Am I sick of it?

We had an unusual winter.  We saw some snow, enough to cause traffic problem and closed schools.

During one of those off days, my friend snapped a picture of the highway.   Just a random picture.  Something to do with the index finger on the iphone.

That picture was about ready to be deleted.  It was not intereting.  But what do you do with your day when you try to stay off the road as much as possible?  Play with all your pictures, my friend said.  Cropping is easy to do.

"I want to paint that."  That was my impulse after I saw the cropped photo.

My first attempt at the photo was too "faithful".  I think I was too busy recounting all the details, down to the little bush in the foreground.  The bush looked out of place in the painting.   For one it was too small to really establish a perspective.  Besides, it really took away the  abstract patch type ambiance.  I also thought the horizon lines very too strong. They were too rigid and confining.  This painting attempt had all the undesirable misgivings of painting from a picture.

On my second attempt I thought I would just recall from the photo.  I think I was playing a little more with the elliptical shapes of the landscape, rather than the landscape itself.  The lines definitely livened up and were not as forbidding.  Gone was the redundant bush in the foreground.

 

I wanted to play with the shape partitions more,  i.e. the sky, the bend in the highway on the left, and the filed in the foreground.  In my mind, this had turned into an exercise of painting patterns and lines.  I was reluctant to do this a third time.  I seemed to me that I had spent my soul in the first attempt already, and anything subsequent to that is boring and repetitious.  Perhaps I just want to prove to myself that I have discipline and I can work at something until I am satisfied.

I looked at my third attempt and I saw haste and desertion.  What have I done!  I was a mad man.  I really couldn't make anything out of it.  The painting looked disjointed.   I should have stopped at two.  Perhaps I was tired of toying with the same time over and over again.

Could I just be sick of it?

Taking a break

I was really getting tired of my brush calligraphy.

Every stroke was a chore.  I had no flow.  I was flustered. 

I was told that this is a sign of energy not flowing and it would be pointless to continue.  So I looked for a diversion.  I painted instead.

The painting was done on sized Xuan, the same piece that I aborted my brush calligraphy on.   This paper is better able to retain the original brilliance of the pigments used.   I used it for calligraphy practice because it was scrap and was easily within reach!

The painting was done without much thought process nor planning.   I did it just so I didn't have to practice my calligraphy.  It just flowed.  I am now looking for ways to crop this so I can present it in a proper format.

or

 

 

 

 

 

I have lots of time to muse over this.

Crash and Burn, attempting woodblock

I took the prints from my first attempt at wood cut to my teacher, who happened to be an expert in this field.  My teacher excelled in woodcut prints while studying art in France.

I wasn't ready for the appraisal I received.  Nothing about the print was right.  Not one iota!

I was trying to state my case.  The wood was too hard.  I used a crooked pine board.   I used ink instead of the proper print paint.  I didn't have a roller.  The paper I used was not card stock.  I really liked the feel of it.  I tried to demonstrate a spatial relationship of the 2 trees.  There was variation of in ink tone.

My teacher demanded to see my carving knives, which I did not bring.  I asked instead for my teacher to base the critique purely on the merits of the image alone.  Why must one involve my carving knives.  Why couldn't we talk about whether the print surface was properly primed or not.  So the discussion evolved to discussion of whether one could do proper Chinese brush calligraphy with a brush for house painting, or must oil painting be done on canvas, etc.

After much discussion, the take away I got was that there are distinct traits of merit for every discipline.  For example we kept talking about bi-fa in brush strokes, be it brush calligraphy or brush painting.  Correspondingly, wood cuts need to demonstrate the way of the knife, for lack of better terms.  It was this lack of knifesmanship that doomed my print.  I failed to demonstrate any control of the edge.  What I deemed as pleasing, i.e. the wood grain coming through, the mottled look etc. should not be and could not be a substitute for proper cutting technique.

This reminded me of my own blog  Isn't Being Cute Enough?  I was too preoccupied with the First Time fever to see it.  I fell into the same pit.  Thus my lack of skill in wood cut was not concealed by
any sorts of pretence;  at least not in the eye of someone who knows.  The advice for me:  don't rely on gimmicks to save me.  Learn to do it properly.

