Wild Wild West

I am a fan of Ennio Morricone.  When The Good, the Bad and the Ugly came to the silver screen there was no internet to search for information.  I was also too young to want to dig up where the music came from or was it original music.  All I knew was that it was great music.  It wasn't until much, much later that I found out who the composer was.  Gabriel's Oboe made my eyes swelled up.  His C'era una volta il West is the epitome of songs without words.  The angelic soprano voice has no lyrics, yet it says so much.

Recently I found a documentary about Ennio Morricone on my subscription and I finally had a chance to learn about this great composer.  I learned that he loved to experiment with sounds made by playing musical instruments in an improvised, non-traditional way.  I suppose he was much too playful for his conservatory trained background and his colleagues and that his association with the so called spaghetti westerns costed him the proper respect he deserved. He was not looked upon as a serious composer.  He was nominated for numerous works and movie tracks and was always snubbed.  In fact the Academy presented him with an honorary award thinking that he might never earn a real one.  He finally won his only real Oscar 4 years before his death.   I suppose if one is in the business, then the Oscar is possibly the most significant thing that matters, like it or not.

His life story gives solace to those of us who like to be experimental or prodigal at times,  The different drum beat we follow often rub the establishment the wrong way. The heart of the matter is, he absolutely enjoyed what he was doing.  He would often times turn down different works only to acquiesce later because he found inspiration and he wanted to leave his marks.

The documentary on Morricone made a lot of references to the Westerns.  The wild west backdrops of these movies remind me of the cloud pieces that I've been playing around with.  Borrowing from his theme Once Upon a Time in the West, I am inspired to do a painting with big sky and expansive landscape.  I am aiming for my own painting without words.  Let's see if I can deliver that notion.

I sketched a roadmap of what my piece might look like.

My clouds on the top side.  There would be more void spaces on one side, to make the arrangement look more interesting.  I wanted a couple of dark clouds in the middle, not only to create contrast with the rest of the sky, but to give perspective of distance.  My theory was that the darker clouds would appear denser and more suffocating, thus should be closer to the ground than the rest. I sort of wanted the clouds to radiate from the center of the painting, utilizing them to define the vanishing horizon.  

I would use a landscape from the central part of Oregon to complement the sky.  Central Oregon is known as desert country and we have a geological feature of dunes with strata of different colors from different minerals.  One such spot is called the Painted Hills.  I picked this feature because I needed a desert for my wild west scene, and I thought it would be surreptitiously funny to name a black and white painting Painted Hills.  I can see people scratching their heads.  That's what I like about black and white paintings.  They force us to let go of a lot of foregone conclusions of what different objects are being described.  We have to read the painting to get the context.

I suppose I could call the dramatic clouds portion of the painting a melody. The two dark clouds could be the main theme of the melody.  The abandoned desert would be the counter-melody, to borrow a musical term. 

That's the plan anyways.

I sketched in the borders of the two center clouds.  I was concerned about their "silver linings" effect, or the absence of.  The pencil marks helped me to visualize the clouds better against the white paper, especially before the darker contrast of the next cloud was painted in. 

I then moved on over to the right portion of my clouds.  I loved doing these clouds because I felt more spontaneous.  I could feel that freedom in my brushstrokes.  It was also gratifying to see the cumulus clouds cumulating and being sculptured by each successive dark brushstroke, like lava oozing out from fissures.  At the same time it was challenging for my brain to identify and define the void areas by using ink.  It was almost like backing up a trailer on a hitch.  One needs to steer left to effect a right turn!  It absolutely took practice.

  

My intention was to make the sky very dramatic and haunting.  A white sky did not convey that feeling.  My dirty ink rag under the paper gave me an idea.  Paint the sky black to allow the clouds to shine.

So was this too much?  It was too late to change anyways.  I could not undo or lighten the dark ink.  Besides, I said that one needs to let go of their foregone conclusions when reading a black and white painting.  So the sky doesn't always have to be white, or light.  Right?  In any case, the "silver linings" really popped now.  

Actually I liked the drama.  Loved the drama.  

Speaking of drama, I wasn't sure that the "silver linings" were grandiose enough.  Then I realized that my translucent Xuan was sitting on my felt underlay which was not white.

So this would be the appearance of the painting if it was mounted on a white piece of Xuan.  The proper white balance would be restored.  This is a great example of why we must mount our paintings done on Xuan paper.  There is no two ways about it.  

I laid a piece of white matboard beneath part of the painting to further illustrate my point of the necessity of mounting.

Atmosphere 2.0

I decide to continue my quest to describe atmosphere with my brush and ink.

I am using the same kind of paper, a semi-sized Xuan.  I am sticking with the basic construct of the composition.  What I have learned from the last exercise is that my technique of using a water brush along with an ink brush seemed a little monotonous.  I am looking for more variations, not only in ink tones but especially in shapes.

I am starting a new experiment by loading the tip of my soaking wet brush with saturated ink and rely on the natural depletion of the brush and the natural dispersion of the ink to effect the change of tonal values.  

Notice that I'm holding my brush flat with the inked tip pointing towards myself.  Thus the subsequent brushstroke will have the dark ink contrasting with the light portion of the previous brushstroke.  This is how I am going to improve on my rather banal brushstrokes from the previous painting.  I find this to be a more expressive method of defining shape and tone, for my purposes anyways.

In short, I am using the dark values of my brush to define and give shape to the voids.  I learned this trick during my days of doing floral Chinese painting.  The example below shows how the dark color of the leaves are used to describe the serrated petals of the flower.

I am glad I am able to recall this time-tested method of painting.  It definitely makes my brushstrokes more lively.  I can actually design the body and shape of my clouds now. 

As I am taking a break from the current painting, my eyes wander to the one I finished a couple of weeks ago, the one that I think looks a bid drab.  Could I change the character of the painting by cropping it?

I eliminated the upper portion of that painting.  The clouds seemed trite and were distracting from the story.  I am liking this new version now.  It is menacing, to say the least.  Not drab anymore.  It packs a punch now.

What if I crop the yet unfinished painting that I'm working on now?

It certainly does not impart the same flavor as the last one.  It needs a lot of work.  I better continue with the painting and see where it leads me.

For the sky on the right side of my painting I shall give the clouds a more compact look, to contrast with the big fat cumulous clouds on the left.

I mean these are still lumpy, but they are more layered.  Almost like dough folding over themselves when being kneaded.  

Of course I still need cloud patches that retain all the tonal values, but garnished with the silver lining. I can't have everything in high contrast.  A few well-placed and diffused dark areas add to the credibility that these are indeed clouds.

I'll be remiss if I don't address the dark bar at the bottom of my painting.  My reason to include that is purely to give anchor to the painting.  Frankly I have problem presenting a story with just clouds.  My vocabulary is rather limited and I do not have the eloquence.  

To avoid presenting the dark strip as dead weight, I used my alum solution to write a few wriggly lines. My intention is to let the alum solution act as a sizing agent, thus help to block out being covered up by subsequent ink brushstrokes.

So how do I account for such void spaces.  

That's up to the viewer.  

For me, I am reminded of waves cresting. 

Under an ominous, boiling sky.