Beaverton Creek

It had been a cold January.

I resolved to make no resolutions for the new year.  Don't want to disappoint myself.  The inactivity has contributed to the build-up of my love handle.  I really didn't want to be snatched up by Michelin to be their tire model, so I ventured out to my favorite hangout Beaverton Creek, despite the lingering freezing fog.

The sun was actually trying to fight through the fog.  It was interesting to experience the stillness of this crisp morning through the haze, involuntarily wiping my wet nose with the back of my hand.  I was a kid again.

So I've been thinking about painting this experience.  I just couldn't decide on how to convey my feelings.  Eventually I decided on forging ahead with the first stroke to get things rolling.  Too much thinking and plotting actually destroys the spontaneity.  I am hoping that once I started, I would be in a groove.

I wanted to let the color of the painting to set the mood.  I prepared a very weak wash using Label 3 Green and laid down the landscape using the splash ink method.  Splash ink could literally be pouring a dish of pigment onto the painting surface if it is large enough, and guide the flow by using brushes or tilting the surface.  In this case I used a large brush.  This is very therapeutic.  This is Xieyi at its extreme.  Large expressive movements without too much concern for details.

I then prepared different hues by mixing Label 3 Green (173) with Label 3 Blue (493) and ink.  I worked to reveal layers of trees and shore line.  Using yellow I dabbed  in the initial highlights.

I had envisioned a glistening water surface of the creek despite the lack of direct sunlight that day.  I misted my Xuan paper with a solution of gum and alum with a spray bottle, and had hoped that these droplets would work as a resist and not take on pigments, thereby revealing white spots as glistens and voids in the woods.  This effect is usually more pronounced when viewed from the back of the paper.

 backside of Xuan

 front of Xuan    

I am now faced with the dilemma.  Should  I now paint on the back of the Xuan or continue to work on the front.  Working on the back would allow a stage for the alum white specks and would be more true to what my initial concept was.  The back it is !

 Alum white specks

But then the left and the right side of the image would be flipped. 

 

Oh well, it is time to take a break.  I'm going to walk away from this and look at it again in a few days or weeks and gather my thoughts again.

Two Female Nudes

I came across a black chalk painting by the French artist Aristide Maillol ( 1861-1944 ) .  It was a painting of 2 nude females.  What captured my attention was the impressionistic depiction of the female body with firm bold lines and exquisite light values.  As a fan of photography, I wish my photos could exude those qualities.

I studied the painting for a few weeks, and decided I would try to copy the painting, using my understanding of Gou, Chuen, Ts'a, R'an.  I started out with charcoal sticks on Xuan paper, developing my lines and rubbings with charcoal.   I then used the coffee that I was drinking as a pigment to process the lines and shading, to get that sepia look.     Ink was used to further enhance the  lines and the shaded areas. Raw Xuan paper turned out to be a perfect media for this endeavor.
It took on the charcoal nicely, and by paying attention to the stray (excess) charcoal dust, one can incorporate them into a nice gradient when applying the wash.  The thick lines give thickness to the image and help to bring a 3 dimensional feel to the drawing, as was discussed in how to paint contour lines in my landscape blogs.

 

 

I don't want to merely learn from Aristide Maillol's interpretation of the female body, I also want to exploit the translucent property of the Xuan.  My scheme was not to paint the two bodies together as the original work did, but to paint them on separate pieces of Xuan, and then superimpose the images.  The result is quite interesting.  The two bodies seem to be in different dimensions now, and the conversation between them becomes more intriguing.

 

 

Amending the Tree

Riding on the energy and motivation of finishing the tree project, I decided to add to the 70%.

I tidied up the background with hints of vegetation with scattered brush.  I used these, along with titanium white to soften up the dark patches.  A yellow wash is applied to the whole painting after the Xuan has been thoroughly moistened.  Yellow is a very difficult color to handle, but it think it would coordinate the color scheme and give that impression of filtered light.  Dark green dots are placed along strategic branches to exaggerate the layering. I've also darkened some of the branches to appear more as a silhouette but leave others quite faint, to simulate the effect of squinting into bright light and the edges dissolve.

Finally I re-cropped the painting to give it more of vertical bias.  I think this helped to rationalize the overly long lines of the person's back.   Now I need to figure out a way to move the tree away from the center !

Finishing The Tree Project

With minutes ticking away from the remainder of 2012, I felt like that I needed to put an exclamation mark on at least one of the projects that I have started but never finished.  That thought alone forces me into inactivity!  Yes, I am a pathological procrastinator. Hmm, thought for New Year's Resolution.

I've decided to amp up the tree trunks a bit by giving them more texture and shading.  I played up on the highlights and then "chuen" with a dry brush to give the tree bark more definition.  Again, going back to the 4 steps in brushwork, Gou, Chuen, Ts'a, R'an, each working with complete accord with the others, the result can be quite satisfying.

Here is the finished painting, for now, anyways.  I've been told to stop when the work is 70% finished, thus allowing room for improvement.  I think I've gone too far already, in the zeal of completing something before the new year rolls in.

I had a draft of the image that I wanted to pursue.  In that image, it was supposed to be a huge umbrella of a tree shadowing a tiny human figure to create the contrast and solitude.  I was hoping for having the forceful lines to tell the story.  Obviously I ran away from that premise.  It seemed like the more I dwelt on the painting, the more baroque it became.  Well, perhaps I should explore the simplicity of lines one of these days.  New Year's Resolution number 2!

Ball Point Tree

Kind of dreary outside, with a relentless mist and wind.  There is nothing interesting on the tube and I fumbled through my movies collection and could not find anything worth watching again.

