Round and round and round

After experimenting with my newly acquired airbrush on my String Theory-themed pieces, I realized it was something I wanted to pursue further. With practice, I’m confident I could master the technique. At the very least, it would provide me with hours of amusement..  

I am fortunate to have a body of water behind my residence, such that the reflections of surrounding foliage on the water are both tantalizing and mesmerizing.  

I’ve decided to paint water with a multitude of colors using my airbrush.

This time, I’m adding a twist by using metallic paint. I associate the shimmer of water with the sparkle of metallic paint, and I hope it will bring a some impressionistic realism.

I have a bottle of gold metallic acrylic paint that I use for my gilded calligraphy on greeting cards. I experimented with it in my airbrush to see if it would work.

However, I quickly realized that the acrylic paint was too thick to aerosolize. It was quite different from trying to airbrush ink or watercolor. I had to dilute it significantly to make it spray. Unfortunately, the resulting spray was too watery, and I worried that the metallic sparkle would be lost.

But I was wrong! The sparkle returned after the paint dried, which was surprisingly fast. Repeated spraying helped build up the color saturation.

Encouraged by my success, I ordered a box of 18 colors metallic acrylic pouring paint from an online store. I thought the pouring paint might be less viscous. Instead of using special solvents, I diluted the paint with plain water. I assumed that the label said the paint was water-based, so I figured water would be an acceptable diluent.  

 

The painting I had in mind was about a white egret taking off from water, which was dotted with circular ripples.  I figured since I had no control of the air brush, I could at least spray round circles, over and over again.  It would be like doodling.  Child's play. This is absolutely contrary to what I was taught in Chinese Brush, in that we tried not to cover up our brushstrokes with repetitions.

I decided I was braving new frontiers (new toy actually) and I would not genuflect to the strict doctrines of traditional Chinese Brush.  I used the thin translucent cicada skin Xuan however.  The paper had a nice natural sheen to it.

I knew where I wanted to position my egret so I cut out a template for my bird.  I used that template to block out any sprays from my air brush.  With that done I proceeded to spray my background with a blue metallic acrylic.

I was using a chopstick to mix and dilute my paint in the paint receptacle.  I didn't want to waste whatever paint that was clinging to my chopstick, so I dapped the paper with the stick to form circles like ripples.  I had this wild idea of modeling my ripples.  I kneaded strings using my scrap Xuan paper and I fashioned them into circles and plotted them on the paper.

Well that was a disaster.  The strings of paper were so light that any spray from the air brush would blow them out of place.  It was an exercise in futility.  Even the cutout mask I made for my egret had to be weighted down.  It took me about 5 seconds to realize how stupid my idea was.  Free-hand spray it would be.  After all the whole idea of doing ripples was so that precision was not called for, taking into account that this was something novel for me.

I kept reaching for different colors from my box of 18, using both the air brush and regular brush (it took time to clean out my air brush after each spray, since the acrylic dries rather quickly and can clot up my sprayer).  I seemed to have painted with aplomb, which in reality I was too naïve to worry about whether the lines were in the right place or not.  The spray was sort of diluted and wet.  The diluted paint made it difficult to see if there was overlap or coverage or how wide the spray pattern was.  After a while nothing mattered anymore.  I could picture myself with a robotic arm, seemingly dancing with a mind of its own.  Gyrating to the cadence of the hiss from the airbrush. 

What made it more difficult, or interesting, was that depending on where the light source was, different colors would manifest.  The photos showed the void left by my mask of the egret.

 

Wet mounting my two black and white pieces

Now that I've finished painting the two black and white pieces of works, which began with a notion that I could depict "atmosphere" with an ink brush and a water brush, I need to have them mounted.  Wet mounted that is.  

I keep harping on the topic of mounting works done on Xuan because in my neck of the woods people are still pretty naïve about this practice.  They either don't think that is so different from stretching an oil canvas over a frame, or from plain old matting a painting or picture.  As I had mentioned before, even our local Asian art and culture venue would display unmounted works squished and wrinkled in picture frames in their lobbies. I also personally know people who have sold framed, unmounted works on Xuan and are surreptitiously elated because the buyers of their works didn't know better.  Neither of these do justice to works done on Xuan, hence my insistence on writing about mounting. 

Enough soliloquy.  I should take heed of the name of a restaurant here, "Shut up and Eat".

My works are done on cicada skin Xuan and they are extremely fragile.  Great care must be paid to the handling of this paper, either when wet or dry.

The painting was laid face down on a clear sheet of plastic and wetted thoroughly.  Water relaxes the fibers in the paper.  Wrinkles invariably formed and the painting now looked like the skin of an old person.  The trick was to spray more water onto it, such that the paper actually floated on a thin film of water.  This allowed the wet Xuan to move freely on top of the plastic and most of the wrinkles and air bubbles could be stretched out.

Starch was brushed onto the back of the painting.  The stiff brush further pressed out any remaining wrinkles and air bubbles.  A piece of regular Xuan was put onto the back of the freshly starched painting.  Now that the painting was starched to the backing, the two pieces were lifted as one off the plastic and draped onto my wood board to dry.