This is what I like about my teacher.  The ability to conduct open, thought provoking discussions.

Attempting Woodblock

I had grown increasingly dissatisfied with my brushstrokes, and my calligraphy.  I sensed that I was placing too much emphasis on the shape rather than the energy.  I was tracing instead of writing.

I thought doing some woodcut might be a good diversion.
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I had never done woodcut before, but this "First Time" trepidation was exactly the motivation I needed.  I had a piece of scrap pine board left over from frame making.  Perfect material for trial and error.

I thought I would do trees.  Simple lines, and a good challenge to be able to show spatial relationship of the limbs.

I started out by painting 2 trees onto this block of wood.   I wasn't concerned about mirror image or upside down or else.  Que sera sera!   My goal was to have two trees with a few overlapping branches.  My challenge would be to show which limb is in the back.

Initial draft and scribing

 

 

 

Close-up on woodcut

 

 

Since this was my maiden voyage into woodcuts, I was anxious to see if this would fly at all.  I dabbed ink onto the one tree that I had finished so far and laid a piece of Xuan on it.  I used a piece of dry dish washing scrub pad for the rub out since I did not have a roller at my disposal.  The result was better than expected.  I was particularly happy with the wood grain from the pine board showing up.  The beading was probably due to the virgin wood surface, as the ink had not yet soaked into the wood fiber.  I was able to showcase the different ink tones.

Finished board with ink

 

Print made from the woodcut.

 I was not able to achieve the same drama with different ink tones.  The wood fibers were wet now and they seemed to have diffused the ink for me.

I did not like the hanging branch on the right.  It was ostentatiously annoying.  So I lopped it off.   The resulting image is more coherent .  Amazing how a little alteration goes a long ways.

I brushed  concentrated ink onto the left tree and diluted ink onto the other, creating a contrast between the two stands.  I printed on the bamboo paper for calligraphy.  This paper is more absorbent than the regular Xuan.  Instead of using the scrub pad I used my fingers to press down on the paper.  I was able to modulate the pressure at various spots, resulting in a print with varied intensity and emphasis.

I used broken lines to define the spatial arrangement of the limbs.  Branches that are in the back received the broken line treatment (areas circled in red).  This is a technique frequently used in Chinese brush painting.  For further discussion of this topic please refer to my blog on More Than Just Broken Lines dated 3/29/12.

I am quite tickled with my first attempt at woodblock.  I would definitely pursue this further in the days to come.

A Quorum of Geese

It is time to get back to my geese project.

While I was preoccupied with painting my horse, the thought of how to create a geese painting was still churning away in the background.  Unfortunately I am no closer to the goal than a couple of months ago.  I can't keep writing off my hesitance as being pensive, so I decided to face my demon....  out comes the paper and brush.

My theory is that despite the absence of a concrete idea as to how the painting might end up, perhaps I have a subconscious impression of my painting to be.  So I'll be a good listener and hear myself out.

I have chosen a paper that I normally do calligraphy on.  It is more absorbent than the regular Xuan and the brush strokes tend not to bleed.  I was also drawn by its native yellow gold color;  perhaps I could utilize that background color.  This piece of paper is 6 feet wide, I decided to use the whole thing.  I was gearing up for failure already.  My rationale for using the entire 6 ft was that if I screwed up I could start all over without missing a beat. This way I could just paint continuously until there was  no empty space left and I could always crop to size only the desirable sections.  Smart decision !


Armed with such a game plan, I started to lay down a bunch of geese:

Then I decided to take advantage of the paper's yellow color and made the scene as if bathed in the glow.  I used gamboge and cinnabar and mixed in some titanium white for the added blocking effect.  I now wanted the geese to look a little hazy.  I also painted in some smaller, blurry geese to the right, to achieve  a little bit of depth perspective.

I blocked in some landscape for depth perspective.  The darker emphasis is on the left side of the painting,  to contrast with the right.

Tidied up the background.  Showed some highlight on a few select geese,  and called that a wrap, for now.  I might not like some of the individual birds, but I have grown fond of the overall mood of the painting.  I'll hang it up and stare at it for a few weeks and see what else comes to mind. 

I decided to add in the white highlight on the butt of the geese.  I perceived that was also a trade mark, just as the banding on the head.  I wonder if I over did it? 

