushstrokes and compositions were practiced incessantly, not only by me, but by all serious students.

Since I haven't painted an orchid for a long time, I decided to start by doodling and trying to recall my muscle memory of orchid painting.

Honestly I was doing this to kill time, while I awaited the capacitors to arrive so that I could repair my vintage turntable and get on with my project of digitizing my old vinyl records.

I constantly looked at my tracking page from the vendors, as if this would hasten up the delivery of my needed parts.  I was being a kid again.

The day came when the brown delivery truck pulled up next to my door.  I ripped the capacitors from the packaged strip array of 5's, almost with the same fervor as trying to open up a package of prophylactic for the very first time, and impatiently waited for my soldering iron to heat up; fidgeting with the new capacitors to determine which lead was negative, so that I would not reverse polarity when inserting my new capacitors. 

I replaced two capacitors on the circuit board, put the screws back in and fired up my turntable.

Success!  My newborn had been cured.  I was a jovial new parent again.  Now I could use my vintage equipment to relive my past again.  In Da Gadda Da Vida, White Rabbit...........

Working with Audacity and iTunes was such fun.  My digitized music library was growing slowly and the past was definitely worth reliving.  I streamed part of the collection to my sound system, and it sounded awesome, the fact that I could no longer hear beyond 10 kilohertz notwithstanding.  

It was all in my head.  There was no better way to endure the pandemic by doing what I was doing.  Useful, stimulating.

Orchid painting can wait.  After all I was just trying to brush up my basic skills in painting by revisiting the past.  It really wasn't tops in my agenda.

Then one day the STOP button light on my turntable would not come on.  I thought my deck was unplugged.  The lights worked on the 33 and 45 buttons.  

Must be a burned out lightbulb.  How difficult could it be to replace the lightbulbs.  

Off came the bottom of the turntable.  I located the tiny lightbulbs underneath the capacitance buttons and switched out the bulb for 45 with the STOP, since I don't play 45's.  Put everything back and to my chagrin the turntable was saddled with erratic speed switching on its own.

Further research revealed that the circuit used the resistance of the lightbulbs in its capacitance calculations.  The tiny current draw by placing one's finger on these capacitance buttons was tied in to the lightbulbs and therefore this was a scenario where not just any lightbulb would work.  A  set of 3 lightbulbs for this particular turntable would cost me $21 to buy.  Should I just buy them and possibly exorcise my erratic speed demon?

I wasn't so sure at this point.  I looked at the schematic and it showed the correct voltage at different points of the wiring schematic.  I figured with a little patience I could retrace the different paths of the schematic and with the 6 different potentiometers on the circuit board surely I could adjust the voltage to spec without replacing the burnt lightbulb and my vintage machine would work again.  Besides this could offer me a new experiences to tinker or experiment with something.  Just like painting, I told myself.

As I was contemplating my moves, I went back to my Ji Ben Gong exercises.  Something to do to take my mind off the broken record player.  My muscle memory was slowly coming back.  I could see my brushstrokes getting better and more fluent within the matter of the weeks while I was toying with fixing my turntable.

In the spirit of toying and experimentation, with the same aplomb applied to trying to fix my old equipment, I tried painting on a matte photo paper.  Curious to see what it was like.

The result was not ideal.  The photo paper called me out by amplifying my indecisiveness in my brushstrokes.  They seemed a little pretentious and not spontaneous enough, especially with regards to the petals of the orchid.

In the days and weeks that ensued I realized that I was in over my head with fixing my turntable.  I did not have a basic understanding of the schematic or how the circuit was designed and I based my optimism on the assumption that I could somehow adjust the voltage to spec.  With 6 different potentiometers and a burnt out lightbulb that I kept turning and  switching around I had totally lost track of what I had touched and altered.  I was lost in a deep canyon with no identifiable landmarks.

Back to the drawing board, literally.

I started out with the leaves of the orchid plant.  As I had mentioned before in my blogs about traditions, I was mindful to keep the phoenix eye in the basic construct of the leaf arrangement.