The photo above showed the wet painting with its backing being hung out to dry.

The drying process renders the fibers taut in the paper.  The starch and the backing Xuan add strength and rigidity to the once whimsy cicada skin Xuan.  Remember the starched shirts and trousers in the old days?  I certainly do.  It's the same idea.  

I would use a double weight Xuan paper for my backing in this setting.  The double weight Xuan is thicker and more durable.  This is a 30 inch painting, so the two pieces of paper absorbed quite a bid of water (and starch).  The weight of all that water could easily tear the wet backing paper when being lifted from the plastic and transported to the wood board.  Try imagining how flimsy a wet piece of paper towel can get.  Now imagine lifting and handling one that is 40 inches long, laden with water.  

I knew I needed to be gentle and careful when doing the mounting, yet I still managed to nick a hole in my paper.  That seems to be my signature move. 

This was not the time to panic.  A very wet brush saturated with water could gently refloat the nicked area and tease the tear back to its original state, or at least greatly minimize the damage.  Never use a tweezer or you would tear the piece off and end up with a hole, guaranteed.   

The other painting, C'era una volta il West was mounted the same way.

In the photo above one could clearly see the white that was painted on the back of a dune and the tree. I used the white pigment to guarantee a solid white background for those two features, without adding distracting brushstrokes to the front of the painting.

The backing Xuan and the painting done on cicada skin Xuan were hung on my wood board to dry.  In this state of dampness, one could clearly see the effect of the white from the back.

This was how the painting looked when dried.  Notice how flat and taut the piece was.  It was like being ironed onto the wood board.

Again, the white from the back revealed nicely, without being obtrusive.  The fact that no visible "white" brushstrokes were seen bestowed a much more natural feel to the painting.  This harmony reminds me of a dark pupil next to the white of the eye.  The pupil is not a button stitched onto the sclera, but a natural looking component of our eye.  The same can be said about the negative space in the lower left corner.  That void was done on purpose, albeit without the help of white pigment on the back of the paper.  That one vacant corner gave room for the painting to "breathe".

LOST

C'era una volta il West

Sunrise at Huangshan

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!

 

Face Up or Face Down?

To the uninitiated, Xuan paper is just a regular piece of white paper to be painted or written on.  The more astute observer would however notice a smooth side and a rough side.

Xuan paper is made from the pulp of plant fibers scooped up on a sieve and the sheets are deposited flat on heated rollers or steel walls to dry.  The side of the paper that faces the roller or wall is smooth, the other side is more fibrous, and therefore rougher.

Technically the smooth side is the "top" side but many artists prefer the rough side to paint on.  It has more "feel".  I can attest to that.  I also like the texture the bottom side provides.  

Printing paper on the other hand are less tolerant if the "wrong" side is used.  I have wasted so much inkjet color by loading my print paper the wrong way.  It is especially easy to do if I was printing on matte photopaper.  The two sides are almost indistinguishable, either by feel or by color.  Only the finished print that comes out from my printer would tell if I fed the paper correctly or not.  Obviously there is no such problem with gloss or semi-gloss paper.  

There is a type of Xuan paper that I like to use and for lack of a proper translation, I'll call it cicada skin paper, or cicada wing paper.  This Xuan paper is very light and transparent and has a slight sheen to it, just like the wings of a cicada. The paper is considered sized or semi-sized, in that it allows color to float on it a little bit without too much bleeding.  It also is able to withstand repeated rubbing without having the top layer of fibers linting up.  Its transparency augments the transparent watercolor and bestows a very delicate feel to the painting.  It is a favorite with artists who do the Gongbi (elaborate) style of Chinese painting.  

I have a couple pieces of dance movement gestures done on such a paper.  I try to use calligraphic brushstrokes to describe the limbs and gestures.  I feel that this approach gives the dance movements more flow and energy.  There is a je ne sais quoi quality of  "writing" versus simply filling in the space with ink or color.

With me the dilemma is not whether I should paint on the paper face up or face down.  As far as I am concerned there is no perceptible difference either way.  My problem is which side of the paper should I be presenting as the top side of my painting.

The cicada paper's thinness and transparency allows the painted image to be visible from both sides of the paper, as if one is looking through a projection slide, or one of those double-faced silk embroidery from Suzhou.  The bottom side of the image can sometimes be a little less saturated or slightly well defined around the edges, but it is this quality that captivates me.

The picture above actually shows the bottom side of the cicada paper with painted image on it.

The painting on the left has the "face up" side showing, whereas the painting on the right is showing the bottom side as the good side.  Can you tell the difference between the two?

The following is a close-up of the painting presented with the "face down" side.  The images are more veiled like, more dreamy.  The limbs are obviously articulated but there are apparent discontinuity in the brushstrokes.  I suppose not all the color comes through from the top side. The blue streaks act like an atmospheric or water current, or even yards of fabric, enveloping the dancers.  I feel that "face down" presentation suits this painting well.  The audience is given more freedom to implement their gestalt. 

