All By Herself

A woman was  taking a stroll down a pier. 

This pier was at a bustling fishing village, with roadside bistros on one side and fishing boats and freight barges on the other.

Perhaps it was only late afternoon thus the night life hadn't struck up yet.  The outdoor restaurants were still getting ready for the night time onslaught of patrons, so the round tables with frayed plastic tarps and empty stools stood empty. 

For now.

That was the setting for my painting.

The fishing village had the quaintness of times gone-by, along with the contrasting hustle of being a tourist stop.  The open restaurants were nothing more than rows of round tables under a canvas top supported by bamboo pole rafters.  Cooking was by portable  propane tanks and obviously seafood was the only category on menu.  All the menu items were maintained in water pails; fish and shellfish galore.

Again I summoned the help of the translucent semi-sized Xuan, wanting to do the Ji Mo technique again.  The foci of my interest will be the interplay of the vertical pole lines with the round shape of table tops, plus the back lit effect of the late afternoon sun.

After situating the various elements of this panting, I started to establish a dark area, distal of the painting, mainly to help guide me as to how the work should progress.

Oops, I let my box of macadamia nut chocolate got into the frame.  That was my fuel!

Since the lady is the person of interest here, I decided to accord her the proper decorum, by working on her first.

What started out as a woman with a face soon evolved to a mere shadow with few details. Employing the Jimo technique style, I tried to create the impression that light was behind her;  rendering her features obscured.  I retained a hint of a bust on her;  just to entertain myself I suppose.

The watermarks left by each subsequent brushstroke added interest and structure to an otherwise bland patch of black ink.  This is this characteristic that I exploited to create my "silver lining" on the back lit silhouette in the finished painting.

I needed also to account for the time and place of my lady.  She was walking with her back against the setting sun and therefore needed to cast a long shadow to fit that scenario.  I cut out a paper silhouette of the lady and placed it onto my paper and shone a light behind her.  By moving the light around I could cast whatever shadow I needed.  Once I found the shadow I liked, I painted that in.  That was pretty ingenious, wasn't it?

Epilogue: Chronicle of Shadows

I chronicled my trials and tribulations with my Shadows painting.  In the Coming Full Circles blog I settled on a final version.

I was happy with it.

Until I showed it to my group of Chinese Brush painting friends  and to an arts professor.

My friends could not accept the fact that the shadows did not cross the path.  They kept assuming the void space was water and in that sense I could have painted in reflections.  They simply could not tolerate my attempt at filtering out some details to create sort of an art deco type exercise.  I was trying to blend realism with a graphic element.

The art professor had problem with the paths. 

Too structured.  The edges were too rigid and not xieyi enough, 

I was able to present my case.  I showed the works by Gong Xian (1618-1689), one of the Masters of Nanjing.

Did he not have a blend of realism and graphic design?  He too had a well defined path leading to the house in the bottom painting;  and a second void space at the right middle portion of the painting.

I was trying to emulate his Ji Mo ( accumulating ink ) technique.

I had four months to think about everything.  Over time I became less defensive and more willing to accept other viewpoints.

Since I've been doing a lot of black and white paintings as of late, I decided to really play up the ambiance of this painting.

I made a strong presence of light coming from behind the trees.  The shadows now sprouted across the page to amplify the light source.  The prominent pathways are now reduced to bright patches, suggesting but not defining trails.

I truly sensed that I've written the final chapter on this painting.  There is no room for other changes, only pages of thoughts and suggestions.

This is indeed the epilogue of Chronicle of Shadows.