What is Chinese Brush Painting, learning by rote

Traditional Chinese Brush painting ( Guo Hua)  can be divided into two main styles; Gongbi ( Gong means craft, Bi means writing instrument ), a meticulous and formal brush style and Xieye (Xie means to write, Yi means sentiment, expression), which literally means writing with expression and spontaneity. Within these styles, there are divisions into different genres such as Floral and Birds, Personalities and Landscape.  Landscape paintings are deemed the most difficult.

Guo Hua is typically learnt by rote.  Practice, memorize and practice some more.  Copying is one of the methods employed in the rote system.  Students copy their teachers and other masters.  Anybody who is serious about studying Guo Hua has labored with the Mustard Seed Garden, copying and studying different techniques and styles, honing their Gi Bun Gong.  It is perhaps due to this forced feeding that a lot of the Chinese paintings look similar to each other, especially with regards to subject matter and composition.

Mustard Seed Garden on tree arrangement

Mustard Seed Garden on mixed foliage    

 

Mustard Seed Garden on mountains        

 

Mustard Seed Garden on painting falls   

 

Mustard Seed Garden on painting incidentals

 

 

 

More contemporary examples of "how to" text material:

how to paint peony and koi

 finished painting of peony and koi

 how to paint fish                

Unfortunately we have so-called teachers these days using these as their templates for teaching Chinese Brush painting.  The "come-on" is to lure people to paint a fish with a scant few strokes and thus fulfilling the minimalistic presentation of "Asian art".  What they don't realize is this is just a gimmick and not a lesson.  The emphasis should be on the Bi-Fa..... how to start and finish and what parts of the brush does one need to pay attention to.  The result is a painting with all the lines in the right places, but shows no distinctive characteristics of a controlled brushstroke at all ( remember the calligraphy Te?).  This is fine as a means  to spark a person's desire to learn Chinese brush painting, but not an end. Being able to play "Chopsticks" on the keyboard does not make one a piano player, anymore than the person teaching it a piano teacher.

Qi Baishi (1864 - 1957) is a world renowned Chinese Brush artist.  He was born a peasant, became a carpenter, then taught himself how to paint.  He also worked on a few fish paintings.  In one, he actually wrote the following on the painting,

It is difficult to paint meticulously and be lively at the same time.  The difficulty lies in using  just a few strokes to capture the shape and attitude of the subject matter.  This fish exemplifies the masterful employment of ink tone, the superb brushstrokes, motion and energy.

How is this fish compared with the fish in the "how to" book?


to be continued

What is Chinese Brush Painting, an artform of lines

A Chinese artist in the 6th century indoctrinated the 6 canons of painting:

1. Rhythm
2. Strength in brush strokes, reflectig the spirit of the artist
3. Fidelity to nature
4. Appropiateness of color
5. Composition
6. Learn by emulation

Thus Chinese brush work is an artform of lines.  It is the brushwork that evokes emotion rather than the object, as evidenced by the relative order of importance suggested above.  Such is the instinct of this eastern artform.

Bi-Fa ( method of the brush ) or Gi Bun Gong ( the fundamentals ) obviously pertains to mastering the brush.  For most Chinese of my generation, brush writing was still taught in school and we sort of took it for granted.  Brush penmanship however is another story.  Student of calligraphy are taught to study and emulate calligraphy by famous masters, in different fonts.  We use a "Te" (template) as our study material.  The goal is not to make a tracing of these brushstrokes but to study them and "read" the intricacies.  This is when we learn how to use the tip, edge and belly of the brush to effect different shapes.

I am going to use just part of a character here to illustrate my point:

In this example, we start at

1. with the tip of the brush, forming the thin sliver
2. traverse with even pressure and speed to form a line of uniform width
3. stop, and the right side edge of brush forms the straight edge here
4. lift brush towards 10 o'clock, leaving the little corner as evidence of the brushstroke, then bring
    brush down in a continuous loop to
5. start with the tip of brush again
6. traverse down with increasing pressure, to form a line with gradually thicker profile
7. stop, allow the belly to fill the delta at the 4 o'clock position;  the left side edge of brush forms the
    straight edge   
8. lift brush towards 10 o'clock, again leaving the little pointy corner as evidence, loop the brush in
    the air towards 9
9. start a new downward stroke, showing the tip of the brush

Calligraphy is like choreographed dance steps; one can make connections from one pose to the next.
Writing with a brush does not mean wantonly putting a bunch of lines together to form a legible character!

 sample of my calligraphy

to be continued

What is Chinese Brush Painting

What is Chinese Brush Painting?  I suppose this is a rhetorical question, or is it?

Can a painting done with oil painting brushes but carries a Chinese motif be called a Chinese Brush Painting?  How about doing Monet's Water Lilies using Chinese brushes, can the resulting work be called a Chinese Brush Painting?

In Chinese societies, one would use the term "Guo Hua" (Guo means national, Hua means painting; to paint) to describe traditional Chinese Brush Painting.  Guo Hua is done with a round brush, using ink or pigments, mixed with water and painted on Xuan(Hsuan) paper or Juan(silk).  The finished painting is signed off with seal(s) and mounted either on paper or silk and presented as scrolls, or more recently, in frames.