Oh, did I mention this is a six footer? I wonder how I am going to mount it.  If I use my Xuan-boo method, the warm tone would be restored once I applied the gel;  and I do like that warm fuzzy feeling!

We have a problem

I have been casting that occasional glance at my horse paintings, especially the joie de vivre  piece.
These seemingly casual encounters actually help to form the basis of a non-analytical analysis.  What an oxymoron!  What I meant is that I started to feel instinctively something is good or bad, and that motivates me to pry into the causes for my concerns.

I felt that something is amiss. 

Well let me see what is good first.

I liked the effect of the white margins left by the alum solution.  As I said before, my inclination to use alum is probably due to my inadequacy in my brush strokes, my Gi Bun Gong, and my lack of control of the proper amount of water.  A good painting is a successful interplay of ink, water, paper and brush.  I have used different types of Xuan paper.  Aside from different absorbency and tendency to bleed, some will retain a more distinctive margin in between brush strokes.  Since I am not a connoisseur of Xuan or ink, I only had the pleasure of chance encounters with said products.  I do not know enough to seek out a particular type or brand to acquire.

Anyways I was able to portray the apparent feel of tendons and muscles by giving them definition with white margins in the following example:

The white margins left by alum also helped to add layer and depth in the hairs of the mane and tail:

And of course I love the body language of the horse, enough to name it  joie de vivre.  What gives this painting a sour taste is the neck area of the horse.



I suppose the painting of animals do require a certain understanding of anatomy.  In this particular case the strong neck muscles needed to control that long cervical spine is totally missing in the representation.   What I have depicted is almost like kids playing with sand on the beach, trying to build a sand horse.  Bucketfuls of sand is piled on top of the chest to depict the neck, without regards to how the neck should be attached for articulation.  What I have erected was a column that I called a neck and placed it on top of the body, without accounting for how this column should be rested on the shoulders.  Hence begging the question, should anatomical proportions and placements be exact when doing Chinese brush painting?  According to 6 doctrines prescribed by Xie He (謝赫 ）likeliness only assumed the number 3 position of relative importance.  Can I write off  this miscalculation by saying brush strokes trump proper anatomy?  I don't know.  I wish I know!

From the painting, we can see the white margin left by the original brush stroke of the neck.

In subsequent shading and augmenting the lines, I had changed the contour of the neck column.

This is the result after digitally erasing the extraneous brush strokes outside of the white margin to shape the neck better.  Does this alteration render a better fit for the neck to the shoulders?

 

 

Did this simple change breathed new life into the painting?

Joie de vivre

I had my Happy Year of the Horse painting pinned on my wall;  indulging myself in narcissistic glaring sessions.

After the initial euphoria had subsided, I stepped back and began my self critique phase.

I need better looking lower limbs on that horse.

I started with the same basic outline of the animal, but with a broader stroke.  I was going for sort of a boneless brush stroke, creating more of a silhouette than outlines.  I was hoping this would make my brush more expressive.

I was treating the lower shanks more like a calligraphy stroke;  with discrete stops and lifts and pressure variation.  I also pre-wet my brush with alum solution.  As you recall from all my toying with alum solution, I was going for that discrete white margin around the brush strokes.  As I overlay and correct my lines, these white margins would give an illusion of muscle groups and tendons.  If I was a master in brush painting, I would have left the "white spaces" to my brush but I am not at that level yet.  Thus I cheated with my faithful alum solution!

Another thing I need to mention is that I had tried to paint the mane and tail with side tip strokes and they just don't look right.  After I looked at Xu Beihong's horses, I realized that they should be done with center tip brush strokes.  Since the lines go every which way, it is important to rotate the shaft of the brush such that the tip is always lined up with the changes in direction, thus maintaining the center tip attitude.


Side tip strokes

 

 

Center tip strokes

This is the revised version of my horse.  I am certain we can still find fault with my techniques and craftsmanship, but I am happy with the expression and the feeling the painting conveys.  I especially appreciate the neck and head movement.

I sense that the horse is speaking to me.  This is a Happy-Go-Lucky horse.  This is a horse with that Joie de vivre swagger.

Wishing you all the same!