Getting down to the nitty-gritty of Suliao Xuan Ban

I See The Light is ready for mounting and framing.

To say that I'm a little apprehensive is an understatement. I' really don't want to ruin my piece in this delicate process, especially now that the piece has been adjudicated into an exhibition.  I need to have it done.

I'm employing my Suliao Xuan Ban method to make the painting appear like a float; to highlight the fragile Xuan and the starkness of my light show. This process involves the dry mounting process, when the tissue paper like Xuan is affixed onto a sheet of clear plastic.  The adhesion is provided by fusing the paper to the substrate with heat transfer fusion paper.

In the wet mount method the starch glued piece can be soaked to rid it of adhesion and begin the mounting from ground zero if a boo boo was made.  This luxury, if one can call that as such, is not afforded by the dry mount. The bonding cannot be reversed easily.

First the fusion  paper is tacked onto the clear plastic. My favorite tool for this purpose is a heating iron left over from my model airplane building days. I used this to iron on the skin to the spars of  the models.

After the backing on the transfer paper is peeled off, my attention turns to the air bubbles.  I burst them with a pin and press them flat using a rubber eraser, avoiding body oil from using my fingers.  I don't know if such precaution is necessary, but I rather be safe than sorry.

The Xuan with the painting is now laid on the bonding surface, and is ironed on through a cover sheet to avoid marring the painting.   The procedure of tacking  in place with the small iron is repeated, followed by using a regular iron for a uniform surface.  The trick in tacking now is to use sufficient heat for some fusion to take place, yet not too hot to allow wiggle room for the Xuan to shed its creases and wrinkles.  This is where tender loving care comes in. The big iron is used only after I am satisfied with the quality of the painting's surface.

A blank piece of Xuan is then bonded onto the opposite side of the plastic for white balance.

Here is the finished product in the custom frame I made,

The white border around the painting is not matte board, but rather the wall behind the frame.

It's Like Oil & Water

I've been struggling with my lines.  The quality of lines.

I seemed to be sketching and tracing, rather than laying down decisive, strength laced calligraphic brush strokes.

I know I must practise on my calligraphy, there's no two ways about it.  Somehow I resent such exercises.  I feel restrained, contrived,  trying to copy all the nuances in each brush stroke precariously, all the time wishing that I could just write like that.    My frustration is that I never seem to be able to lift any benefit from this arduous task.  Whatever I learnt from  brush calligraphy somehow defies to be translated into painting.

No I'm not having the blues, I just happen to find my old Tai Chi painting from the pile in the corner of my room.  I have the urge to revisit that subject matter, with a twist this time. I'll side step the lines. Find an easy way out.

I shall do the gestures in forms and not line figures.

Since I've been doing black and whites lately, I shall continue my pursuit in this vein.

Instead of using alum to block off my forms, I decided to experiment with using oil.  My theory is since oil and water don't mix, perhaps the space occupied by oil will prevent water or ink from seeping in.  So goes the experiment.

The following is one of the gestures done with just plain cooking oil.  I let the oil dry overnight before I attempted to do anything more to the experiment.

I found out that the oil patches could be overcome if I used concentrated ink.  So I throttled back and started out with a more diluted solution, subsequently building up to the desired degree of blackness.  The oil laced gestures actually helped me tremendously in deciding which part should be filled in with ink or not, and also allowed me some freedom as to modify the boundary between oil and water.  I found myself morphing the figures as I went along and it was quite exhilarating.  Almost like chiseling out a marble  figurine.

Then this idea suddenly crept into my consciousness.  I've been leafing over pages on acupuncture books and I was in the process of trying to understand the 12 main meridians and the organs they are associated with.  Why don't I illustrate my gestures with these meridians.  Who knows, they might be educational, for me at least.  My plan is to gather them into groups of Hand Ying, Hand Yang, Foot Ying and Foot Yang, plus the Du and Ren (Governor Vessel and Conception Vessel).  This should account for the twelve regular meridians, plus two of the eight Vessels.  That's a plan anyways.

