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!
