SCATTERED FOCAL POINT PERSPECTIVE

I was presented with a piece of work with the emphasis on perspective. In this instance, assuming a downward looking perspective.



Before I delve into this topic of perspective in Chinese paintings, let me address the concept of scattered focal point. As we thumb through "HOW TO" books on painting, we often find the terms horizon, vanishing point, etc. In Chinese Landscape paintings, the concept of scattered focal point is introduced. As you look at objects at different elevations, and I am using a building as an example, conventional wisdom will tell you that if you see mostly roof, then you are looking at the house from above. If you see mostly foundation, or the soffit then you are looking at it from below. A lot of Chinese landscape painting however depicts the buildings at various elevations as if one was looking at them from level ground, and this is the concept of scattered focal point.






The attached illustration makes that observation.



When the uninitiated individual looks at a Chinese landscape painting, one might notice exotic ways of representing mountains, hills, rocks and streams and vapor etc, but one can't quite put the finger on what else makes the painting different. This is almost like looking at a flat map of the world instead of the spherical map



Having said that, the artist can choose to deviate from this format, and utilize perspective to add to the overall feeling of the painting.



When I looked at the presented work, I had a strong feeling of discord. I will shy away from discussion of composition, but I will



try to address what I see is wrong, and it all has to do with perspective. The work pretends to present a view from above, thus the observer is looking at the top of the gazebo. Unfortunately nothing else suggests that. Everything else in this painting has the scattered focal point presentation.



I used the following indicators:



I should be able to see the water leading up to the fall on the left.



The water falls ( the artist says those are water falls ) on the right looks like streams if this was the perspective from above. They do not show a downward movement, just a north-south direction.



The contour lines on the hills are those of a typical observer at the same level, i.e. the contour line defines the ridge.



The artist did not accept my observation well. Perhaps

the artist is too entrenched in the Old School of copying and did not do much observing. I asked the artist to paint the same landscape, but using the traditional scattered focal point practice, to show me the difference his view of " from above" vs that scattered focal view and the artist was not able to do that. I then realized that his inability to do so stemmed from his lack of true understanding of "perspective".



I spent a couple of weeks attempting to present my case in a different fashion. I tried to draw the same painting by using my understanding of perspective, and I failed. I found that his type of landscape does not lend itself well to make my case.



I finally resorted to building models to illustrate my point. I crumbled a piece of paper and built my own mountain. I fashioned my gazebo top using a tiny square of paper, resting on a pin. Set up my light source to the right, above my "mountain" to simulate the sun, and took pictures from above and from eye level to get the 2 perspectives. I labelled the typical contour lines A,B,C,and D to show how these same contours, or land features, are different when viewed at different elevations.



What is readily apparent is that in the eye level shot ( gazebo top is in perfect side view), the contour lines pretty much defines the highest point of that feature, therefore a line defines a hill. Whereas in the birds eye view, that line has crept forward, followed by an area showing the "thickness" of the feature. This thickness can be addressed by light values and not by lines. One needs to add real estate beyond the contour line !! To make an extreme case of this, a tree at eye level shows the trunk and the crown. The same tree in the birds eye view will be a round circle of leaves, i.e. the "thickness" of the crown.

I showed these photos to the artist, and now he understood the point I was making. He asked to borrow the photos for further studies. This is why I am posting this, as it had been a consuming topic for the both of us, to explain and to comprehend.

I have certainly learned from this exercise. I had a concept that I could not verbalize, nor execute. At least now I have a better understanding.

But to the artist's credit, traditional Chinese landscape paintings often incorporate the bird's eye view with the scattered focal point perspective.  I am not sure how to put this concept across succinctly, what comes to mind is how we look at a world atlas.  We know the earth is round, so if we can conjure up a view from space, then northern Russia and Greeland would not be as big as they are seen on maps.

