Presenting: Emote

Now that the painting is finished, it's time to present it properly.  I'm going to facilitate that by using my homegrown Sulio Xuan Ban method.  This is the process where I affix my Xuan onto a piece of clear plastic or acrylic board, such that the finished product presents itself like a float when displayed on a wall.  This method of mounting also lends itself to special lighting effects, which I will delve into at the end of this blog.

Traditional Chinese brush paintings on Xuan is mounted on another backing piece of Xuan, to give it rigidity and proper white balance.  For my process of mounting on clear acrylic board this backing piece is mounted on the back of the board.  I basically trim out a piece of blank Xuan using the same dimensions as the painting, and mark the position on the protective sheathing of the acrylic board.
The fixative is an iron-on silicone sheet made for dry mounting.

the silicone sheet is trimmed to the same exact dimension as the backing Xuan

the backing on the silicone sheet is peeled off after initial ironing

Breaking up trapped air bubbles using a pin or thumb tack.  This is a critical step because these air pockets prevent proper adhesion of the silicone to the acrylic board.  If this is not done properly, then whatever we try to fix on top of the silicone will show air pockets too.

The blank sheet of Xuan is ironed on after mitigating all the bubbles

Once the backing Xuan is in place, I flipped the acrylic board over and repeat the same process with the actual painting on the top side, using the position of the backing as my guide for proper placement of the painting

The ironing process with the painting has to be slow and methodical, taking care to spread and iron out the creases.

When additional air pockets are encountered, break them with a pin and pass the iron over the area again.

I decided to be a little less meticulous with ironing the petals.  I found the little imperfections described their textures rather well.  I thus left minute creases and folds at strategic locations on the leaves and flower petals.

The finished sandwich of painting-acrylic board-backing is ready to be inserted into the custom frame that I built for this painting

The finished product as it hangs on the wall

I am quite partial to the effect of the clear border around the painting itself.  It is much less confining than a traditional frame, and yet looks finished and expensive.  It is a lot of additional work but at the end of the day I'm quite happy with it.

I found a painting of a rose I did some 15 years ago and it is interesting to look at it now and reminisce a little.  I think I have matured.

I mentioned at the beginning that my Sulio Xuan Ban set up lends itself quite nicely to special lighting effects.  Here is an example of placing a light source behind the painting.  I am of course exploiting the translucent property of the Xuan.   This could be placed on an occasional table with a mood light behind it.  I can visualize the drama it could create in a study or a foyer.

Emote, cont'd

Having increased the dark tone on the small, ancillary rose I proceeded to add more light values to the main rose.  My objective was to manufacture a certain degree of realism on this two dimensional medium.  Again judicious use of ink was the mantra.

I also refined and vine and bud on the bottom of the painting.

As I had mentioned, I was caught up a bid with the venerated traditions of either Gongbi or Xieyi styles of rendering until I decided to say "screw that";  but I still need some credible and efficacious
way of defining forms and details.  After much trepidation I settled on the principle of contrasts.  I used black or no lines at all to define light areas.   I traced thin black outlines amongst the white petals so one could tell them apart, with the help of light shading of course.  These black lines would be written using center tip,  transitioned to side tip when I needed to add thickness to the line, as when I was trying to depict the edge of a petal.. I used a thin sliver of void to define a dark form against  a dark background.   Thus when I was adding to the dark values of the backdrop I took special care to allow unpainted borders to form around the leaves.

The effect was actually quite stunning.  I could really grasp the high contrast effect I was aiming for.
Xuan being an absorbent piece of paper could really play havoc with a wet brush.  To minimize any unwanted bleeding out of my brush strokes I drafted my hair dryer blower into service.  The trick was to blow dry my brushstrokes before they had the time to bleed and migrate.  For the most part I was able to preserve that pristine little white lines around the dark leaves and stems.

Armed with this new narcissistic excitement I worked on the dark leaves some more to give them more structure and detail

I had thought about stopping right here.  But then I thought the two tones of black in the backdrop was too exaggerated so I decided for a smoother transition.

