The black and white charcoal, ink, altered neck piece of botched attempt of geese of my dreams (second to last picture in "Have I Cooked My Geese" blog) had been pinned on my walls for quite a while now, trying to get my attention from time to time. I'll be the first one to admit that this had been a love hate relationship. I loved the looks, but I hated the details. The painting did not look bad as long as it was just a glimpse.
I suppose the desire to rectify the painting had laid latent long enough. I suppose in today's lingo this would be data running in the background. Every glance I casted at the painting contributed to a few ones and zeros in the command and all of a sudden the indicator light came on and I was asked if I wanted to execute the program.
I am going to cook my geese. Again.
First I spiced up the painting with blue color. I was trying for water in my original concept. Then burnt sienna mixed with ink to warm up my geese a little bit. I circumvented the issue of continuous lines by slicing up my Xuan paper into strips of various widths and then reattaching them to form a new composite. By shifting these strips I was able to break up the lines and still form a comprehensible image.
Since the format was no longer a rectangle, I had to squeeze in all 5 geese into the confines of this square. I enjoyed the resulting effect from slicing and dicing my original painting, but now the canvas seemed crammed. Annoying is the fact that the geese have divided the canvas into left and right halves with an invisible center line down the middle. If the single goose at the right bottom corner had been a smaller size, then it would have fit in the balance of schemes better.
Then it dawned on me that by flipping the canvas 180 degrees, the flaw is not as perceptible. Moreover, the stratified look is true to reflections of the geese in water. A few white crosses suggesting a shimmering surface help to seal the deal.
Slicing and dicing, a new recipe.