Although the so called host and slave leaves were not well defined, the nuance of such a relationship still governed the composition in this complex arrangement.  Is this the only way to portray orchid?  I would hope not; but old habits are hard to break, especially for students of rote learning.  This type of presentation nonetheless provide a comfortable space, for both the viewer, and the painter.

So the pandemic is not relenting and my vintage record player suffered a fatal blow from my malpractice.  In retrospect the viral pandemic offered me more leisure time to do something that I normally wouldn't have done, and my desire to relive or to preserve the past led to my attempt to convert analog tracks to digital bits.  I see a parallel in my naïve determination to tackle something that I only had a superficial knowledge of and my painting by rote.  In electronics repair I thought I could follow the schematic and somehow attain the correct voltage without knowing what led to the deviation to begin with.  In painting by rote, I followed the traditions without clearly understanding what dictated that practice.  My saving grace is that sometimes I have more gall than brain and sometimes good things happen.  The truth is that my painting attempts could be serendipitous but luck is more stingy when dealing with technical issues.  One has to have Ji Beng Gong, or the basics, by hook or by crook.

How else could I be vacillating between euphoria and despair, but by sucked in by the romantic notion, that I could hold on to things in the past and relive them.  However, on this date, I bid adieu to my vintage turntable, a small but significant part of my past.  

Pie Jesu - A Song and Dance

I've arrived at a point that I am out of whims.  Something tells me to stop.  I am referring to my dancer painting from the last post.

Now what?

How do I botch this up ?

I am looking for a vehicle to coalesce these figures and give them a theme, a message.  I am looking for a road map to exploit.

Then I chanced up a music score for Pie Jesu.  I am a huge fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber and his musicals and I am absolutely infatuated with Sarah Brightman.  The score had parts for string instruments like violins, violas and cellos.  When I saw the notations on how to play the music, I thought of the similarities between music and calligraphy.  In this particular case, between music and my dancing figures.

The individual notes in music is akin to the individual strokes in Chinese writing.  The strokes could be horizontal, vertical or dots and occupied a framework in space.  The notes occupied positions designated by the staff, building a tune.  Tempo of the music is similar to the speed at which the various brushstrokes are laid down in calligraphy, whereas a scherzo and largo might be loosely exemplified by the grass script and the seal script.

So in the Pie Jesu score I saw notation for the bow, i.e. up bow or down bow and I made the association to how the brushstrokes starts and ends.  There was legato ( notes slurred together ) for individual, adjacent notes and that is totally similar to how the brushstrokes were treated in Chinese calligraphy.  Some brushstrokes need to be assimilated as one in order to build the structure.  Phrasing and rhythm are not unique to music, but is evident and required in Chinese calligraphy by how the brush is wielded.  I saw notations for tenuto ( holding notes to their full values, sustained ) even when the music is pianissimo.  So a common mistake for someone using the Chinese round brush for calligraphy is that when one comes to a thin line one tends to skim over that and not give it the full energy, resulting in what I would characterize as a wilted beansprout.  There was notation for pizzicato ( plucking the string ) and arco (playing with the bow) instructing how the musician should sound the notes.

Hence the arms of the ballerinas might dictate long and speedy brushstrokes to distill expression extending to the fingers, not unlike employing thee whole bow to play certain notes to give them character.  Whereas the note might be played with only the middle section, or the tip, or the bottom of  the bow for different effects, various parts of the brush result in different results too. Thus a turned ankle is done differently from a turned head, a difference between using center tip or side tip technique.

Let us examine the two inserts from above.  They show the same word 寒 in both instances.  They are from my calligraphy studies of Su Dongpo's Cold Food Festival Te.

The red circled bend on the left insert shows a smooth round turn.  Compare that to the red circled area from the right insert, where the bend is a very distinct, angular shoulder.  So I would characterize the left insert as an example of legato in brush works, whereas the right insert is an example of pizzicato.

