It's For The Birds

The unseasonably warm weather is going to take a turn for the worse.  The forecast is for the temperature to drop 20 degrees Fahrenheit in a couple of days.  I am just trying to savor "Spring".

 The geese have laid their clutch of eggs.

Having practised my calligraphy today, I decided to follow-up with ink doodling.

 

 

 

framed with mat board

 

 

 

Just for fun !

 

Beaverton Creek (yellow)

The last Beaverton Creek painting done in green was very impressionistic.  I liked it enough to build a canvas frame for it so that I could mount it a la Xuan-Boo style.

In the mean time I want to try my hands on something a little less wild, but still Xieyi.  The image I conjured up was a landscape bathed in a golden light.  Beaverton Creek, yellow !

 back of  Xuan

Again I mapped the landscape on the back of my Xuan.  This  process allowed me more freedom to flick my brush.  I could then concentrate on building up the painting  on the front side of the paper.

front of Xuan

My first step was to add visible branches and tree trunks to the scene.  I punctuated the highlighted areas with tips of branches.  I was trying to achieve the effect which I discussed at my "Visual Acuity" blog.  It is important to extend the exposed tips and branches down, at least in appearance, if not in physicality.  There is a saying in Chinese brush   "bi duan yi lian", meaning the  brush trek is broken up, but the meaning (spirit) still connects.  Sort of like driving down the freeway and using the dotted line to inform you of the virtual divide.  The extraneous branches and stems could be blended in very nicely with the split hair technique.

 

 

A few contour lines and hemp chuen  took care of the foreground, transforming a patch of grey into a bank with rocks and texture.

Looking at the rough draft, I noticed a white right triangle sticking out at the lower right quadrant of the painting.  Somehow there was a white line forming a vivid hypotenuse with the white branches.  This is most awful; especially when you are now aware of this flaw.

My remedy was to fill in the hypotenuse and turn it into a contour line.  I now have a more defined shore lobe extending into the water.

Right now this lobe seemed a little awkward, but I better stop now before I commit some knee-jerk changes.

You Bad Bird !

I was just doodling with my brush, no doubt inspired by the Mi Fu tie that I re-discovered amongst my pile of paper.  I was trying to do calligraphy ostensibly, but I was just going through the motions.  After all I didn't even have the right ink.

I noticed that my scribbling had permeated through the top paper to the second layer beneath it.  The blotches left on the second layer was interesting to me.  I could tell that they were characters of some sort but there wasn't enough information to fill in the voids to give them any meaning.

 

Sort of remind me of a half erased chalk board during my grade school years.  For some reason I thought of my "Fortune Birds" painting. 

The bird on the right is the teacher, trying to educate a bunch of subdued, disciplined pupils.   All except for the  one on the far left; the one that is distracted by something.

Ah that could have been me.  Bad Bird !!

Painting On Turned Wood

A friend of mine turns wood as a hobby and gave me a turned vase for the heck of it.  He had applied a coat of sealer on it (the purple coat in the picture).  It offered me a new playground.

I brushed on 3 coats of white gesso, allowing each coat to dry before the next application.  I mixed in some custom lime green color on the final coat to give it a very light greenish hue, reminding me of an Araucana chicken egg shell.

After smoothing out the brush marks by sanding, I painted a few shrimps on the vase.  I made this work "legit" by painting my chop on it, since a flat seal  would not go on a curved surface.  The entire surface was then sealed with urethane from a spray can.

The result was pleasing, I thought. 

Mountain Lobes

I've been asked quite frequently as to how to paint mountain lobes.

As I explained in the "Ridge Top Explained" blog,  we treat them like slices of the whole mountain range.  Since mountains come in different shapes, we can paint them into any forms our imagination leads us.

The problem I see is not with the shape, or contour of our paintings, but rather with the interpretation of  the light values.

 contour lines depicted.

My advice is to look at our fingers for illustration.   Each finger represents a lobe or a slice of the mountain.  The outline of each finger is defined by the contour line.  We can see in this picture, the darkest part of the "lobe" is immediately on top of the contour line from the finger below.  The brightest part is right under the lobe's own contour line.  These light values help to define perspective and contribute to the three dimensional feel of the object.  There is no line separating the sliver of bright area from the dark area.