Here I painted in the three Foot Yang meridians (Stomach, Bladder, Gall Bladder) in red

I also experimented with depicting the meridian (Foot Bladder)  from a second sheet on the bottom, since the figure part is quite translucent

Foot Kidney meridian (Ying, in blue)

I've been ruminating.  Had my command of brushstrokes been better, I would never have thought of all these "tricks" to experiment with.  I suppose if everyone was naturally beautiful and perfect, the hair dye, mascara, lip stick industry would not have existed.  Necessity is the mother of invention.  Just saying!

Before I segue too far from the topic, I just wanted to say that I'm not too happy with the portrayal of the meridians.  I shall look for a more artistic way to depict them.  I am hoping for a way to combine science and art into one.  

In this particular instance anyways.

For What It's Worth

There was a painting competition for high school students.  The subject matter was flowers. This happened in Hong Kong.

This was probably a project sponsored by the likes of urban parks council or parks and recreation, etc.  A noble effort to promote art and participation and drew attention to the merits of a city park.

The result of the competition, along with the works was posted outside the administration office, where the public can view during operation hours.

The  First Place winner of the group is

The Second Place winner is

I remembered the unsettling emotion I felt when I saw the results.  I was confused, perplexed.  I felt the judges were wrong.

It really was none of my business.  I was just someone who loves and appreciates painting, certainly not a juror by any stretch of the imagination.  Art is a very subjective thing.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  How do you agree or argue with a urinal being accepted as modern art, or breaking a Ming vase as a program of arts had any redeeming values.  I am venting again with these off the cuff remarks.  My apologies.

Anyways I was prepared to do a rather informal, unscientific survey of my own; I asked my painting cohorts to rate these 2 paintings.

I did not tell them what this was about or who did them.   I just presented them with the 2 images and asked them to rank them.  They did not even have to tell me why they ranked them that way.  I was not looking for a reason, just a ranking.  I believe this way people feel a little more secure in the sense that they need not expose their thoughts or feelings or biases.

To my delight, only one person agreed with the judges.  The rest of us thought it should be the other way around; that the Second Place winner should be awarded the First Place.

I don't know if this has anything to do with our social indoctrination or our immediate cultural environment.  I am sure that it does.  I have my own theory.

The top painting seemed more exuberant, full bodied and vibrant.  A value more often associated with prosperity, happiness and abundance.  It closely animated the Chinese saying of A Hundred Flowers Blooming Together.   Auspicious is the word that comes to mind.  A more traditional value in the Asian culture.

Whereas the second painting seemed more abstract and airy.  Ostensibly a merit in the Xieyi style of painting, nonetheless succumbed to the relative frugality of floral arrangements. There was a distinct feeling of the subject matter and the background, the host and the guest.   Whereas my cohorts and myself are Asians but we are now immersed in western culture and perhaps are more receptive to the  less representational presentation.

Or, my cohorts and I instinctively shared the same affinities.  The fact that we agreed on something just says we have the same taste, not that we are right or wrong.

Our tastes have changed.

Just a thought, for what it"s worth.

Who! Where?

Our local educational channel aired a program on owls.  It turned out that a huge forest park close-by is actually a habitat for a certain species of owl.  This particular species is not nocturnal and can be seen during the daytime, its inclination for secrecy notwithstanding. 

I've tried to venture out and see it for myself but have not had much luck.

I thought of a painting of the woods that I did some time ago.  I thought that painting was missing something.  For one thing the painting looked a little anemic.  I had wanted to depict the ambience of woods in scattered light, punctuated by the crisscrossing trail.  What a perfect opportunity for me to jazz it up with a couple of owls.

So I filled in more foliage to make the painting look fuller, and  to give it a more structured feeling.  I also painted in a wash of very light dark green, barely perceptible; perhaps as a subliminal stamping that the scene is of a woods.  A couple of owl was inserted atop of tree stands.

Can you find the owls?