There was this one petal in the flower and its profile was standing straight up, thus presenting itself as a thin white line.  Visually speaking it created quite a challenge to give it a body.  I tried to create an interesting black line with varying thickness to describe the undulation but needed to add to its white value.  How to make a void more "white" was my dilemma.  The easiest way would be to paint those areas with either titanium white or white gouache but that would totally destroy that je ne sais quoi quality of a translucent Xuan.  Perhaps I could illustrate my case as when we could see internal organs on a small guppy fry or a small shrimp; it's a delicate sight to behold.  That same sight gave me the idea of painting the white gouache on the back side of the translucent Xuan.  Now that area appeared "whiter" when viewed from the top side, and yet showed no trace of pigments on the paper.  Unadulterated innocence!

                                                     viewed from the back side of the paper

Stamping my seals presented a problem since the backdrop is deep black.  I cheated by stamping the normal way, then selectively painted in the seal with vermilion and titanium white for lettering.  I smudged up the chops ever so slightly to give them that weathered look.  It added character ( pun ).

Finally the finished piece

Yes, I quite like it;  especially when viewed from a distance under illuimnation.   I really enjoyed the treatment of the white edges, as if the plant was back lit.    It does have that pop without being harsh.  It does impart a special feeling, sentiment;  to me anyways.

I am emoting.

Emote

I was at the mercy of a pair of crutches for a little while because I was on a ladder trying to lop off  tree branches with my power saw, and somehow gravity got a hold of me.  I was knowingly being  callous with myself.  I was in over my head.

Between feeling stupid about my insolence and the pain of my tibiotalar ligaments, I was conjuring up this image of a painting of a flower.  A large, specimen like presentation of a flower.

I wanted the painting to be of high contrast, sort of making a in-your-face statement; and yet not harsh to look at.  I was vacillating between a peony or a rose.  I settled for the rose because it has fewer petals ( thus less work? ) and it is universally accepted as the symbol of love and gratitude.

Should I employ the Gongbi style where everything is outlined and scribed or the Xieyi style, where brushstrokes define form and space?  Since my vision was to create a high contrast painting with ink, then the petals would have to assume a rather dark value to relieve from the white paper.  A dark rose somehow would not seem appealing.  Keeping the background very dark could certainly make the rose stand out, but that meant the petals have to be mostly white ( or mostly void spaces ).   It would thus be difficult to delineate the individual petals.  I could use titanium white or white gouache to paint the petals, but then I would lose the ambience of the translucent voids imparted by the Xuan.
Thus the Gongbi method seemed inevitable; or so I thought.

I was still living in my rigid cell of definitions of Gongbi and Xieyi and Chinese Brush and whatever that I lost sight of the main reason for painting;  revealing, expressing.  Those shackles had to go.

Thank god for the World Cup. It kept my mind occupied, although the notion of high contrast rose painting kept churning away in my subconscious.

Then came the news of the miracle rescue of the Thai youth football team from the cave.  The broadcast media was filled with breaking news reports.  One of the anchor woman from the peacock network unfortunately showed how little she really cared, or how she pretended to care.  It had been widely known and heart gripping for so many days, that 12 young boys and their adult coach was trapped.  The British diver who discovered them and asked how many were in the cave, upon hearing the answer, he said " Thirteen?  Brilliant!"  Yet this anchor woman while showcasing her talent on another talk show in a July 11 broadcast,  had to chime in with her own remarks.  She kept referring to 13 little boys, 13 little souls.   And when empathizing with the news of the Thai Navy Seal who lost his life during this ordeal, this anchor woman said that navy seal lost his life to save 14 people.

Really?  While the whole world was rejoicing that 13 lives were saved and this host of a national syndicated TV station couldn't even get the numbers right as to how many people were trapped in the cave?  Now that's cold, and pretentious.  How could she be so detached from one of the biggest news story that every TV station was reporting on? Was she just reading the news and not felt the gravity of all the emotions involved?   Did she not care?  Was she just a TV personality; window dressing?  Surely this could not have been a brain fart.  She cared more about which way to turn to the camera to show off her best side rather than to the humdrum details of the news that she was reporting.  Or could it be that this happened not in a Western civilization, and a world thousands of miles away from her.?

 I almost wanted to send that TV station a comment about this faux pas.   In my anguish, I hobbled to my painting table and started my rose painting; the one that had been gestating for a little while.

I was emoting!   I was feeling a different kind of pain.   I needed this little spark to set me off.

I wanted to keep my background black,  that meant white petals.  Keeping in mind the necessity of contrast, I used very light ink to brush in the petals.  Not all of them, but the strategic ones that I thought was vital in giving structure to the flower.