Now the blue circled area from the left insert shows a distinct loop joining the left stroke with the right stroke.  An obvious example of a legato, connecting two distinct strokes, heading two different directions, into a single expression.  The blue circled example from the right insert does not show the overt loop, but does give a suggestion of the brush turning backwards, as evidenced by the little hump.  Whereas this is also a legato, I would also add tenuto ( sustain ) to it to make sure the artist does not lift the brush and maintains the energy throughout the brush travel.

It is very typical for Chinese calligraphers doing the walking or grass style calligraphy to write the same word in varied nuances  In other words one never dresses the same words in identical attires.  This is a way for the calligrapher to bring his/her hubris and boasts his/her command of the brush.  Thus the expression "to read a painting", meaning to appreciate the nuances of the brush through close examination.   In a way this is not that different from the variations of a theme in western music, or seeing the theme being employed and developed again and again throughout a musical piece.

Obviously in Chinese calligraphy, or in using the Chinese brush, there are none of these notations.
The knowledge hence rests in a solid Ji Ben Gong (the fundamentals ) and rote learning.  The point is, such notations are just as necessary and vital, only that they are not explicitly written down in the arena of Chinese brush calligraphy or painting.  I suppose that makes the Chinese brush a tad esoteric.  My intent therefore is to demystify the myths and hypes surrounding the Chinese brush art form and relate it to something tangible and equivalent from the western world.

Enough soliloquy, time to roll up my sleeves again.

Once I was tuned in to the resonance between music and calligraphy, I decided to prop my silhouettes of dancers against the  background of music score from Pie Jesu.

Laying down the staff was the first task.  I thought I had pretty good command of the brush but it was a humiliating experience putting the lines down with a fine brush.

I was trying to be fancy by making my own quill out of a bamboo branch.  That too was kind of disastrous.  The extemporaneously made bamboo quill had no means of holding ink in a controlled manner.  Thus it was all or nothing, resulting in deposit of puddles of ink that I had to blot off in a hurry.  I also suspected the abrasive bamboo tip scratched the surface of my Xuan into a more fibrous state, causing the ink to bleed haphazardly upon contact.  Fortunately I used a light ink for the purpose of writing down the music score.  It didn't take my long to pitch my quill and embraced my round brush again.

It is interesting in hindsight to see how my painting is constructed, borrowing from and finding inspiration from different disciplines, and different cultures.  Here my focus isn't so much on the accuracy of anatomical proportions but rather on the expressiveness of the forms.  This is not unlike Chinese calligraphy.

Just like the horse hairs on a bow caressing the strings in a fine mist of rosin, my brush too is able to course through the Xuan, seeping ink into the fibers to manifest forms; in both instances, expressing something deeper than what is superficial.

Dance Movements

I tried painting my hero's journey with dancers but I botched the work with ill placed streams of ribbons.  Conceptually I was trying to narrate a development of the journey but aesthetically it was a miserable display of disingenuous afterthoughts.

But the inclination to paint dancers never left my mind.

Every time I practiced Chinese calligraphy, especially with the walking or grass script, I invariably think of the written characters as dancers.  I pretend that each brushstroke describes a pose or a transition to a pose.  I am leaning on this thought as my inspiration to do the opposite; perhaps I can paint the dancers with the idea that each pose somehow transforms to a Chinese character.  Is it possible to use the dancers as a reflection of written words?

So I decided to paint dancers again.  I decided to paint them like stick figures, to dispense with the banal requirement to paint faces and expressions and costume.  I shall focus on the placement of the bodies and limbs of the dancers and their postures instead.  Just like a well written calligraphy which possesses balanced form and proportion and energy, I am hoping to emulate that with my dancers.  Since Chinese calligraphy is more than just an arrangement of sticks, as some store signs with faux Chinese styled bamboo alphabets would suggest, I shall paint my dancers as silhouettes.  I trust the Chinese round brush for calligraphy is perfect for this task.  With the correct amount of pressure or lift the artist can modulate the shape of the brushstroke.  These brushstrokes should be rather useful in depicting the expressiveness of the forms and the profiles of the performers.

