As I mentioned I was particularly fond of the way I was able to "stop" the bleeding of color in its track. I allowed the bleeding to form streaks on this semi-sized Xuan and before the streaks could homogenize I used a hair blow-dryer to dry them. To me it was like going back to the dark-room days when one pulls the print from the developer tray into the acetic acid stop bath.
I thought I was so resourceful.
I fretted over whether to paint birds into this landscape. When I gave in and painted in the migrating geese I thought it was cliche.
It turned out that the professor did not like my treatment of the streaks at all. "Contrived" was the comment. I was feverishly defending myself. I was trying to hint the presence of trees without making them too real.
I urged to express the presence without making it so mechanical. The bleeding streaks intimated themselves as an afterthought, as evidenced by the layering, rather than as a natural occurrence. The birds fit in fine and were not ostentatious in this particular case. That was the professor's adjudication.
I wanted to say one man's meat is another man's poison but then something else hit me. I was too immersed in the technical trickery that I forgot about the overall ambiance of the painting.. What I deemed a monument became a boulder.
As a painting, it was unremarkable. As an etude, why not. I still like it.
