Explorers

It didn't take too long for me to realize that my Reflection painting was too solitary. I am sure that notion was amplified by the curtailing of social activities and the collapsing of social circles by the pandemic. I have plenty of solitude from being locked up inside my house, and looking at the painting to satisfy my Mindful Moments as dictated by my health apps is a depressing proposition. In fact I had this primal urge to part the shrouded landscape, skim over the water and snuggle up to the branch tips, hazy smoke nothwithstanding. At the risk of being banal, I decided to add a couple of geese in flight for a little movement and drama. Canada goose is a subject that I'm pretty familiar with. I'm fortunate to call them friends, as a nesting pair live off my backyard and always introduce me to their offsprings. I've grown to know some individuals by their manner, or lack of, in taking food. Unfortuanately a bobcat ambushed the couple and I got to pay my last respects by bagging their mangled feathers and entrails. God is flawed; in creating a food chain which predicates on termination of life in order for the exchange of ATP to happen. Anyways I shall borrown them for my subjects. I painted my geese with a few extremely simple calligraphic brushstrokes. The Chinese round brush was the perfect instrument. I was WRITING my geese. I will break down the individual brushstrokes to demonstrate the simplicity of such calligraphy. I started out by writing an upward slant, nudging the round brush after establishing the initial point

Then I extended the brushstroke with a downward slanting one, with a nudge towards the end and feathring out. This formed the wings of the goose in flight.

Next came a side-tip brushstroke, resembling a hook

Position this hook beneath the wing, allowing a narrow slit between them to represent the telltail( a homophone pun ) white margin on the tail feathers of the Canada goose

Gave the figure a little dot where the head should be, and Voila,

The companion goose was painted the same way.

So now my painting has a pair of inquisitive Canada geese, ready to explore their surroundings. The saturated ink tone of the geese helps to create a perspective of distance.

Flamingo Tango

One of my teacher accused me of unable to Let Go !  Thus my brushstrokes are not deliberate and feel inhibited.  I was told many times to let it all hang out, because I had to go so much overboard just to reach par!

I was cutting up some paper for calligraphy, which I was in no mood to do.  Why don't I doodle, or just horse around with the brush?  Perfect excuse for not doing calligraphy!

Images of a pair of Flamingo dancing came to mind.

Not bad, I thought.  Then I decided to add in a few black areas to signal the trailing edge feathers.
Us Chinese have a saying:  Painting legs on a snake.........................................  messing up a good thing by being redundant and overbearing.  The black lines were clearly an afterthought, and not syncing with the rest of the brushstrokes.

In my disgust, I grabbed a whole sheet of 4 ft Xuan and repeated the process, except this time I figured a way to incorporate the black areas a little better.

I don't dislike it.  I thought it looks interesting.  I could do a better job on the body!  I thought the body on the smaller piece looks better.

I decided to anchor the birds a little better by writing in some darker ink brushstrokes, being careful to display calligraphic characteristics, especially with turns and lifts.