Ridgetop Explained

Now that I am done with the Portland Open Studio event and my son's wedding, I have a little more time to write my blogs. Having a student or two to teach has actually taught me a few things. The task at hand now is how to convey in a clear and succinct manner so there is an actual transfer of knowledge. We often harbor a notion, a concept that we somehow intrinsically know, but are unable to verbalize. Since so much emphasis in Chinese brush painting is placed upon Bi-Fa (method of the brush), the "don't do what I say, but do what I do" doctrine becomes an exercise in frustration.

Case in point, when painting rock formations, hilltops, mountain ridges, the beginners often copy the shapes without understanding the structure of the lines. It is not unusual for a range to look like a row of staples or horseshoes. I have sat in on classes where the instructor is unable to convey the concept of "contour" lines.

I am sure most of us have seen and understood what elevation lines represent. When we look at a topography map the elevation lines give us a description of the shape of the land. We know where the ridges and gullies are, and the relative steepness or flatness of the land. In painting a mountain range, we are just tilting the map on its side, so the elevation becomes not the height from the horizontal plane, but the distance to where we stand.

To illustrate my point, I've chiseled out a wooden block into the shape of

a mountain range. Now I have painted the " contour lines " on this block, and these lines describe the shape of the mountain ( as elevation lines describe the heights at different points on the map). When we paint these contour lines in succession, we are in effect transcribing the mountain range.

I have sliced through this block of wood into slabs to illustrate this point.  The more slabs I create, the more information I am able to draw ( i.e. more contour lines ), this is akin to having more "pixels", or watching a 1080p HD program vs. the 480 lines old programming.  The "chuen" lines that I have discussed  in the past i.e. hemp "chuen", is merely a sliver of such a slab; thus showing just a partial contour instead of the entire shape.  Therefore one can use a few strategic contour lines to describe the main shape of the range, and the "chuen" or "texture rubbing" lines to describe the minute details of the topography.

As we paint the lines with the Chinese brush, we are naturally in a "center tip" form as we traverse horizontally on paper, and as we turn the corner onto the vertical lines, the natural angle of inclination puts the brush in a "side-tip" mode automatically.  That part of the line describes "thickness" of the slab that we are painting, thus unknowingly giving a 3 dimensional appearance to what we have painted.

top photo is center tip( tip is aligned with direction of  travel

bottom picture is side-tip (tip is pointed at an angle to direction of travel)

Hopefully these little hints will help us attain a better understanding of Chinese landscape paintings.

Scatter Brain

In this painting I wanted to paint a bridge next to a lily pond.  My original premise was that the bridge is almost silhouette like, swallowed in rolling fog, like a ghost ship in vast sea. It is the lily pond in the foreground that shall work as a lead-in to the scene, and sent up the perspective and the contrast to the vessel in the back. 

An issue that I have considered in painting the lily pond is that if I had painted all the stalks of  wilted lilies and reeds, the viewer would be bombarded with so much information and will make the scene quite messy.  This is along the same vein that I have alluded to in my Feng Sui blog.

Went back to my playbook and deployed my old trick again.....Ancient Chinese Secret Solution (alum solution).  As you recall, alum solution is used for sizing paper, works like a resist in watercolor works.   I therefore proceeded to paint with this alum solution to form most of the wilted lily stalks and their reflections.  After the wash is laid on it, the painted alum shows up as void spaces that hints of the presence of stalks, without these discrete black lines to jam your visual cortex.  What I was able to do was to create a "presence" without the usual boundaries, or harshness.  I picked a few strategic locations in plant my foreground, my vivid lotus stalks.   I thought that worked rather well in this setting.

What I have not followed through was the original premise.  Where was my Flying Dutchman?  I was too carried away in laying out the dead sticks in the pond, that my fingers took on a life of their own and started to paint a setting sun, and trees, and a cow and .......

Before I realized it, I had embellished too much onto my painting.  I got off on the wrong ramp, and how do I extricate myself now ?  This is when I decided to put in highlights on some of the foliage and the back of the cow herder to playoff the setting sun.  I can only lament.... what a scatter brain.



DON'T CROSS ME

I was showing a beginner how to paint bamboo.  This person painted quite a few vertical stalks of bamboo, consequently a lot of them crossed each other, and the painting looks like a wire mesh (exaggeration)!
 The remedy is to control the angle where the stems intersect.  Make those angles acute, and as far away from 90 degrees as possible.  Another remedy would be to hide the point of convergence with leaves.

I then used my Blue Heron painting as an example.  The blades of grass are bound to intersect with each other.  What I did was to deliberately wet that juncture with water to cause the ink to bleed.  The diffused ink helps to soften those corners.


To show the effect without the diffused ink, I used "PAINT" program to erase the bleeding ( I don't know how to Photoshop that out).  Hopefully you would agree with me that the one with the bled ink looks better.

I then totally erased the grass to see what the painting would present itself............................ well, what do you think?

Ghosts From Yesteryears

I decided to clean out my pigsty in preparation for the upcoming Portland Open Studios tour and came across some stashed away Opus Magnums from my past.  Oh my gosh these were done in 2003.  I remembered buying a box of water color tubes out of the blue and a booklet of papers and ventured into the world of painting. It appeared that I made no attempts to mix the colors, not surprising since I did not have a color pallet. It almost seemed like I painted straight out of the tubes.  Interestingly I was using aluminium foil as a surface for mixing colors when I first took lessons.

These images are like your baby pictures.  So untouched and natural.  You can tell that they are infantile, and yet soooooo innocent

Calligraphy and Painting

There are people who asserted that calligraphy is the basis for all Chinese brush work, including brush painting.  For me, this statement is quite true, especially now that I am attempting to teach people how to paint with a Chinese brush.

I had done some form studies on heron, and I've decided on adding calligraphy to  them.  The calligraphy will be used not in a narrative sense, i.e. telling a story about the herons, nor is it a poem about herons, but is used as a complementary tool to inspire and to augment the form of the heron.

 

 

 

In this work, the calligraphy which is in the cursive style  is done as a very faint background, so as not to distract from the main pictorial outlay, but its subtleties help to bring out the dance form of the herons.  Notice the single leg stance of one, and the ballerina like stance of the other.  The motion and energy of the main characters are derived from the calligraphy, and vice versa.

Wanderlust

Songs and Hymns
soar to the Heavens

This moment fills me
intoxicates me

I surrender myself to wanderlust




The above is a rough translation of the Chinese writing in the painting.   This style is called  the "grass style" or "sloppy style"  of the Chinese cursive writing.

This flowing style of calligraphy matches quite nicely with the very raw and bold form of interpretation of a bird.  No attempt was made to hide or ameliorate the brush strokes.  This really is the essence of the Xieyi style of Chinese brush painting......concrete thoughts, but free brushes.  

Good or bad, let it all hang out

Calligraphy

translation:

If
LIFE  is not witnessed by the present moment
then
when does

Living
is
to be able to
Do As You Wish