Water

I did something quite different with my "tedious project", and that was trying to paint with a Gongbi style workflow.  That involved drafting a copy of outlined objects and then filling in the blanks with color.  That tedious project had to do with reflections and ripples in a duck pond.  What made that particular project tedious and perhaps unique ( different from your typical everyday Gongbi style paintings of birds and flowers ) was that my painting had a mosaic appearance to it.  Quite impressionistic to say the least.

So I am going to visit that format again and try my luck.  With nothing but ripples this time as my subject matter.  I am hoping to digitize if you will, the analog experience of constantly shimmering ripples.  Forever morphing and yet appearing so orderly as to be cavalries swarming across the surface.

I am starting out by defining the bright areas of the water first.  Typically these are the fronts of the ripples.  Thus these areas might seem random but they actually remind me of U-shaped staples arranged in rows.

There are going to be tons of these bright spots and I really don't want to confuse myself by all these wriggly lines.  After 5 minutes of this I could no longer distinguish which areas are bright and which are dark.  To help my ailing cognitive brain I am cheating by filling in the dark areas as I go.

In a typical Chinese Gongbi style painting, the quality of the brushstroke for lines is of utmost importance.  They need to be evenly applied, like the gold rims around a fine china plate or cup.  My brushstrokes here really do not pass muster.  My excuses are that I am preoccupied with the expressiveness of the shimmering water, and I am eager and anxious to lay down the next piece of the mosaic before I lose my train of thought.

So there is order in my madness.  The red lines in the following photo show my perception and identification of the ripples as they dance on the water. 

This is more tedious than I have anticipated.  Time to pin this up on the wall, allow myself some distance from this mess of untidy lines and reassess this project.

The Verdict

I've submitted 3 of my black and white renditions to a juried event.

After I tendered my digital images of the works, I started to make frames for them; fully expecting acceptance of my labor of love.  If anybody wants to know what optimism means, go no further.

The work with the two Canada geese spending some quiet time amongst water reed is given the title "Encounter".  The painting was done with Chinese ink on Xuan, subsequently mounted on canvas.
I made a custom frame with poplar and painted it black.

The painting of the single white rose is named "Emote".  The painting was done on Xuan and mounted on a pane of clear plastic.  A custom poplar frame was made with a groove to accommodate the plastic pane.  I was looking for the "float" effect.

I had previously done two pieces of banyan roots and I chose the more complex one to be mounted
the traditional Xuan on Xuan fashion.  I bought a cheap poster frame and trimmed my own mat to display this work.  "Finding My Roots" is the title.

The results are in.

Only one piece is juried in.

"Emote" did not pass muster.

Nor did "Finding My Roots"

So much for optimism.