Trees in Mustard Seed Garden

I've touched upon some of the ways leaves are depicted in traditional Chinese brush landscape and I've also alluded to my realization that groves of bamboo appear to be telegraph poles.  It will be remiss for me not to mention some examples of how trees are represented. 

I am going to borrow examples from the Mustard Seed Garden for illustration.

It is not difficult to surmise that dots and/or little round circles are used to describe leaves on a tree.  It is quite plain.

The "antler brushstroke" is ideal to show a deciduous tree in the fall, with its barren branches, devoid of leaves.  This brushstroke resembles the antler of a deer, hence its name. 

By extending these "antlers", we have the basis for painting a willow tree, which is a very common thematic matter in Chinese landscape painting. 

The Mustard Seed Garden is also a compendium for how varies ancient masters would paint their "woods" with assorted trees species.  Again I am borrowing from the text book and try to showcase an example:

In the above exercise, the various trees need to assume different heights and not be rooted on a straight line, thus portraying a scattered look.  It is not important to accurately describe the correct species of each tree, just so the aggregate shows mixed trees in the woods.  Trees are often painted with exposed, gnarly roots to lend a sense of ruggedness.  It is often common practice to assign each tree with a different color to emphasize the diverse flora.  Branches and leaves often overlap each other; thus it is vital to distinguish the spatial relationship of these seemingly mundane brushstrokes.  This is where the craft of the artist is exemplified, and where the dilettantes miss their marks.   

Of course when it comes to the ubiquitous pine, there are numerous styles in the Mustard Seed Garden that one can study with.  Pine is important because it is symbolic for longevity and the ability to triumph through hardship. 

My favorite example comes from the ancient Song dynasty painter Ma Yuan.  He used a so called "broken brush" style for his conifer.  The "broken brush" literally means a brush that has seen better days and has lost some of its hair and is no longer able to come to a point.  In other words a worn-out brush.  Thus the brushstrokes are raw and unrestrained.  It really adds to the stubbornness of the pine.

Again, I encourage the readers to do your own research if so inclined.  Try to dig up a copy of the Mustard Seed Garden and enjoy a first-person experience. 

Emulating, Copying

The rote learning tradition of Chinese brush painting required most of us going through the repetitive process of practicing the fundamentals, Ji Ben Gong.  We learned how to use the brush, manipulating the tip and the edge, techniques evolved from brush calligraphy.  The old reference book Mustard Seed Garden provides loads of information on how to arrange and paint different subject matters, and gives examples of the different styles, stemming from different dynasties and assorted artists. To hone our skills and to put these examples into practice, we are often required to emulate or copy works from famous masters.

We benefit from such excursions only if we pay critical attention to the various aspects of the masters' paintings, and how they relate to the examples in Mustard Seed Garden.  Otherwise it's an exercise in futility. Worse yet, we will be repeating our mistakes without knowing it.

Recently I encountered a student's emulation of an old landscape painting, probably of the Song circa.
I was very surprised when the instructor piled heaps of compliments on this exercise because as a student of Chinese brush painting, I felt that student totally missed the boat.

I didn't think the student understood what all those lines represented.  I had posted in my past blogs about the contour lines of the mountains as being thin vertical slices of the structure, as if we were looking at a series of a CT scan of the mountain.

Here are some typical examples of classical brush landscapes

There were too many scalloping on the contour lines ( circled red ) and the flat platform showed no reference to the edges ( circled blue ) and obviously the trees were haphazardly placed.  Jagged undulating lines were mistaken for little mounds.  I refuse to believe for one minute that the original looked anything like that.  I thought this was a searing example of illustrating our bad habits; blindly copying without understanding.  Either that or I was using a different yardstick.

I thought I would take a picture and compare that with the original for more research and the instructor blocked my capture with a hand, stating that I needed permission from the student for my picture taking.

I was at a loss; confused and startled.  The instructor would have no second thoughts about making photo copies of copy righted material and yet was being so adamant about my taking a picture of what I deemed as a bad case of copying? Taking a photo of a copy of a copy elicited ire!   God help me.

I rather enjoy the landscape works of Zhang Daqian ( 1899-1983 ).  His bold use of color and the splashing technique was refreshing for me.  Unfortunately he was also known as a supreme forger.  Anyways it is his craft that I wanted to study.

I decided to emulate a snippet of his LuShan Painting.  This painting is interesting in that Zhang had never set foot there.  He composed it purely from imagination and experience from other places.  I chose the semi-sized Xuan for the ease of  floating colors.

I started out by sketching with charcoal and painted in the tree trunks using alum mixed in with a base color.
I needed the alum to help define the body of the trees, even under the cloaking of the leaves.  It works sort of like a resist does in watercolor.

Using light ink, I wrote in the tree that was not colored in the original painting.  The fact that Master Zhang left this tree untouched was interesting, as if he wanted us to see his creative process; this along with the faint sketch lines he made of trees and contours towards the upper middle part of the painting.  I also utilized the light ink to loosely dab in the shaded areas of the precipitous, making it easier to identify the tucked in areas.

I then began the arduous task of writing in the leaves on these trees, paying attention that there were different styles of leaves, as pertained to the mixed woods canon.

A base coat of color was applied to form the hills, and the various ledges and flat tops, also delineating the folds along the flat top edges and the little trail that led to the bottom flat top.

Accumulating layers of color and Chuen strokes to render texture to the landscape.

Applying Lotus Leaf Chuen to the hill on the left, adding reference to where the trees were sprouted.  This simple technique helped the viewer to perceive that the trees grew not out of a  straight line, but rather, a mass that had a top surface.  It added to the dome shaped top of the structure.

To summarize, I paid attention to the following attributes when I decided to emulate this piece of work:

1. mixed woods presentation of the trees
2. naked, exposed, tenacious roots, and suggestion of a broad root system even on distant trees
3. how to preserve the tree trunks as discrete voids
4. relationship of the roots to the land, how the trees are anchored
5. the edge and folds of the flat tops, and their relationship to the precipitous
6. the roof tops behind the tree line for Depth Perspective
7. the addition of Lotus Leaf Chuen to help modulate the otherwise two dimensional hill ridge
8. the continuation of the land mass as represented by the sketch lines to the right of the trees,    dissolving into the ambiguous background, lending so much more virtual space to the ambiance

It was a fun exercise, and hopefully I retained some of the knowledge gained.