This following is the "before" look of the painting

I See The Light, the verdict

After looking at the pinned painting on the wall for a couple of weeks, I couldn't think of what other changes I could make to it.  I personally thought the effect was quite dramatic.  I had mulled the painting from near and afar.  I would look at it from 10 feet away, to see if it hit me in any way.  I would examine it from 2 feet away, looking at minute details and brushstrokes.  I wanted the painting to have a visual impact that could reel in the audience, then smother them with fine details, like reading the pages of a fine novel.

I would walk into the room with my eyes looking away and then turned my attention to the painting abruptly, just to see if I could get a rise out of it.  Some Geek, I know.  But that's the joy of painting, for an amateur like me anyways.

Before I got too indulged in my own work, I decided to solicit the opinion from the pros.

The first pro is a famous artist who studied in China and France and is well versed in both Chinese and Western arts.

The artist did not like my using of the alum, or gouache or gesso at all, which was really surprising to me.
"Dirty" was the comment. It looked unnatural and smudged.  Too much covering up.  Try to paint by leaving voids was the advise.

However this artist really liked my treatment of the trees in the background.  It was subtle, full and yet not cluttered at the same time was the encouraging comment.  Again urging me to rid the contrived highlights.

I took the painting to another professional painter for critique.  This artist studied in China and is well versed in charcoal and oil, doing landscapes and portraits.

I told this artist about my reservation and ambivalence in using gouache and gesso and alum since these are rather unconventional ways for painting on Xuan and the reply was that I need to paint the way I see it.  My only concern should be on how I express myself. There is no right or wrong in painting so don't let my own ignorance shackle myself.

This artist had exactly the opposite opinion from the last pro.

This artist didn't think there was any problem with the alum etc and the painting was not "dirty" as the other pro would have put it.  This artist thought my use of the highlight was quite effective and gets the point across.

The problem however was with the background.  It was felt that my repeated washing and re-adjusting of my black/grey areas rendered the painting too "heavy".  Thus the ethereal feel of ink and water on Xuan was  lost.  I had forsaken the translucent, fragile feel for this heavily caked look.  The advice was to brush up my perception of the values and just do it with simple aplomb and certainty rather than repeated staining.

This was especially refreshing for me to hear, coming from a artist who normally deals with canvas and heavy stock paper, to have such an insight on the feel of the paper itself.

I have forgotten that the Xuan that I painted on is an integral part of the work, and not just a passive substrate.  It too could effervesce a nuance into the overall presentation of the piece.

My saving grace, hopefully, is the fact that I had planned to frame this piece of work using my Suliao Xuan Ban method to allow the painting to be shown via back-lit lighting.  I am convinced that the translucent virtue of Xuan would still come through.

We shall see.

I See The Light, cont'd

Now I needed to tend to the main element of this painting, the light, or beams of light to be specific.

My basic premise was a black and white painting having a diagonal divide, with a darker right lower half contrasting with the lighter left upper half.  The center beam of light would be the most pronounced, hitting the fern plant in the foreground.  Half of the plant would be highlighted, to add to the drama of the light show.

In order to train my brushstrokes to the proper orientation to showcase the rays, I cut out strips of newspaper and placed them in the pattern of the rays.  My design was to have these protected areas be the light beams, thus whilst I could paint in the background, I could just paint over these strips of newspaper, not having to worry about broken or disjointed brushstrokes.  In my mind, the painting would be sliced up by these swaths of void, but I didn't want the piece to feel scrambled.  I wanted that knife edge feel of a search light beam.

The newspaper covered areas would not be totally vacant, since I had started to paint in the background already but using ink diluted with alum.

 Now I would ramp up the intensity of the "dark" areas to show off the voids.  It's all an optical illusion.

The rays of sunlight seemed too staged and rigid in the painting.  This was not unexpected, since I was rather draconian in blocking in my light rays.  Fortunately this offered me an opportunity to gradually change the black or grey values, to make the painting look more pleasing and less mechanical.  That required patience, something I am constantly reminded as a virtue that I am lacking

I needed to manipulate the length, the width, the intensity and the spacing of these rays..

