Xuan-boo

For those of you who have been following my blogs you know that I have been working on the process of mounting Xuan paper on canvas.

Xuan paper is translated as Rice paper in English. It resembles a piece of tissue paper. Paintings ( or calligraphy) done on Xuan paper has to be mounted on a substrate to make it either as painting ready to be framed, or as a scroll, ready to be hung. The mounting serves several purposes. The most obvious is to beef up the thickness of the painting so that it is more durable. The second purpose is to take out the wrinkles, so the painting is stiff and flat, devoid of creases. The third factor, which most people often forget, is that mounting adds the "white" backing to the translucent tissue like Xuan paper. This brings out the saturation of the image and makes the painting more vivid. The art of "mounting" Xuan paper is a craft in itself, and it contributes directly to the grade of the finished work.

By mounting Xuan paper on canvas, I can present a different feel and texture that is subtle and yet very perceivable. By applying varnish on all or part of the finished work, I can alter the "depth" of the colors which is not feasible with ordinary mounting of Xuan on Xuan. By applying my own gesso I can effectively control my "white balance" and this is most exciting. I am now offered a second chance to manage the overall "mood" of my work.

I am constructing my own canvas and building my own frames on my table saw and miter saw. All of a sudden, I am free from almost all restrictions. I no longer have to worry about dimensional proportions or finding a right sized frame or go to these astronomically expensive frame shops for custom frames. My only restrictions are my paper size, which comes in 4 ft widths and my imagination.

Since I am the pioneer of this process, I am going to coin it Xuan-Boo. Xuan meaning Xuan paper, Boo means canvas cloth.

So Xuan-Boo it is. We shall see if it catches on. I do Chinese Brush painting on Xuan-Boo.

FENG SHUI

This is not a painting about Feng Shui, nor do I know anything about Feng Shui. However, one of the concerns about this painting has to do with that....... so bear with me

In Xieyi style painting, it is imperative that your brush strokes flow with expression. Each stroke should lead towards an arena of thoughts and meanings, not merely occupying space. Chinese landscape painting traditionally depict soaring peaks, dreamy streams, bold rocks, wind bent centenarian pines. Visions of immortal beauties. The Xuan paper could look real busy if the artist does not create a focus, a mood, a statement. Hence blank space is vital..... we call that space "breathing". It can be used as a divider, or as a conduit, depending on the need.

In this piece, the blank space presents itself as a foggy mist; rolling down from distant ridges, creating distance, yet guiding your attention to the center of the painting. The water features are flanked by more detailed "cheun" ( applying texture ) of the rocks, as a contrast. "Cheun" in the center, where the butte stands is a lot more definitive.

The foreground is done with bold orchestration of color and branches. I used this scheme to make the painting appear less "busy". Thus, I break it down to basically a Chinese Brush painting with ink, augmented by red wavelengths to make a statement.

A comment from an art teacher was that I should paint a tunnel to accommodate the suspension bridge. He has missed the point totally. The bridge is there to link the butte with other land features, and to hint that there might be a river underneath, downstream from all those water falls. Xieyi is about imagination. It is definitely not about photographic accuracies. I did the trees in a "U" shape to cradle, to receive the "flow" of contents from above.

The stairs leading up to the vista is obscured by fog mid-span. Chinese culture does not prefer a long, straight staircase. Folks buying a 2 story house would prefer not to have a straight staircase at the front door.   Chinese do not want a Jacob's Ladder in their dwelling.  The superstitious labels this as "Feng Shui". The rational would tell you that it is better to have shorter sections of staircases with landings, to break your fall in case you tripped.

Cheers to "Feng Shui"

WHAT BRUSH WORK

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Part of the bargain of being in the Visual Arts Showcase was to function as a docent for a few hours. I picked up a couple of shifts and it was a very rewarding time. Rewarding in the sense that I was able to explain to people what Chinese Brush Painting is about. In this part of the woods, many savvy artists had the slightest of idea about Chinese Brush Painting. The overriding concern was whether it was water color done with a Chinese Brush. I guess this is as relevant as whether God Save the Queen was played on a sitar. As I had mentioned in my "Soap Box" blog, certain knowledge about the art form is mandatory in order to really appreciate the art form.

I had guests pointing out to me other works in the exhibit that were very Chinese Brush Painting-ish. I did not want to offend them by pointing out their ignorance. I simply emphasized what to look for in a Chinese Brush painting and how to appreciate the quality of the brush strokes. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Hence I am going to use 2 samples to again illustrate my point.