 

So I parked myself in the lot of a Nature Park and saw this tree.  Happened to have a scrap piece of matting board and a ball point pen so I started to draw.  I went over it with some color lead after I returned home.  Kept me occupied for a while.

And we survived 12.21.12 !

Project Tree

The traditional Chinese landscape painting  model would have a cluster of trees, each with a different foliage, to establish spatial relationship.  When you look into the Mustard Seed Garden Manual ( Jieziyuan Huapu ) you'll find pages and pages of methods on painting different foliage, i.e. dots, lines, circles, triangles etc. and methods of painting trees and branches, assigning description such as crab claw, deer antler among other things.  Typically you would see branches and foliage of different species woven together, allowing various degree of obscurity to represent which tree is in front of the other.  Such separation would be more difficult to show in a homogeneous group.

 cluster of mixed trees

When I painted my Multnomah Falls (Multnomah Falls Again blog), I utilized such an arrangement.  We would coin this layout as painting "mixed trees", not that they are the real indigenous species, but are more likely to be fictitious sets. 

Since I was playing with my alum solution again, I decided to experiment with the technique of expressing spatial relationship again.  I wanted to paint just one tree, but the branches themselves have to showcase the perspective.  I have the image of this huge tree in Kowloon Park.  The branches are so huge and convoluted that they actually rest on cement columns  for support.  My challenge is to establish the relative position of the branches without resorting to different foliage.

For this exercise, I was using left over pigments from my dish ( red and blue and yellow ) .  My brush was first saturated with alum solution, then dipped into the color wells.  Ink was added to attain the desired black levels.  The paper I used was a remnant hemp paper ( not the usual raw Xuan ) and this turned out to be less than desirable for this purpose.

    boneless strokes rendered in alum+pigments

                                  

 the back side of image above, white patches are caused by alum

I then flipped the paper over and used the backside as the front of my painting.  I did that to try to exploit the alum solution.   Brush strokes done with alum and pigments would show a minute clear margin around the strokes, and is more prominent on the back side.  This effect is usually quite apparent when using raw Xuan, but did not show up quite as well with the hemp paper.  I suspect the paper is semi-sized to begin with, because the color sits on it for a while before being soaked into the paper.  I used some diluted titanium white along the edges of the brush strokes to mitigate the apparent lack of clear margins.  On the outside of the titanium white, I lined in with ink.  Essentially, I started out with a boneless brushstroke of the branches and then use titanium white and ink as my Gou step (refer to my blog on Gou, Chuen, Ts'a, R'an blog on June 24, 2011).  That was followed by Chuen and Ts'a with the dried belly of the brush to give texture.  The final step was R'an with a wash to add shading.

 ink line outside of margin

 Gou, Chuen, T'sa, R'an

It is important to tread with a light foot (hand) in the Gou step.  The lines need to be loose and do not need to be continuous; try to feel it.  Pay special attention to the junctures where branches cross.   Allow enough spacing to the back branches to give depth ( refer to More Than Just Broken Lines blog on March 29, 2012).  The fatter and lighter imprint of brush strokes from the reverse side of the paper gives a shadow effect to the narrow Gou outlines, giving the branches a more 3-dimensional feel.

 keep the Gou lines loose and spirited            

 fatter imprint from the reverse side adds body

The final product now shows depth, texture and a concrete representation of the location of the different branches.

Creative Use For Alum

Ever look at a distant object through blinds?

You are aware that something is blocking your vision and yet your eyes are still able to focus beyond the impediment.  This is the effect I am trying to create.  I am still attempting  new ways to dress my Canada geese models.  I've settled for that fluted look, and now I wish to explore those vertical lines some more.  I thought of pulling alum from my trick box.

Alum is indispensable for Gonbi style paintings, as well as in preparing mounting starch.  It is a sizing agent.  I am going to exploit this property, akin to using resist in watercolor works.  While its opacity is nowhere near rubber cement, the subtleties it exude is perhaps better suited for the ambiance of  Chinese brush works.

There are debates as to how much, and what kind of glue, or gum, should be mixed with alum as a fixative agent.  For my purpose, I used straight saturated solution of alum.

I painted with alum on a piece of blank Xuan a matrix of tree trunks and branches  Think of woods after being sprayed with Agent Orange and you get the picture.  After this is dried thoroughly, I began my normal painting procedures.  As the painting evolves, white streaks will show up acknowledging the prior application of alum.  The opacity of these streaks depends on the type of Xuan and the color and  transparency of pigments used. 

ink on back of Xuan                

front view, ink fixes selectively

To make these streaks more interesting, I turned over the Xuan and applied ink at desired locations.
The effect I was trying to create was a foggy landscape concealing the true color of part of the trees.
When viewed from the front now, the white streaks representing tree branches are now black, but with white edges showing, as if encased in frost.  This technique allows one to be as Xieyi as one wishes (the big picture) and yet upon close examination, there are small details that are provoking.  Thus one can see the forest and feel the trees, or vice versa, feel the forest but see the trees.

 Green 3 Label        

To go along with this plot of sensing but not seeing, I used some Green 3 Label to dress up the vegetation in the foreground.  For the most part the brush strokes disappears in the dark landscape, but occasionally one catch a glimpse of the intense bright color of the Green 3 Label.  It also added a subtle green sheen to the landscape.

 Wet wash

 

 when dried

Further adjustment with a purple brown color was made to transition the dark and bright areas better and less blotchy.  I moistened  down the affected areas thoroughly before applying my blending brush strokes.  For this exercise, the retouched areas will look very dark and intense.  It will dry to a much light scale, so experience definitely helps.

finished product