A two dimensional map tries to make the converging longitude lines into parallel lines, thus distorting the distances at the ends of these lines. Thus the typical perspective for a Chinese landscape painting is one that is a bird's eye view of the landscape, but the description of each part of the landscape is as if the person is seeing them at eye level.  One can almost claim that these paintings do not really distinguish foreground or background.  Every point of interest is "equal distance" from a perspective point of view. 

HORSING AROUND WITH STRIPES

Garble Garble, hope everybody had a wonderful turkey day. I had to work that day, but all these years of working retail had taught me to look at any day as just another day! How can one be disappointed when one does not have any expectations.....hmmm, something Confucius might have said.

In preparing for the Portland Open Studios, I wanted to paint something that is high contrast and black and white, something that reminisces of a black and white photograph. I came upon a picture I took of zebras at the Washington Park Zoo and I proceeded to plan this painting.

The second insert is the finished product ( before it is mounted on Xuan paper backing and framed ) and I named it 15 Zebras. It measures 26 x 17 and was priced at $ 475. My intention was to paint a herd of zebras, but only their striping would show. I wanted to show only the upper body of the animals, asserting that the limbs would be hidden by tall grass on the Serengeti. I wanted this presentation to take on a contemporary, quasi abstract kind of feel.

I started out by trying to emulate a famous Chinese horse painter by the name of Hsu Bei-hung.( see top insert ) but somehow the horse's body does not translate too well into zebras. I started to sketch with my brush, using ink only, and I did quite a few models. When I was researching through pictures of this animal, I noticed the brown stripes amidst the black ones. Oh xy?! is what I uttered, now my images would be too busy....... would not be that high contrast, austere look that I was hoping for. Now I would have black and brown stripes!!!! I settled on using the brown color as my shading.... and it seemed to work for me. I cut off a piece of my studio practice piece ( close-up of two zebra heads ), cropped it and sandwiched it in a glass block frame.

Now that I have a better grasp of what I am painting, I started to paint in earnest. After I was done with it, I hated it. It was too austere...... too much white spaces... so destitute. It literally slept on my floor for 3 mouths. So many times I had the urge to cut it, crop it into smaller piece(s) to salvage it. After all, I've spent many a sleepless night planning this nightmare.

Finally a good friend of mine gave me some inputs.... "why don't you paint in some grass?" What on earth ?? This is like putting rosary beads on Buddha.... how dare you.

A couple more weeks went by..... end of September was drawing near, I could smell October.... I could taste Portland Open Studios, oh what the hell, I've got nothing to lose, so I begrudgingly dappled on grass, and brown shading, and wait a minute, now I see a "S" pattern to the composition ( in retrospect, I should have done a "Z" formation for zebra ) so now I am legit, I know how to frame my composition !

With renewed zest, I darkened the stripes on the front pack, I really emphasized the manes of those animals to make them stand out from the back, to create distance. I used brown shading to add to the roundness of the animals' bellies. Named my piece 15 zebras. I wanted the visitors to count out 15 animals in this painting.

Sure you can pick this painting apart... some might even say the zebras look like asses, or worse yet, there is a lack of "Chinese" flavor in this endeavor. All points are well taken... my response is....I had FUN doing this. This Prozac worked for me.

OIL, ACRYLIC, OR MIXED MEDIA

I had mentioned that I am experimenting with making some of my works have an "oil painting" feel and I had posted an example on my last blog. Here is another example of that. I am biased of course, but this is so far my favorite. The subject matter and the composition is akin to the western painting feel and this piece of work lends itself very nicely to this transition. I took this picture off center to show the gleaming quality of the paper/canvas/varnish.

For those of you who are familiar with mounting Xuan paper, you know it is delicate work. I shall describe a little bid of my process of mounting Xuan paper on canvas.

When we mount paper on paper, the difficulty of the task is to be sure that all the wrinkles are out so that we have a piece of perfectly smooth and taut painting when dried. As we lift the wet Xuan papers with glue applied, we just have to be careful in the lifting process, so that we are not tearing off the corners by mistake ( I've done that, and I found out how many swear words I know). Papers you can lift, but how do you lift a framed canvas ?

