Quorum gets framed

I've been glancing at my Quorum piece for a while now hoping to receive some vibes as to what kind of alteration I could make to render the painting more interesting.  Sadly my antenna picked up no such signals.  Does that mean my journey with this piece ends right here?

Fortunately no!  I've also been eyeing this frame that I picked up rather inexpensively.  This must be an abandoned order from a custom frame shop, but looks perfectly fine to me.  I've been hoarding it just for an occasion like this.

I have something to tinker with now.  I think I can trim my Quorum piece to fit this frame.  I am going to mount my Xuan onto canvas first.  I really enjoy the texture of the canvas showing through paper.

Normally I would build my canvas frame but I recall a foul experience when the canvas frame twisted after the mounting process.  Since this is a rather large painting, I decided to take the safe route.  I bought a piece of  two-ply wood veneer and tailor fit it to my frame.

Then I applied exterior wood glue to the veneer

My OCD is coming through a tad.  I was being a bit pedantic and presumed that this is the perfect way of assuring even dispersion and good bonding.  To my horror the glue did not spread well at all.

And it is drying fast after being spread thin.  I haphazardly dabbed all I could and turned the veneer over onto a piece of canvas.

I folded up the edges, pinned them in and put weight on the veneer to prevent it from curling as the glue set.

After the glue is thoroughly dried in a couple of days, I trimmed the excess canvas to the edge of the veneer.

The painting was wetted down with water to relax the fibers

The paper was allowed to air dry to the point when it is considered moist.  This is when all the fibers had relaxed and the paper had regained its tensile strength back so it would not tear as easily during the mounting process.  A dilute solution of starch was used, such that the Xuan could float on the starch a bit and I could brush out any creases and air bubbles.  The lowering of the painting onto the canvas is a two person job and demands a steady hand and nerve of steel.  Disaster beckons if the paper does not align with the canvas, especially with a long piece like this one.  Notice the more saturated tone from the wet paper.

I am thrilled to see the added texture imparted by the canvas to this painting

The taut Xuan paper looked like fabric now

The dried surface lost a little of saturation when dried.  This could be restored by applying gel on the painting to reclaim the vividness and the depth of the color.

Finally, my Quorum gets framed (this picture was taken under halogen track lights, thus the warm color)

Bamboo Tutorial continued

The painting I took to class was very two dimensional and lifeless.   Somehow it looked like a manikin.  I suppose it was sufficient for instructional purposes.  I figured since I do not paint bamboo that often, I needed the practice.  I ended up with the one shown above.

I attempted with different ink tones to show the spatial relationship of the different stems and leaves.  The bold ink color of the lower vertical stem gave anchor to the painting and helped to defuse the parallel lines.

My painting colleague had this critique............. a weak left flank.

But I had already mounted the painting.  Any alteration now will disturb the sandwiched starch layer and cause the paper to warp.   Oh what the hell, it's only a piece of paper.

Armed with concentrated ink right out of the bottle, and a very dry brush ( really too dry to paint bamboo leaves, but I had few options), I attempted to build on the left side.

One thing is for sure, this painting has more spunk than the one in the last blog.

I had to do another class demo, so I tried my hands at bamboo again.  This time paying a little bit more attention to contrast and harmony.  The more noded stem has denser and adhering leaves, versus the less noded stem with sparse leaves that hang away from the main stem.  More or Less.

Finally, the painting is cropped and mounted on canvas, and I even made a frame for it.

P.S.  For more material on bamboo leaves, please watch video on my blog on Bamboo Leaves and Pronation published on Oct 29, 2011.