Somehow the painting still looked odd to me.  I couldn't quite tell what was wrong with it but I knew something was missing.

After I got tired of scratching my head, and some other parts of my anatomy, I cheated by digging out the photography again; just to see if the picture could help me re-live the moments when I snapped it.

What was missing became imminently apparent.  It was the details at the upper right hand corner.  What I had now was a huge hole.

I was thinking beams from the sun, all the while forgetting that the light squeezed in through spaces at the tree tops.  That little bit of detail at the upper right corner made all the difference.  It defined the portal where the beams sneaked through.

A lighthearted and well placed smudge by the brush fixed that problem. 

The painting looked finished now, all pieces were accounted for.  While I was plugging up the hole on the upper right, I also added some finesse to the painting.  I added some highlights to the tree trunks and branches.  I mentioned that I mixed ink with alum solution to hopefully get some clear margins on my brushstroke edges.  Well that didn't happen as I had hoped, so I did my own garnishing.  I used a watered down white gesso as my pigment.  I was just experimenting and the results were fine.  These seemed less luminous than the gouache and showed the highlights in a subtle way.  Definitely not overpowering like the fern leaves.

I See The Light

I recalled a photography I took while walking in the woods.

It was a foggy kind of morning and the sun was out.  The beams of light from the sun were piercing through the tops of tall fir trees, and wiggling through leaves and needles of cedar;  illuminating the morning mist as they descended onto earth, turning the space into an outdoor cathedral.  I could place myself in a dim duomo,  the swirling smoke from the burning incense being caught by the light coming in through the stained glass windows.

I wanted to paint this.  In black and white, with ink and Chinese brush, on Xuan.

Immediately I was faced with a challenge.  How would I portray the fern that caught the light?

In traditional Chinese painting light value is seldom an issue. The emphasis is always on brushstrokes, whether they possess rhythm, strength and if the composition is ethereal.   Here my emotional connect was with this theater of light beams, and I am using ink to establish my values; to set my stage.  Traditions out of the window.

I would normally use the unpainted areas of my Xuan as my reference for white, but that seemed inadequate in this setting.  In my mind the untouched areas are "neutral", and I needed a way to depict "brightness" beyond neutral.  I needed to find a way to go into the "positive" values.  I wanted to be able to show that the fern was in the lime light, its fish-bone like leaves were emanating the reflected solar energy.

I called on my old trusted friend alum, exploiting its sizing quality.
 
I first painted the lit areas of the fern with a saturated solution of alum and allow that to dry completely.  This process helped to protect my fern from future staining by ink, as long as the ink was kept light.  In other words, if I could paint  in the surrounding spaces judiciously, I could stay away from the brushstrokes laid down with alum.  This is sort of similar to using masking fluid in watercolor painting,   Masking fluid could not be used in conjunction with Xuan because the paper is so fragile,  Imagine using masking fluid on toilet paper!  I would not be able to erase or peel off the dried mask.

Because the alum could not shield ink completely, I chose to go over my brushstroke with titanium white or white gouache again.  So why did I not just do the gouache in the first place?  That would save time and effort.

By adding a real opaque layer on top a semi translucent layer of alum, I was having 2 overlapping white ( or void ) layers, slightly juxtaposed, creating body and thickness.

I had to insert a colored under-pad to see my white brushstrokes, since the white wool pad that I normally used did not help to create a contrast.

I then painted in some of my background firs.  Here I diluted my ink with alum solution.  The purpose was to laid down tracks that were semi impermeable to subsequent brushstrokes, such that it could be seen as vague and solid at the same time.  I was concerned that any future staining, washing of the background could render these stands into oblivion; into an abyss of darkness.  I wanted the outlines to be discernible at the very least.  I wanted to create an air where one senses the presence of the trees, but is not aware of them as individuals.  Also I was hoping for some of the alum would migrate to the edge of the brushstroke before drying, thus forming a thin clear margin, representing the lit edges of the trunks.  Hopefully that would happen serendipitously.