Between feeling stupid about my insolence and the pain of my tibiotalar ligaments, I was conjuring up this image of a painting of a flower. A large, specimen like presentation of a flower.
I wanted the painting to be of high contrast, sort of making a in-your-face statement; and yet not harsh to look at. I was vacillating between a peony or a rose. I settled for the rose because it has fewer petals ( thus less work? ) and it is universally accepted as the symbol of love and gratitude.
Should I employ the Gongbi style where everything is outlined and scribed or the Xieyi style, where brushstrokes define form and space? Since my vision was to create a high contrast painting with ink, then the petals would have to assume a rather dark value to relieve from the white paper. A dark rose somehow would not seem appealing. Keeping the background very dark could certainly make the rose stand out, but that meant the petals have to be mostly white ( or mostly void spaces ). It would thus be difficult to delineate the individual petals. I could use titanium white or white gouache to paint the petals, but then I would lose the ambience of the translucent voids imparted by the Xuan.
Thus the Gongbi method seemed inevitable; or so I thought.
I was still living in my rigid cell of definitions of Gongbi and Xieyi and Chinese Brush and whatever that I lost sight of the main reason for painting; revealing, expressing. Those shackles had to go.
Thank god for the World Cup. It kept my mind occupied, although the notion of high contrast rose painting kept churning away in my subconscious.
Then came the news of the miracle rescue of the Thai youth football team from the cave. The broadcast media was filled with breaking news reports. One of the anchor woman from the peacock network unfortunately showed how little she really cared, or how she pretended to care. It had been widely known and heart gripping for so many days, that 12 young boys and their adult coach was trapped. The British diver who discovered them and asked how many were in the cave, upon hearing the answer, he said " Thirteen? Brilliant!" Yet this anchor woman while showcasing her talent on another talk show in a July 11 broadcast, had to chime in with her own remarks. She kept referring to 13 little boys, 13 little souls. And when empathizing with the news of the Thai Navy Seal who lost his life during this ordeal, this anchor woman said that navy seal lost his life to save 14 people.
Really? While the whole world was rejoicing that 13 lives were saved and this host of a national syndicated TV station couldn't even get the numbers right as to how many people were trapped in the cave? Now that's cold, and pretentious. How could she be so detached from one of the biggest news story that every TV station was reporting on? Was she just reading the news and not felt the gravity of all the emotions involved? Did she not care? Was she just a TV personality; window dressing? Surely this could not have been a brain fart. She cared more about which way to turn to the camera to show off her best side rather than to the humdrum details of the news that she was reporting. Or could it be that this happened not in a Western civilization, and a world thousands of miles away from her.?
I almost wanted to send that TV station a comment about this faux pas. In my anguish, I hobbled to my painting table and started my rose painting; the one that had been gestating for a little while.
I was emoting! I was feeling a different kind of pain. I needed this little spark to set me off.
I wanted to keep my background black, that meant white petals. Keeping in mind the necessity of contrast, I used very light ink to brush in the petals. Not all of them, but the strategic ones that I thought was vital in giving structure to the flower.
The composition of the painting would have the subject assuming a diagonal attitude, with the white rose as the focal point. Borrowing the theory of Ying and Yang, solid vs vague, dense vs sparse etc, the meat of the painting is in the upper half, thus the lower half is the meek. To add interest to the apparent austerity here, I painted in nondescript bud and vines as garnishing. I painted them as voids to contrast with the background.
I debated on whether to finish the black background first or to paint the flower and leaves first. My initial impulse was to paint the background first. I was rushing to be immersed in the high contrast environment. I was seeking instant gratification. But then the left hemisphere of my brain took over and advised me not to. The all black backdrop could lure me into being heavy handed with my dark values on the rose petals, as if to compete with the blackness.
I started to work on the leaves and other parts of the plant, all the while reminding myself to be patient and discret and that the flower will pop once the background is filled in.
I left myself with a lot of wiggle room. My values were quite tentative, heavy on the light side. I could always make something darker, but not the other way around. After the rough sketch, I decided to fill in the background.
The saturation faded quite a bid after the ink dried. It required a lot of trial and error to accumulate the knowledge of how to gauge or anticipate the tone after drying.
I knew I would eventually increase the saturation of the black, for now I would work on the smaller rose on top. This rose needed to assume a rather dark value. This rose was cast the role of subordinate to the bigger rose. It needed to stay in the backdrop.
.....to be continued.........