Of these 2 patches, which one is better? They are both results of collaborative painting. One is done by a group who has varying degrees of expertise in the craft. The other one is done by visitors at the art show, where a piece of Xuan paper and brushes are provided and people are encouraged to contribute their marks. I am not going to distinguish which one is which. I hope the difference is obvious.


I am going to further support my argument by providing an analogy to calligraphy, Western calligraphy. This is a page taken out of a Speedball manual. Here we see the study of form, shape, angle of slant and nib placement in order to effect the broad and narrow widths of the strokes. A non calligrapher will use the same nib but produce totally different results.

It seems frivolous to denote so much on the mechanics of Chinese Brush painting and not mention the emotional impact of this art form. Here is where I shall submit that I cannot prescribe a sensory illumination , instead, I am trying to provide a basic appreciation of the tactile attributes.

A New Beginning, 2010

The

City of Portland proclamed that the 2nd and 3 rd weekend in October as the Portland Open Studios weekends and to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Portland Open Studios, the City of Portland honored this organization by having a First Thursday event called the 10x10., I guess it meant 10 th anniversary in the year 2010 ?? Portland Open Studio artists were asked to submit work measuring no bigger that 10x10 to be exhibited in the City Hall during the month of March.

For some reason the image of 2010 left a fluorenscene in the synapses that no amount of Prozac could erase. I was so obsessed with 2010 that I was going to incorporate that into my painting, regardless. Perhaps I have this very personal desire to start out this year with a clean slate, free of old baggages.

I had wanted to paint something Asian, but inexplicably I reverted back to images of the Portland Westhills. I wanted to paint a cityscape at night, with a huge X'mas light that says 2010. I thought about painting downtown buildings at night with a bright marque screaming 2010.

After conferring with a few friends, I decided to forget about the Chinese motif, have to be honest with how I felt at the moment.

I chose to paint a dark, still night hushed in snow. I recall something about the darkest hour is right before dawn, so my painting is a euphemistic representation of my longing for a new beginning. I was able to show my fixation of 2010 as a mail box number.

The snow again was laid down using my Ancient Chinese Secret solution. I have developed enough confidence to use it in conjunction with ink, to create layers of gray, and that added so much to the 3 dimensional presence of the snow accumlation. By using undiluted ink around the buildings and in front of the conifers, I was able to really bring the snow out. I did the sky in a "streaky" wash to hint of inpending change, to create some motion in an otherwise still painting.

Mailbox number and box flag was done in red to add interest, and to match my chop.

2010, A New Beginning !!

Serene Lake

This is one of those projects that took me a long time to finish.

In my mind I wanted to paint something serene, peaceful; something to day dream with.

I know I wanted to use a very simple color scheme. I do not want a palette of colors to distract from the feeling of the painting. I want it to be vast, something that can fully occupy one's visual field, such that one can be totally immersed. The only thing I did not know was what to paint!

In a way, that might be a valid way to proceed. The abstract thought of the work superseded the physical entity, and painting is just the process when the artist translates that thought onto a medium.

I finally settled on water. I must confess I am fascinated by water, and yet I am very much afraid of it. When I look at a body of water, I feel its presence, its inertia and its infinity. In this painting, I wanted to capture the feeling of being there, with a sense of peacefulness, with a underlying yearning to explore, to anticipate.

I know that the "void space" will take up the majority of the space. It is however, through this "void space" that I must communicate. I shall therefore summon the help of the shore line as the white lines on a black top. I put the shoreline one-thirds way across the paper, vaguely remembering the rule of thirds from my school days. I faded out the landscape from right to left, directing the observer's attention to the yonder. To add interest on the landscape itself, openings in the trees were made, to admit light from the other side to come through. This little window of illumination helps to play out the dance of the reflections. I thought it added tremendously to the life of the painting, without being so loud that it disrupted the tranquility.

The boats in the water are there to create perspective. The five dots on the left of the horizon represents boats so faraway that you can barely see them, thus helping to create the vast spread of the water. I had originally deployed only 7 vessels but my Chinese roots tell me that even numbers are preferred, thus one more dab of the brush makes a total of 8 vessels. Hm, interesting!

