Pear Flower

I must have stared at my Chinese Pear trees for the last 10 years, each year contemplating whether to thin the pear blossoms or not.  I was told thinning the blossoms will give me bigger pears.  As it is my pears are tiny, but abundant.  In fact so many of them fell to the ground each year that it seemed such a waste.
Fortunately the Canadian geese have developed a taste for them now and they are helping  themselves to juicy (fermented?) pears on the ground in the Fall.

This year I decided to paint my Pear blossom, ala  En Plein Air.  As I am also studying Chinese calligraphy, I thought it would opportune myself to "write" each petal.  I would attempt to write each blossom with my Chinese brush, with infinite patience, and observation, and different brush strokes.

I am also doing this painting on my calligraphy paper.  I was told this paper is made of bamboo fibers and is colored yellow.  Not unlike the toilet papers that I remembered growing up.  The paper is very absorbent and "honest", in that it captures faithfully your brush stroke.  Unlike ordinary Xuan, it is not good in recording shades of grey, but it excels in reporting the sharp edges and streaks rendered by your brush.

I picked this subject matter because each petal is akin to writing a "dot" in Chinese calligraphy.  Not necessary round, but some requires you to hide the tip, while others demands a parade of tips and hooks and twists.  Intriguing indeed.  Thus I spent quite a few days, sitting in the backyard, painting on my picnic table.  A tedious process,  for I am not a patient individual.  A rewarding process, for the finished work is one that I could be proud of.

Finished painting is 16 in x 16 in, mounted on Canvas, ala Xuan-Boo style.

Etude

Examples of  Landscape practice pieces.  I intend to use some of these as instructional materail.  Why not?  Write a blog and be able to use it for teaching...... I guess this is what you would call killing two birds with one stone.

Gou, Chuen, Ts'a, R'an

Gou, Chuen, Ts'a, R'an are the 4 required elements to execute a Chinese brush landscape painting.
This is a continuation of my last 2 blogs; "Stone Paper Scissors" where we tried to make sense of all the lines that are associated with rocks and mountains, and " What Chuen" where we delved into the application of  texture to the object.

The loose translation for these 4 elements are as follows:

Gou  means to outline, to scribe.  This is the process when we lay down the initial outline of the landscape.  The requirement for this element is that the line must not be "drawn", and must be "written."   The line must possess the quality of change, from start to finish.  The viewer has to be able to feel the variations in brush speed, pressure, center or side tip.  Hence "GOU" carries the connotation of not tracing but etching and carving.














After we have the outline done, it is time to garnish it with "Chuen" and this is the process when we can provide a qualitative description of the texture of the landscape.  In this particular example, I've used mainly the "AXE" chuen and a little bit of the "HEMP" chuen.












After texture is provided, we provide the the painting with "Ts'a"
Ts'a means scrub or rub.  This is when we used a very dry brush to rub the landscape to give it a general sense of texture.  This texture is quite generic, unlike the more specific axe or hemp chuen.
The Ts'a process is often  mingled with the Chuen process.  As one is laying down the more specific texture, one can also add the non specific texture.  In a way the Ts'a process can be deemed a prelude to shading.  The important thing to remember is the Ts'a still requires the artist to follow brush strokes, paying attention to using either the tip or the belly of the brush, or both.  This is definitely not a random, omnidirectional wild circles of shading.

The last element of landscape painting is R'an, which means to dye (wash), to shade.  This is the time when we use a very diluted ink wash to accentuate the shaded areas of the landscape, to effect a more 3-dimensional presentation of the work.  It is important to note that the R'an process must be done with patience.  It is only after repeated attempts to selectively augment the strategic areas of the landscape, each time with different dilutions of the ink solution, does one succeed in a painting that is pleasing to the eye.

This patience has to be tethered with experience for the effort not to be futile.  Xuan paper gives off a false and exaggerated saturation profile when wet.  For beginners ( and impatient journeymen alike), the wet Xuan seems to function like an abyss, where it will take up a large amount of ink and showed little difference in the apparent "blackness" until it is irreversibly too late.

This is an example of a wet Xuan,  The R'an seems more saturated than it really is, giving one a false sense of security.

The above picture is the same as  the wet Xuan picture, except that now it has dried.  As one can see, the really dark  areas are no longer pitch black.  Thus for those of us who are not patient, we will try to attain this with one step, one layer of R'an and that often ends up in overkill, and renders the painting rather unnatural.

 (example of color added)

At this point, some artist like to give the painting an overall wash, often times with the brush wash, to give the painting a more coordinated look.  Many artists dislike this process, for it tends to take away the "punch" of the painting.

If one chooses to add color to the painting, now is the time.   Color often is considered a distraction, and is typically not applied until the painting is deemed satisfactory and coud be presented as a black and white on its own merits.