As you recall, my first experience was with the work submitted to the Audubon society when they asked for a 6x6 work on canvas. Since the framed canvas is small, I could easily lift the entire frame from the mounting surface without too much problem. As the frame gets bigger, the task becomes exponentially more difficult. A large, wet, flat surface creates so much suction and the fact that is frame is rigid and not flexible like paper, makes it almost impossible to lift the canvas frame. What I have done is I used small piece of clear acrylic ( any hardware store should have it.... this is better than glass because it is light, and safe to handle) and as I am ready to lift the canvas frame, I turned the whole thing over, i.e. so now the clear acrylic is sitting on top, over your painting, which is wet and glued to the canvas frame. Now I can slide the acrylic off the painting, with care of course. The clear acrylic allows me to see if I am sliding too fast to create tears in my work. The acrylic also has a little flexibility in it, so I can bend it a little bit to break the vacuum.

After the acrylic is removed, then I worry about brushing off any inadvertent air pockets and now I shall wrap the edge of the Xuan paper around the canvas frame to give it that wrap around look.

After drying the painting should be flat and taut, no different from Xuan paper on Xuan paper.

I now brush on either satin gel or gloss varnish according to my desire.

The problem now is what do I call my work, or how do I label my work. Is it oil, acrylic or mixed media? Any suggestion??????????

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

I had a pretty successful open studios with the Portland Open Studios tour. My number of visitors were down from last year, but interestingly enough, a lot of my visitors this year are people in the trade. I actually learned at lot from my visitors.

As was publicized in the Asian Reporter, and I had posted in my blogs, the new "direction" that I am exploring, is to mount Xuan paper on canvas. I feel that this allows me to exploit the dispersing and diffusing property of the Xuan paper and also the texture of the canvas. My signature piece this year was "Come Up Here" and it was a compilation of these 2 substrates. I have also posted a piece titled "Snow Scene", where I was also trying out my ancient secret Chinese solution, and that work was also done as Xuan paper on canvas. Both of these pieces were sold during the open studios, and this format was received with positive feedback.

I had expressed the wish of finishing my work with some coating so that it will have an appearance of an oil painting. Well I've received numerous suggestions and I've been experimenting with these suggestions and the results are fantastic.

The bottom image is a close-up of the varnished Xuan paper on Canvas. It absolutely has the feel and look of real canvas work. The top 2 pictures are side by side comparisons. The one in the middle is the original painting. The one on top has the varnish finish. Notice how the coating brings out more color depth and detail. I LOVE IT !!

Beyond Exposure, Understanding

All of us have been exposed to Chinese Brush Painting. So what is Chinese Brush Painting. Does the painting have to look "Chinese"?? Can a "western" motif painting done with Chinese brush be called Chinese Brush Painting?? How do we appreciate Chinese Brush Painting??

Chinese Brush Painting is an art of form and lines. Well that sounds pretty generic. Chinese Brush Painting is all about " Be Fa", the method of the brush. It is closely linked to the practice of calligraphy. Chinese calligraphy is not just a bunch of symbols or characters, but each stroke has characteristics of "press", "turn", "lift","hook" etc. Each line is like a human body, it has a head, a body, bulky at some places, and skinny at the other places. A bad line is like a bad body shape...... that's the only way I can explain it. With these attributes, then you assemble the lines not only in the form of the character that you intend to write, but assemble it in a pleasing manner! There is a belief that if one cannot do good calligraphy, then one can never be a good painter. Perhaps that's why I am having a hard time with my paintings...... I am a disaster when it comes to calligraphy. You rarely see any writings on my work This is in stark contrast to a lot of the current pseudo Asian art, especially in mixed media, collages, where people clip off prints or newspaper with Asian characters ( Chinese, Korean, Japanese) and paste them into their work and pawn it off as "art". As far as I am concerned, this is a huge disrespect and shows complete lack of understanding of Asian calligraphy. Calligraphy on Chinese Brush Paintings usually involves the title of the painting, and perhaps a poem about the painting. There could be narrations on the occasion for which the painting was done.