I had wanted to paint in some flocks of birds but decided against it. Too "formulary", and disruptive, I thought.
Alright, I am now on the water, and ready to traverse this lake, and let my mind drift.
After the completion of the painting, I wanted to mount it on canvas and not on tradition Xuan paper. Wow, I had no idea about the difficulties that I would encounter. With the help of my good friend Sandy, we embarked on this mounting project. Several hours into this, it was one disaster after another. Too wet, too dry, paper was not lined up properly (this painting is 4 feet long, not very forgiving about misalignment), too many air pockets, too many wrinkles. Sandy and I literally waited for the mounting to become dry so we can see the final product. We now know what "watching the paint dry" means. After all is said and done, we were very pleased with the result. The 4 foot wide piece of Xuan paper on canvas looked and felt right. Awesome !

But alas, several days after it was hung in my studio, the whole piece started to warp really
badly. The shrinking process in mounting exerted uneven forces on the canvas frame and is pulling a warp that you can't believe. My remedy was to shell out for a custom frame to beef up the canvas frame. Ouch! But now it really looks like a piece of art work.

This painting by the way, got invited by the Visual Arts Showcase sponsored by the Beaverton Arts Commission. It will be on display in the Beaverton Library starting Feb. 6, when there will be a Gala reception that evening.

Land Of The Falls

Happy New Year !!

I am fortunate to have 2 pieces of work accepted into the Beaverton Visual Arts Showcase this year. I submitted 3 pieces of work for jury.

They are "15 Zebras", "Land of the Falls" and "Serene Lake"

The "15 Zebras" piece unfortunately did not meet the standards of the jurors. "Land of the Falls" and "Serene Lake" did.

This painting was inspired by the Iguazu Falls ( Cataratas del Iguazu ) in Argentina. It was one of the most awesome sights that I have witnessed. In my rendition of the Falls, I was trying to exploit the translucent property of the Xuan paper to bring out the water. All the bodies of water in this painting are nothing but voids, empty spaces. The trick is to define these "voids" and to give them characteristics of vapor, spray, and flow.

Painting the land mass in a very saturated color scheme helps to bring out the water. This intensity is definitely a departure from the traditional Chinese landscape painting. The edges of the upper falls have a sharper margin, to give the ribbons that knife edge feel. The hill sides are inundated with silvery swords of water. This gives the painting energy and aura. I've added burnt sienna to the sprays to denote wash off of sand and silt.

The real Cataratas is a stretch of hundreds of falls hanging off a rim that is miles in length. I chose to condense a few falls into a plateau in this case, as if to put the falls on a pedestal. The trailing serpentine river gives reference to where the water might come from, and adds depth and distance to the scenery.

The rocky spines in the distance stand as testimony to erosion. Vapors run along side, sandwiched by the two land masses; hinting the presence of rapid waters?

I originally painted the foreground with light color rocks, but that scheme interfered with the voids of the falls. I remedied that by making the foreground even darker than the rest, and painted the rocks with the lush mossy feel. Throw in a few bamboo cultivations and stands of banana leafs, I made this painting credible.

Interesting side note, I had this old bamboo motif frame with non-reflective glass around and I thought it was perfect for this format. This painting is approximately 11 x 22 inches, a perfect 1:2 ratio, which is a standard ratio for Xuan papers. This is more conducive to landscape painting than the western frames. In fact I have picked up a few 15 x 30 canvas and I plan to do more landscape works on the Xuan paper on Canvas set up.

PERSPECTIVE continued

With my new understanding of "perspective", I am itching to put that into practice.




What I have done here is sort of cheating, well, not exactly. By that I meant I have changed the characteristics of the landscape. I have chosen the type of landscape that is more conducive to revealing the birds eye view perspective.




I have chosen to paint precipitous bluffs with flat surfaces that I can more easily depict an upward orientation.




I have chosen to hide the water leading to the fall with mist and vapor. This void space also helps to create distance from the hills in the back.




A bridge is painted way low to augment the depth of the structure. I wish I had extended the waterfall (void space) below the bridge before the darker shade of vapor.



Bodies on the bridge showed wider shoulders and skinny legs; a distortion that helps the mind to assimilate that this is a view of looking down from above.












I found a piece of sketching to further illustrate the view of "perspective"




In this piece of work, the gazebo showed the underside of the roof, therefore the observer is looking at it from below.



The hill it sits on is at eye level.







The buildings in the lower foreground show their roofs and shingles, thus the observer assumes a higher vantage point than the buildings.



The rock formation in the foreground showed extended flat surfaces. The front contour lines are replaced by light value shadings. The observer can appreciate the and feel the structure as one that the observer can set foot on!



The use of "perspectives" in this painting is more akin to the western practice. We have the upward view, the level view and the downward view, and also, to the left and to the right. The "virtual" position of the observer in this painting is well established.