What "Chuen"

Interestingly enough, when What "Chuen" is translated into Chinese and pronounced in the Cantonese dialect, pronounced "mud chuen", it carries the connotation of WTF......naughty, naughty.

After this tidbit of irrelevancy, let's get down to business and explore "chuen".

"Chuen" can be loosely translated as the act of applying texture to an object (could be tree trunks, rocks, hills etc.).  Since the cardinal rule of brush painting says one should apply "chuen" more in the shaded areas, and since the manifestation of light values in classical Chinese Brush painting is less evident, a lot of people mistake "chuen" as the equivalent of shading.

Historically there are many different methods, or styles of "chuen", and "chuen" can be done with dots or lines.   The different "chuen" imparts a different description of the object.   Let us explore the more common ways of "chuen".  Please refer to my last blog  Stone, Paper, Scissors to see the relationship between "chuen" lines and contour lines.

First is the Hemp chuen.    This is typically a dash initiated with a tapered point.  Think of this as a hemp fiber, with one end kneaded and ready to be threaded through a needle.

Hemp chuen

An embellished version of this is the Unravelled Ribbon chuen.  This can be best described as a bunch of Hemp chuen in close proximity to each other, as if a ball of ribbons of hemp fibers in unravelling.

The "chuen" can be done in any orientation... vertically, horizontally, sideways, etc.

Then we have the Lotus Leaf Vein chuen.  As the name implies, this style mimics the veins of the lotus leaf.  It is a effective way of animating the topography of a landscape, giving the viewer a perspective of the ridge tops and valleys and lobes.


Finally, we have the Axe chuen.  This style is used to document straight line fractures, fissures commonly seen in granites or lime stone layers.  Imagine swinging an axe into a hard surface.  The resulting sharp edge and the splintering along the sharp edge defines this method of "chuen".  It is done by using a dry ink brush laying on its belly with a sharp rubbing.

To witness how these different "chuen" are applied to a real painting, I like to borrow a magnum opus from the late Master Zhang Da-qian; his Lu Shan painting. (painting of Mt. Lu)

Please click on the pictures to enlarge them so you can see the pasted remarks.

The final picture below shows the segment of the painting where I borrowed as examples to illuminate the concept and application of "chuen".

Hopefully we have all gained a little bit of insight into contour lines and "chuen" lines by now, and we won't be uttering "what chuen" (tongue in cheek) when we are asked to write a landscape painting.

Stone, Paper, Scissors

I am going to delve more in depth with painting rock(stone) or hills(mountains).  I have discussed this topic briefly in my "Ridge top Explained" and I hope to use more illustrations to explain away the fear of tackling this discipline.

Hills and rocks are the backbones of Chinese landscape painting.  When we consult the bible of classical Chinese Brush Painting, the "Mustard Seed Garden", we would be told that to paint rocks(hills) we have to convey the 3 facets of the rock.  We have to demonstrate that the rock possesses energy(ambiance) to form the backbone of the universe.  The ability to express this quality depends on the artist's expertise in rendering the personality of the rock(hill, mountain).  Thus the Alps would flaunt the soaring chiseled lines that inspire awe, and the Appalachians with its soft and open embrace.  This blog however, is not to discuss how to depict the temperament of the landscape, but rather on how to physically render the lines of a rock(hill, mountain).  By the way, a lot of us who learned to paint the traditional way, learned by the method of rote, and our reference book is the Mustard Seed Garden.

In this art form of traditions, it is prescribed as to how to group together multitudes of rocks (or multitudes of hills, land masses).  It is suggested that aestheticism is attained  if these rules are followed.  Therefore when we paint 5 rocks, it would be most pleasing if we place them according to the bottom arrangement.

The MSG (Mustard Seed Garden..... not monosodium glutamate !!) also stipulates that the contour lines of the rocks(hills, mountains) should be done with stops and rests abundant.  The lines need to show variations in ink tones, speed and direction.  We then adorn the contour lines with "chuen" (rubbing technique, to describe texture) and shading, thus we are able to form the 3 facets of a rock, i.e. a 3 dimensional reveal of the landmass.

To have a clear conceptual picture of a rock(stone, hill, mountain) I used a stack of left over mat boards and cut them into the profile of a hill, hence the title Stone,Paper, Scissors.  As I found out these boards are too much of a match for ordinary scissors, so I cheated by using my Dremel.  Each piece of mat board now represents one slice of this landmass, and the aggregate stack of all these pieces gives you the 3 dimensional form.

  As I carved away with my Dremel, the straight edges represent the center tip strokes of the brush, and the beveled edge exemplifies the side tip stroke.  Thus the outline of each piece is analogous to the "contour line" that we shall paint, and the twist and turn of the cuts, mixed with the straight and beveled edges represent the requirement of varied speed, hesitation, center tip and side-tip strokes.