I started to paint various poses, and whatever came to mind.  I didn't have a grand scheme of where to place my dancers or how many dancers would I be painting.  I left everything to the whims of the moment.

The brushstrokes are treated as calligraphy.  The shape of the brushstroke can be altered with judicious nudging or lifting of the brush.

The thought of treating the dancing profiles as part of the brushstrokes in the assembly of a Chinese written character helps to exude the expressiveness of the moment.

With this exercise I hope to extol the virtues of the Chinese round brush, and why the need to master the round brush is so critical, not only in Chinese calligraphy, but in Chinese brush painting.    How the buttock could be written by folding and nudging the brush to initiate the brushstroke, or leaving the brush tip exposed to form the phalanges.  There is a je ne sais quoi difference in forms painted by filling in the spaces vs that written by nothing more than a brushstroke or two.

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I would be less than honest by not pointing out all the posers that I encounter in this town.  Typically these people learned a little bit about Chinese painting and then claimed to be experts and started to teach Chinese brush painting.  Whereas they totally lacked the Ji Ben Gong (fundamentals) they drew up something that looked a little exotic and passed that as Chinese painting.   I suppose one can play a lot of songs with just chords but if that's all one knows, then this person shouldn't be teaching music.  The image of Chop Suey was seared in mind.  To me that was and remains the ultimate cultural shock.  

Soul and paintings

As I was wrapping up with my sketches of the pig, my thoughts were steered to posing the animal.
How could I make the subject matter interesting and cute, and most of all, auspicious.  My selfish motivation was to have a representational painting to welcome the Year of the Pig, which will happen in about 2 months' time.

Again I was faced with the choice of style for my rendition, whether to paint the pigs Gongbi or Xieyi style.  I just couldn't shake the shackle despite my understanding that this was so unnecessary.

My sketches were obviously line drawings, so I thought I would attempt the Gongbi style, but I knew my calligraphy was very weak and I was afraid to reveal my weaknesses.  The narcissist in me was urging me not to do it.  It was really cumbersome.  Before I could even wet the Xuan I was having trepidations already.    I was very conscious of the fact that since I identified myself as a brush artist, then I had better show my expertise in the brush.  I suppose Chinese brush has so much nuances about the brush tip, the flow and Qi that it has become very intimidating.

I had an opportunity to admire Vincent Van Gogh's works in their original forms and I came away with the impression that his lines showed none of the virtues I looked for in Chinese brush.  His tree branches, outlines of buildings and objects were what I would call wet noodles, totally devoid of the Qi that I was look for; and yet his works are so valued and admired.  Other than his bold, short brush stroke patterns, the quality of his brush was pretty monotonous.  Obviously this is purely my own impression.

Take his famous Sunflower painting for example

and contrast that with a Chinese painting

one could sense a huge difference in where the emphasis was.  Both were representational art, but immensely different in their impressionistic appearance and feel.  The Chinese painting was all about brush strokes and ink tones.  It displayed the intimate relationship amongst the brush, paper and ink.

Let us take a look at a landscape painting  Wheatfield With Crows by Van Gogh,

and compare that with a Chinese landscape painting by Chao Shao-An, a master of Ling-nan School painting

the intricate brush strokes of Chao was in stark contrast with the bold dabs from Van Gogh.

I remember an occasion when a fellow student told my teacher that she was going to paint a Chinese painting in Van Gogh style.  I didn't exactly know what she meant by it or how she was going to do it but my teacher was incensed.  He actually asked that student to not take lessons from him again.
The teacher was irate because he demanded the practice of Ji Ben Gong, the craft of the fundamentals.  Every brush stroke must encompass the calligraphic virtues by showing the tip used, flow and Qi.  His ire was more than a manifestation of tribalism.

Van Gogh was interested in Japanese paintings and he tried his hands in a few.  He painted this Courtesan

and here's a painting of a Dunhuang character from a Chinese painter, Zhang Daqian

again we saw how succinctly different were the way the lines were written.