We do want to paint in the contour line ( in most cases ) to define the lobe ( or finger in this case ) but we do not want any lines in between the dark and bright.  The light value line is a concept, not an actual line.  This is the reason that "chuen" marks are preferred in the shaded areas of the lobe, and that the bottom edges of the "chuen" strokes should meet the contour line from below, thus avoid leaving misplaced "bright" areas.

A misplaced line can wreak havoc with our perception of the landscape.  We must not confuse the contour line with the imaginary light value line.

 ribbon "chuen"

 

 hemp "chuen"

 

 

Even complicated landscape masses like the 2 inserts above can be dealt with step by step, as long as one recognizes where the contour lines are, and do not paint a line to denote light values.  Strategically placed shading brings out the 3 dimensional feel.  Pay attention to these nuggets of information next time we look at rock formations.  Garnish the details, but address the entire mass to evoke that "feel".

When in doubt, look at our own fingers.

Snakes, just for Fun

This is what happens when I get restless.  I should be doing other things more useful but I find many excuses!  This is one of them...............  Happy Year of the Snake.

                                    

 

 

 

ah, the forbidden fruit?

 

                  Party !       

 

Beaverton Creek Cont'd

I've been looking at my attempt at Beaverton Creek for a week now.  Some of the lustre and vibrancy has gone, now that the Xuan has dried completely and the painting bestows a different ambiance.  My dilemma however remains the same;  should I continue to paint on the back side or the front side of the Xuan?

 

I love the hazy, filtered look of the back side, oh and the vivid specks caused by alum droplets.  What if I continue to work the back side to better define the overall contours and tree lines?  When viewed from the front, would they not present me with the hazy, misty look I was after, but with more detail?

defining tree lines etc

 

I wetted down the Xuan again and allowed it to be 70% dried.  I wanted to paint definite shapes without being too discrete and weighted, taking care to insert a few tree spikes.  I worked to intensify the banks/reflections and what have you.  The repeated brush strokes had taken a toll on the delicate Xuan and lints were everywhere.

 lint on surface of paper

As expected, the painting took on a different feel when viewed from the front now.  The additional wash/staining on the back of the paper caused the alum specks to be quite visible from the front now.  Somehow I was able to confuse the specks to think the front is the back and vice versa ( or was I being confused?).  Chalk this up as an unexpected bonus!

 visible specks in lower left corner

Now that I had attained the feel of the painting, I worked to define the landscape and the incidentals.  I didn't want to destroy the feeling of reve, so I decided to use the split hair technique to define my shapes with dots, which is what pixels do.  This is done with an old brush whose prime has gone and is ready for the waste basket.  The surviving beat up bristles are ideal for rendering these random fine dots.  Discriminate use of dabbing defined shapes, shades and texture.  I wanted to display certain ambiguities with this method; were those shadows or foggy mists?  The layering of these pixels of various saturation actually helped create an illusion of depth; allowing a description of spatial relationship and texture of the various features.

 old abused brush finds new life

 

  split hair (scattered dot) results

 

My attention now turned to the banks and reflections.  I preferred a more defined outline, since I am working with the supposed surface of a body of water.  I described that with a darker colored wash, onto the dry Xuan this time.  I wanted these brush strokes to leave a distinct mark.

Using a mixture of titanium white and Label No. 3 green I painted in some branches on the right hand side.  These would serve as my foreground incidentals.  Some of these features were done with alum initially, just as the specks of sparkle in the water.  My vision was to reveal these branches as negative space to contrast with the hazy landscape.  I chose to outline (Gou) a few selected branches and trees to make them stand out a little more.  The dark thin outline created a border around the brushstroke, achieving an effect similar to digitally sharpening an image.  When done right, the effect is subtle but palpable.  For me, it is a little Gonbi in Xieyi..............

 selective "gou"

 

 selective "sharpening" as a result of "gou"