Aside from the perfect complement of the Xuan(Hsuan) paper as a writing medium, the Chinese brush shoulders perhaps the most vital role in the discipline of Guo Hua.  It has a round body that come to a point.  The mission is how to coordinate the strands of hair to the point, and with the belly of the brush to form lines with various thickness and shapes.  Chinese use the brush for their calligraphy; thus calligraphy and painting are firmly intertwined.  In fact, the Chinese often use the term to "write" a painting to describe the act of painting, and the audience is urged to "read" a painting.  This symbiotic relationship has led to the term "Shu Hua" (calligraphy, painting) to describe the 2 commonly linked art forms and exhibition halls in museums catering to the art of Shu Hua.

Bi-Fa (Bi means writing instrument, Fa means the method) describes the nuisances of mastering the brush.  Bi-Fa is also known as Gi Bun Gong (the fundamentals) in some circles.  Think of the fingers holding the brush as the A-arm of a car's suspension.  Our job is to load the brush with the correct amount of water/ink/pigment, with the help of correct camber angles and toe-in, apply suitable pressure and speed, such that the tip, or edge, or the belly of the brush, or combinations of such, form a desirable footprint on the Xuan or Juan.  In other words, keep the tire on the road, mitigating sand, gravel, sleet, rain or snow, taking into account speed and tire pressure.  Thus one can spin wheel, drive, skid, drift, brake or even induce wheel hop.  Sounds complicated?  Well, when we drive most of us have an awareness of whether the road is slippery, or if we have run over something and we instinctively adjust our driving to the road conditions.  We are at ease because we know what our equipment can and will do.

In order to properly "read" a painting, the audience need to be equipped with some basic knowledge of Guo Hua so they can be literate in this subject.  Obviously Bi-Fa is at the center stage.  We demand artists to show calligraphic characteristics in their brush strokes.  Virtues  of the line, how ink or color is dispersed are all important.

This example shows lively ink tone, deliberate yet free strokes.  Ink should have 5 tones, and lines should demonstrate "Li"(strength).  This is the difference  between a motionless live snake and a dead flaccid one, even though both trace the same lines.

Examples of writing with different parts of the brush.  Whether this is an egret or heron is not important.  What is important is the brushstroke and the attitude.

(to be continued)

Beaverton Creek (classic) completion

I know I have done a "what if" scenario by painting in pink leaves/flowers on the trees in the foreground using Photoshop; but that was before most of the incidentals were painted in and colored.
Now that I could see the finish line, I'm having second thoughts.

I am leery that pink might be too flashy.

There's only one way to find out.  I painted a couple of test swatches, one in pink and the other Blue Hue Three.

 

The blue looked nice and seemed to blend in well with the rest of the scenery.  Hence the problem.  It blended in too well and the painting looked ....uninviting.

The pink was uplifting and definitely grabbed my attention.  It worked well as a punctuation mark!  Now the fat lady sings!

 pink it is

 

The objects in the near ground were done mostly "boned"; with outline to give them a more defined, crisp footprint.  I tried to create the sense of a diverse and mixed shrubbery by punching up the color palette and painting in leaves of various species; avoiding the sense of total chaos at the same time.  Fortunately I've been to this place a hundred times and I had a pretty good idea in my head.  As one travels further back into the painting, the images became "boneless", edges were not well defined, and the color became more monochromatic.  I actually employed alum solution to help create the white margins around tree trunks.  This worked particularly well for objects in the distance, where a dark outline would be too crisp for the purpose and should be avoided.   I suppose I would call this alum technique as a "soft bone" technique.  Obviously this required planning;  the tree trunks were among the first items to be painted with alum.

The bamboo areas in the left midriff portion seemed a little flat.  I tried to paint in a few more leaves but that looked really cluttered and was concealing my brushstrokes, so I backed off.  I settled on selectively darkening certain areas to give it a lumpy look, to get  more depth in that cluster.

 bamboo treatment

The creek still looked too open ended for me.  I would like the bottom part to close off some more.  I also wanted to warm up the foreground somewhat, to subtly draw it out further from the background.  Harking back to Photoshop tricks, I decided to add a warming filter by painting a very diluted  and light yellow color over the lower half of the landscape, and the bottom end of the creek.  I was hoping the slight yellow tint on the water might work as a gradient tool to help narrow the creek somewhat.

 warming filter

 

I wish there is a way to retain this wet look.  There is so much more depth to everything.  Images just want to jump off the Xuan.

I decided to add a few ducks to this painting, or rather, to move them to different coves as compared with the original draft.   It seems like I couldn't do a painting anymore without adding a bird or heron or something.  In this case, that's what Beaverton Creek is all about.  A nature park in a city.

 ducks added

 

One of the things I like about this painting is that there are so many points of interest in it.

It invites you to explore each little snippet, to "read" the painting, as Chinese would say.