Now with this contraption,  I can stack these cut-outs in any fashion I wanted  to acquire the desired morphology of the land mass.

By placing a piece of paper ( I used a hardy typing paper instead of the flimsy Xuan) against this stack and rubbing it with charcoal or crayon or just a pencil in this case, I transferred the profile of this structure onto the paper.  Each line that is transcribed represents a "contour line" of our make believe rock(hill).

By selectively erasing all or part of these "contour lines" we now have a drawing that is made up of   longer, more complete "contour lines" that describes the profile, and short, broken lines (which are remnants of the original "contour lines") now helping to highlight or accentuate the characteristics of the mass, and these now become our "chuen lines".

I shall now go over these pencil markings with ink and brush and the resulting image is more reminiscent of what we see in traditional Chinese landscape painting.

The preceding is an attempt to dissect the construction of all the lines that make up a rock(hill, mountain) and to entertain the relationship of "contour line" and "chuen line" when applied to the subject matter.  Obviously we do not paint this way, but this is a good tool for forming a mental image of what we are trying to accomplish on paper.  Thus for the novice, the brush strokes have at least a purpose and methodology to it, hence Bi-Fa.  And of course for the viewer, a better comprehension of what is involved.

PAIN

The post at hand is not about Bi-Fa, nor composition, nor methodology, nor scatter point perspective, but is about our conversation to the audience, the emotional content of our work.

I assume we paint for different reasons, fun, self-expression, commercial endeavor.  Occasionally we find a piece of work that makes a connection, not only with ourselves, but with the audience.  We might be painting something because that is what everybody else is doing, or some great master was doing that in the past and we try to emulate their works, their styles.  We might get the technique down, but the work is silent, like a perfect mannequin, well proportioned, great poses, but lifeless.

I did this painting when I was dealing with some personal problems.  Yes I did it with Chinese brushes just because that's all I have in my sushi  blanket.  I painted it on the back side of a piece of paper that came with a frame.  The paper that had a generic wedding picture printed on it.  My "wants" at that moment was to find a conduit to release my emotions..... the choice of medium was not my concern. (fortunately I did not release that on a person :-

I had absolutely no idea of what I was doing.  There was no technique, composition, color wheel,  nothing.
I had some faint idea of where to paint in shadows etc. to show the contours, and that was about it.  When I finished the "unleashing" process, I found the dabbling to be dark and full of tension.  I had no idea that I painted a person of unknown gender and  that the wine bottle and glass was not symmetrical and all that.  I was not going to make any alterations.  I just wanted to let the dabbling stand, as a witness to that particular moment of my life.   Perhaps I had given the title "PAIN" to the painting, I was getting some feedbacks, some voyeuristic inquisitions from my acquaintances as to the circumstances ..... but I wasn't going to reveal my innermost secrets. 

A dabbling with no aspirations or pretension to be a piece of art somehow is making a few chattering.  The only explanation I have is because it is not only raw, but brutally honest.  I have also been accused of painting a nude in this painting.  If I did, where did I hide it...................................

Remedy for "Multnomah Fall"

The more I looked at the "Multnomah Fall" painting, the more I was itching to do something about it.  As I mentioned in the blog, it was the bilateral symmetry that really bothered me.  I made the painting look like an insert for a tourist guide, or something I lifted from a photograph ( those of you who know me, know how I feel about painting from a photograph..... the resulting work is often  2 dimensional;  without a soul)

(before remedy)



Since the painting was already mounted on canvas, there wasn't a whole lot that I could have done, else I made the Xuan paper too moist and it would wrinkle again and become separated from the canvas.

I used jet black ink to go over the "chuen" again on the left hand side, to try to increase the density of that area.  I did the same for the trees on the right hand side; to add more body to the foliage and to mask the lower black line of the lower fall even better.

At the same time, I added the bright greenish yellow moss on the rock surface.  I did that with my worn brush, using the "split hair" technique.  The moss added some realism to the scene ( hinted the area of the water spray), but most importantly it imparted a lighter color to the back walls, thus helping to pull the background further away from the foreground.

To add a little bit of drama, I put in a few circling birds.  I needed to cover up the messy ink splashes in the sky anyways ( my trade-mark ).

(after remedy)

Now that I am pleased with the remedy, I went ahead and sealed the painting with a gel medium.  The gel makes the painting water resistant and as an added bonus, helps to bring out the depth of the color and recovers some the lost vibrancy.

The changes were minor and not obvious, yet they helped to restore some balance to the painting.  I am biased, obviously, since I am the architect behind all this,  but it is my sincere hope that the correct remedy was applied.