I was hoping to present the notion that this is not a matter of which is better, or more valid.
How do you compare a Pinot noir to Huangjiu, or Moutai to Vodka.  Before we venture to compare these different alcoholic beverages, we do however need to know what they are and what makes a good Vodka or Moutai.  One would not try to find the hint of tannin from huangjiu.  A vodka bottled in a Chinese vessel does not make a moutai.  But regardless of whether they are brewed with grapes or millet, when these fermented or distilled liquid reaches certain levels of excellence, they shall all be appreciated and consumed.

Having said that, allow me to be the devil's advocate.  Allow me to pose a question.  Van Gogh's love for Asian art notwithstanding, could his Courtesan painting pass for Asian art?  If we found that painting in an attic with no signature to reveal the painter, what would our appraisal be?  Would that be an Asian painting done in Van Gogh style?  Or a western painting trying to emulate the Asian flavor.  What is Chop Suey?  Is that Chinese food?  When I see westerners put soy sauce in their tea I wonder if they were being naive, or was it their preconception that soy sauce goes with everything?  Could it be that they were just thinking outside of the box and was on an intrepid journey to explore tastes?  You might be surprised to learn that there is a soy sauce flavored ice cream!

I suppose the art of painting is not a monolith of just brushstrokes, or color or composition or style.  It is an amalgamation of all the techniques, but most importantly, emotion.  A great painting must have a soul.  A great painting must have a personality, one which moves us.

Soul is defined as an emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artistic performance.  The essence or embodiment of a specific quality; that je ne sais quoi.
Thus where I might deem Van Gogh as not possessing the calligraphic brush strokes, nonetheless his works effervesces in other ways and tugs at me just the same.  The standards and parameters are simply different.  A dog does not have plumage and a bird has no fur.  His works possessed a soul.

I suppose all I was doing was trying to convince myself again, repeatedly, to let go of my inhibitions and preconceived hurdles.  I should be worried about the soul and not the shell.

So I just painted whatever came to my mind, and not worry about the style

Incidentally van Gogh is pronouced differently in Amsterdam than from the States.  So should I insist, during the course of my conversation, that people here pronounce van Gogh the way Dutch do, as a gesture of reverence and risk coming off as a pompous orifice between the gluteus maximus ?

Oink Oink Oink

Prepping For A Demo

I was asked to do a Chinese Brush painting demonstration at one of the local venues.  I told them I would, and my topic would be landscape paintings.

Landscape painting is among the most difficult genre to master.  Needless to say it requires expert brush skill, but it is often laden with so many rules and doctrines, to the extent that it smothers creativity.  Chinese landscape paintings are in essence impressionistic abstract paintings that portray a a state of mind, a philosophy, rather than an object.  It is this ether that gets lost in the process.  I suppose one could describe a well manicured garden with all its physical attributes, design elevations and its eclectic collection of flora but it is the enjoyment of the garden, be it rests merely on the surroundings, or otherwise the sentiments it evokes, that ultimately establishes the garden.

I am certainly no expert in this area, and that is exactly why I wanted to take up this self imposed challenge.  I wanted to approach this demonstration from the standpoint of a student.

A student must do homework, and I need to have a clear road map in my mind as to what I plan to present, so I settled down to devise my program.  My experience with these demonstration sessions are that they are always fluid.  Some audience members are surprisingly well versed, whilst others are totally uninformed and I need to be able to talk at both levels at the same time.  We could be examining one topic and it quickly digressed to something else.  That is the reason I need to be more than a one trick pony and have an arsenal of useful skills and information that I can retrieve from.