Some of these sections could stand in as a complete painting in its own right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I need to hang this up now and  glance at it occasionally.  I'm sure something will come up for me to make corrections.

 

Beaverton Creek Classic (Coloring)

I felt a little better now that I know how to handle the foreground.

Parallel to the creek runs a trail, partly dirt and gravel, and partly constructed of wooden planks.  This trail starts at the little lookout area and then follows the bank.  I am having great difficulty with painting this trail because I really don't have a clear image as to how this trail should look like on paper.  I just haphazardly plotted the footprint and will deal with it later.

The leaves would assume different colors.  It would be boring if all of them were green. I decided to have green, yellow, red, crimson, and blue leaves.  It is not uncommon for Blue Hue Three (176) to be  used as a leaf color; it is like a punctuation mark!  That and Green Label Hue Three(173).
For these leaves I would use yellow as the base coat.  It is important to write the color in using brushstrokes.  Forsake the temptation to just block in the entire area.  In this particular example, the leaves are little rectangles.  So using the brush tip, start at the point, press and lift at the opposite side.  As we pile on layers of color, the tone becomes more saturated.

The different colors tend to carve out a tiny margin around themselves (perhaps due to brushstrokes not exactly the same as I repeat the process) and give the leaves a thickness.  I would pile cinnabar on yellow, then carmine on top of that, for example.  After the entire painting is done, I would then re-outline the leaves and trunks for a better definition.

I now need to put in the grounds.  What I had was a faint green smudge with  dark outlines.  I would go over the entire ground with brown (684) mixed with ink, taking care to leave the highlighted areas uncovered.  By selectively using different tones of brown, and subsequent highlighting with Green Label Three again,  I can map out the contour and the topography of this landscape and render a three dimensional feel to it.

Stepping back and look at the painting.  On the lower right hand corner I have a tree in the middle of the trail.  Looks bad!    So I decided to paint in some foliage around the base to make it less obvious.  I also embellished the trail with blades of grass or vegetation here and there.  I would probably write in some moss dots too, but I'll wait until the painting is almost done.

Once that problem is fixed, the left side of the bridge looks naked.  I had the small trees there to conceal the entrance, but there was no hint of a path leading to the bridge and thus the bridge seem detached and was not connected to the painting emotionally.  My faithful foliage came to the rescue again.  These leaves could be shrubs, or they could be from the trees;  a little added intrigue for the audience!

I also darkened the sky somewhat, such that it is now connected to the rest of the painting.
A margin of green around the shores to frame the landscape.  I use that as a minimalistic representation of reflections, certainly in accordance with classical Chinese Brush painting doctrine.

to be continued.

Flamingo Tango

One of my teacher accused me of unable to Let Go !  Thus my brushstrokes are not deliberate and feel inhibited.  I was told many times to let it all hang out, because I had to go so much overboard just to reach par!

I was cutting up some paper for calligraphy, which I was in no mood to do.  Why don't I doodle, or just horse around with the brush?  Perfect excuse for not doing calligraphy!

Images of a pair of Flamingo dancing came to mind.

Not bad, I thought.  Then I decided to add in a few black areas to signal the trailing edge feathers.
Us Chinese have a saying:  Painting legs on a snake.........................................  messing up a good thing by being redundant and overbearing.  The black lines were clearly an afterthought, and not syncing with the rest of the brushstrokes.

In my disgust, I grabbed a whole sheet of 4 ft Xuan and repeated the process, except this time I figured a way to incorporate the black areas a little better.

I don't dislike it.  I thought it looks interesting.  I could do a better job on the body!  I thought the body on the smaller piece looks better.

I decided to anchor the birds a little better by writing in some darker ink brushstrokes, being careful to display calligraphic characteristics, especially with turns and lifts.

Heron Taking Off

I was cleaning out the attic when I came across a model glider that my son and I had built years ago.
This baby has a 6 feet wingspan and is covered with blue and white mylar at the wings and white on the fuselage.  Somehow it reminded me of a heron.

I wanted to paint a heron taking off, with its dropped nose and neck.  Now I'm thinking about the supersonic Concorde.  These images are good; hopefully they can help lend some emotional content to the painting.

 front of Xuan                     

Heron taking flight would assume a lower view angle, thus framed by grassy weeds.
I first wrote the lines for the stalks, then I turned the Xuan over and retraced some of these lines with alum solution.  As we recall, alum works as a resist.  The reason to do this on the back side is because it is more effective this way.

tracing with alum on the back

Now I painted in the heron itself.  The grassy weeds now have a narrow white margin provided by the alum, thus making a better separation from the heron; creating a perception of distance.

Painted in the shore line and trees to add a perception of distance.  I tried to highlight the heron by darkening the surrounding with a wash.   The best concoction for this wash is the brush bath.  This bath water is the sum of all the colors used for this painting, and is guaranteed to provide the right tone.

   darkening the surrounding

 

       brush bath used as wash

 

This is what the painting looks when dried.

This is an exploratory piece.  I would like to apply what I've learned from this to a few more?