Chinese Brush Painting in the classical sense involves a lot of "rules" and "formulae". For example in the Flowers and Birds genre, we are taught how to paint bamboo, chrysanthemum, peony, ,orchid, plum, blue birds, etc, etc. There is a certain, dictated method and strokes that one does these themes. Go to the library or bookstore and look up Chinese Brush Painting and you'll find all kinds of prescribed methods of how to arrange rocks, how tree branches should be arranged. In other words, there are "poses" that we subscribe to. None of the teachers that I've ever had showed a real example of the subject matter. Sketching is totalling absent. The down side of this training is that all works look alike, they are all "templates". A lot of the Chinese Brush Paintings in the "tourist" districts fall into this category. It is exotic, yet familiar, easy for the palate. Unfortunately this has led to the wrong impressions about this form of work. Again I would have to equate this to when the uninitiated considers " chop suey" as real Chinese food.

When I say Chinese Brush Painting is an art of lines and forms, then one has to appreciate it from that perspective. I'll use some landscape topics to illustrate my point.

The insert where there is an example of 2 rocks, the top one is done with quite a few different techniques, and compare that with the one on the bottom . Both have shading applied, but the top one is definitely more interesting. These 2 are basically of the same form and line frame, but because the characteristics of the lines are different, hence the effects are different. The bottom image resembles line sketches. Lines that are uniform, uninteresting and lifeless. Yes, there are those of us that considers pixels as an art form, therefore one can argue that an image from newspaper magnified a hundred times to show extreme pixelation as a piece of art, and therefore lines, no matter how mundane, serves the purpose. Well, I beg to differ.

Now look at the other 2 images. One is the image of a rock laden with lines, boring lines. The other one employs the brush to do its thing, giving "life" to the lines. Can you tell which one is which? And which one do you prefer??

These examples are devoid of color on purpose, to emphasize the one most important aspect of Chinese Brush Painting. It is not about color, it is all about the characteristics, the persona of the lines and brush strokes. It is about "Be Fa". It is about painting, not drawing, lines with feeling.

It is about whether the brush stroke is heavy or light, fast or slow. Is the line painted with straight tip, side tip or broad tip and how wet or dry is the brush.
Again, using a stringed instrument as an analogy, many people can enjoy violin music., but it takes knowledge of the techniques of vibrato, fingering, harmonics, double stops, staccato,
playing at the frog or at the tip, whether it is up bow or down bow to truly appreciate the virtuoso.

Maple Bridge Mooring At Night

When I was preparing the "One Person One Stroke" project, I was using a painting from the late Master Qian Sonyan (1899-a985) as an example. I had tried to paint it just to show my group that it is a "do-a-ble" project. I just dug up my copy and mounted it.

I am posting all 3 versions for you to observe and appreciate.

The one on the bottom is the original work by Master Qian.

Top left is the group effort version.

Top right is my rendition.

Click on the image to enlarge them, and pay attention to the line qualities. See if you can pick out the differences.

Xuan Paper Delight

The title of this blog sounds like one of those dishes you can order from your local Chop Suey joint....... Yuk !

Anyways, in preparing for the Portland Open Studios event, I am trying to "merchandise" my goods by providing alternative ways of "packaging" . Here again, I am trying to exploit the translucent property of the Xuan paper.

I have done these small 5x7 paintings and instead of the traditional mounting on Xuan backing, I just slip them inside a 5x7 glass block or acrylic block. This way the painting can be viewed from front and back. This is especially interesting when the frame is placed against a window, and it offers a different flavor when viewed in direct light or in transmitted light.

The top 2 pictures are frames placed in front of a shop neon, hence light is transmitted through the Xuan paper. The bottom frame is the same painting

viewed through normal, direct lighting.

Camera work here does not do justice for discerning the different effects. I think the photo voltaic activity tends to average out the curve too much...... but you can still see the difference a little bit.