Students of classical Chinese Brush are aware of the two main styles of painting, namely the Gonbi and the Xieyi; where the former is a more formal style with distinct outlines and filled in color and the latter is more expressive brushstroke ( especially broad side-tipped used to describe surfaces) format.  Landscape paintings demand a good understanding of the Ji Ben Gong ( fundamentals ) which deals with Gou, Chuen, Ts'a, R'an and D'ian ( outline, texture, rub, wash, dot )

Landscape paintings are often a combination of the two, although there are works that are predominately one or the other.  I shall start with the study of the more brushstroke-weighted ( surface weighted) one.  Here the brushstrokes represent a shape, a landmass in this case; and also the light values and shading.

I reached into my tools bag and dug up an old model that I fashioned with foam core board

using charcoal I rubbed the contour onto my Xuan ( I must emphasize that this is not the traditional way of doing Chinese landscape paintings, but strictly something I devised to help myself and others understand the brushstrokes)

I started on the left side and built my backdrop of a trail with steps using light and medium ink

Using dark ink, I sought out the areas that are shielded from the light and did my side tip brushstrokes

As the ink is depleted gradually from the brush, take advantage of that by laying into areas that require a lighter value.  A clear understanding and concept of how the rocks are presented helps to write in these brushstrokes.  In an ideal situation, the charcoal contour lines should not be visible at all, since they never existed to begin with.  They are only "cheat lines" to help the student visualize the structure.  Thus I was trying hard to conceal these lines.

Moving on to the right side, I inserted the rest of the backdrop

Voila, the completed sketch

Before I proceed to my next etude, let me just say that I am not too happy with the above rendition.
The more brushstroke-weighted (surface-weighted) style is supposed to be more spirited and free and yet I don't see that at all.  I believe the culprit is in my charcoal sketch lines.  Those were supposed to guide me as to where to write in my brushstrokes but they ended up being quite restrictive.  I was trying to conceal them as well as follow them and thus my brushstrokes looked more like tracings than actual strokes.  They lacked gusto!

While my scheme MIGHT help us understand where to wet the paper with ink, it also created a rather rigid image.

I turned my attentions to the more traditional method of painting landscape, half Gonbi, half Xieyi.
This process begins by establishing outlines of hills, rocks, trees etc., anything that is in the foreground or middle-ground.  These areas enjoy a more rigorous and detailed description from the brushstrokes.  Thus the process of Gou is the first step.

As the ink gets depleted from the brush, which also gets drier as the writing continues, we need to strategically start writing in areas that demand a lighter tone, also the process of Chuen and T'sa as the opportunities present.  In other words, Gou started out as a single minded procedure, but as the brush changes its characteristics then we take advantage of the situation by incorporating Chuen and T'sa.  This concurrent administering of the 3 techniques gives the painting a more cohesive feel.

The background, or objects far far away are always depicted with the broad strokes without Gou lines. These are suggestions that something exists out there.  The broad side-tipped strokes are used.

After the basic skeleton is acquired, it is time to employ R'an, to add shading and establish the darker tones.  R'an can be most effective and dramatic when corroborated with the Chuen that is already in place.  It really defines the faces of the rocks and the texture.  It helps if we can hypothesize and visualize where and how the light illuminates the formations.

Using burnt sienna, or tea, we judiciously color in the highlighted areas

Write in the darker areas with indigo and ink mixed.  Do this before the tea or burnt sienna dries so the transition of color is smooth and is easier on the eyes.  Also use a non transparent color like green label one to write in the flat land and shore  at the base of the conical pillars.

Close-up of fine tuning the rock face

The reason for using a non transparent color of the shores is so that when we put in the reflection of the pillars in water, the gouache like color is not covered, retaining the integrity of the shores.

D'ian is selectively applied to hide bad lines, or to accentuate a contour line, suggesting vegetation in the crevasses, tree stands, blades of grass along the shoreline or simply as decoratios to take up space, like a potted plant in the corner of a room.  Obviously tree leaves are prime candidates for its application.

The brushstrokes need to be lively and expressive, despite the fact that they seem like mere dots.

The finished painting

which is loosely based on this scene from Guiln

I feel a lot better now.

I feel like I have given the impending demo an honest preparation.

I feel like I have gone to the confession booth and have all my sins absolved.......