The "face up" side of the dancers shows more definition.  The calligraphic brushstroke does wonders with the split leap.  I am just treating the dancers as a words that need to be written, rather than filling in the spaces where their bodies are .  I especially like the effect of flaring on the clothing and all the toe points and all these are achieved with simple calligraphy brushstrokes.

I suppose no competent, upstanding artist would present the bottom side of a painting as the top side.  I don't know which is worse, hanging an abstract painting upside down or doing what I am doing now.  I don't suppose the viewer appreciates being made a fool of.  But for a second rate painter like myself, I need all the help I can get to add drama to my paintings.  I actually considered presenting these two paintings together as a diptych but I really don't want to insult anybody's intelligence, any further than I have to. 

Necessity is the mother of invention.  I am taught well! 

Gestures

I don't know why but I've always liked the pose of a ballerina on toes.  Perhaps that stance forces the dancer to assume a good posture, tensing the right muscles to place the center of gravity within the confines of the mere square inches of footprint.  Toeprint in this case.  The pose inexplicably projects energy, or Chi, as I call it.  

Chi is something a Chinese brush artist relishes and reveres.  Our brushstrokes must exemplify Chi.  One can tell if a snake or a worm is dead or alive without them moving.  Perhaps dead things look desiccated and deflated, that's how we know.  Bad brushstrokes lack Chi, they look withered.   

Perhaps I had one too many music box with a twirling ballerina to play with as a kid, that image is seared in my mind.  I would often doodle a ballet dancer.  As I come to find out, there's a fancy term for it.  They call it gesture drawing.

I suppose my Whiter Shade of Pale painting of 16 Vestals is a culmination of different gestures, albeit not of ballerinas.  Even before that painting I've done studies of dance movements and martial arts movements.  

The last two examples are from me playing with silhouettes as in void spaces.  In traditional Chinese brush techniques I was taught that ink has 6 colors (some schools would say 5) and we should strive to achieve them.  We consider Chinese ink as a color, and the 6 colors of ink ( perhaps more appropriately the 6 variations ) is dry, moist, saturated, light, burnt and strangely. white (actually means absence of ink; a void space in the western vernacular ).  Thus a brushstroke with saturated ink may look dry, or moist, or burnt; depending on the manipulation by the artist, and more than one attribute could exist at the same time.  A brushstroke with light ink is therefore not necessarily dry in appearance.  When we speak of the "white" color in ink, we are referring to how the "white" defines or complements the black.  Sort of like the theory about employing "voids" in the western discipline.  Generally speaking, there are often more "whites" or blanks in a Chinese painting. Bodies of water, waterfalls and the sky are usually left blank.  "Whites" are often preferred even with a "saturated" black brushstroke.  White streaks left in a bamboo stem brushstroke help to define texture and adds character.  My teachers often barked at me, " Liu Bai, Liu Bai !" ( Liu means "to save" and Bai means "white", so the phrase means leave room for voids.)  For that reason we don't usually use a white pigment to paint "white" but opt to leave the space blank instead. Some schools will go as far to say that only a Chinese could understand these concepts.  Thus my void silhouettes are actually using dark ink to define an empty space and allow our mind to see what it wants to see.  My "saturated" ink was an example of it looking "moist" in that last silhouette by the way, and the "white" was used to complement the "black".

As I was playing with and shuffling these studies, somehow my silhouette paintings were superimposed on the other line drawings.  One of my silhouette painting was done on a piece of very translucent cicada skin Xuan, and allowed the bottom painting of martial artists to come through.

That gave me an idea of mounting the two paintings together, superimposed.  This is like working with layers in Photoshop.  How exciting!  I only wished I could control the degree of transparency from each layer.  

My silhouette painting would be the top layer, so it goes face down first.  Since the paper is so thin and delicate, wetting it and flattening out the wrinkles was not an exercise for the faint of heart.  I learned throughout the years that I needed to treat it like attaching window tinting.  I had to use copious amount of water to float the paper, so that it could be shifted slightly or flattened.  It was counterintuitive but it worked. 

I used a soft brush to apply starch and squeeze out the wrinkles.

The next step was to pile on my line drawing of people practicing Wushu.

The Wushu piece was done on regular Xuan paper so it was hefty enough to withstand the rigor of a stiffer brush for starching and flattening. 

The above picture shows the Wushu painting starched on top of the silhouette painting.  A blank Xuan paper backing was applied as the last step and the 3 layer sandwich was allowed to dry.

This is how it looked after drying

Interesting!  Ballerina superimposed on martial artists.  Movements galore.  

Serendipity!  I came upon this setup while shuffling my study pieces around.  

I must also give credit to the person who posed for me for the original silhouette study.  It was at a museum's ballroom which was not in use at the time.  Perfect timing for me to sneak a photo.

Since I was doing a silhouette, I lack the proper training to depict any sort of foreshortening, or a leg bent behind the thigh in this case.  So I changed the pose a little for my painting.  I suppose my study was more about form and feel than just about gesture.