The composition of the painting would have the subject assuming a diagonal attitude, with the white rose as the focal point.  Borrowing the theory of Ying and Yang,  solid vs vague, dense vs sparse etc, the meat of the painting is in the upper half, thus the lower half is the meek.  To add interest to the apparent austerity here, I painted in nondescript bud and vines as garnishing.  I painted them as voids to contrast with the background.

I debated on whether to finish the black background first or to paint the flower and leaves first.  My initial impulse was to paint the background first.  I was rushing to be immersed in the high contrast environment.  I was seeking instant gratification.  But then the left hemisphere of my brain took over and advised me not to.  The all black backdrop could lure me into being heavy handed with my dark values on the rose petals, as if to compete with the blackness.

I started to work on the leaves and other parts of the plant,  all the while reminding myself to be patient and discret and that the flower will pop once the background is filled in.

I left myself with a lot of wiggle room.  My values were quite tentative, heavy on the light side.  I could always make something darker, but not the other way around.  After the rough sketch, I decided to fill in the background.

The saturation faded quite a bid after the ink dried.  It required a lot of trial and error to accumulate the knowledge of how to gauge or anticipate the tone after drying.

I knew I would eventually increase the saturation of the black, for now I would work on the smaller rose on top.  This rose needed to assume a rather dark value.  This rose was cast the role of  subordinate to the bigger rose.  It needed to stay in the backdrop.

.....to be continued.........

A Quorum

Having enjoyed painting my goose amongst water grass, I thought of another painting that I could toy with.  I suppose I am blessed enough to reside in an area where I have ample opportunities to interact with Canada geese, to the extent that some of them would peck on the door to beg for food.  At times there are 4 different families with their offspring borrowing my backyard as their playground.  They are my endearing painting inspirations.

Other members of my family unfortunately do not share my fondness for these birds.  All they can relate to is the odious landmines of geese droppings on the lawn.  I consider them natural fertilizers, and I have yet to catch salmonella.

What I see is a gathering of geese at some wetland.  Bodies of water of varying depths flooding what used to be plowed fields; punctuated by short rows of grass, weed and what not.  Ambiguous silhouettes of hay and implements and dilapidated outhouses dot the frame. Birds are wading on their short stubby legs, swimming, fighting, bathing, less than mellifluous squawking,  veiled by the muslin of saturated water vapor, and the intense amber light of the setting sun, with ribbons of glistening reflections as garnish.  And yes, the hard-to-miss white flickers on their chins and tails as they carry on with their activities.

Such is the setting.

while the paper is still moist I wrote in portions of the trees, such that portions of the tree is visible through the mist

Mother's Day Serendipity

I was invited to do a Chinese Brush demo at a local attraction.  This venue boasts of an authentic Suzhou classical garden and is a destination for a lot of out-of-towners.

Typically I would show people how to hold a brush and why we hold our brush this way.   It's all about the tip and the edge.  I would try to mix good background information with real applications, avoiding topics that are too esoteric.  Don't want my audience to be bored.  My years as a retail pharmacist has honed my ability to discern if a person is drawn in by my topic or not.

I had chosen the topic of landscape painting for this occasion.  I wanted to present to the general public what are some of the attributes of this genre of work.  I used the Chinese Mustard Seed Garden as my reference, since I had to study this text book.  I went through the illustrated examples of composition, as far as grouping rocks, trees, mixed foliage, trees etc and addressed the required proficiency in Gou, Chuen, Ts'a, Ren and Dien.  I also brought prints from painters of the Song dynasty to compare and contrast with the works of a contemporary Zhang Daqian . Obviously not everybody was interested in the fundamentals, and I could tell from their body language.  Interestingly there were a few scholars in the crowd.  I surmised by the questions they asked, and the time and attention they spent at my table.

The day of my demo happened to fall on Mother's Day.  It was especially difficult for moms ( or any parent for that matter ) to spend time exploring a topic when they have their genetic copies tugging at their hems all the time.  I would suggest to you that most of the moms came to the garden as something special to do , on a day that honored them, and not because they were interested in Chinese brush painting.  To honor all the moms in my audience, I threw in a few surprises of attempting to paint a rose, under the pretense of demonstrating what a Chinese brush could do if we can harness its nib to the fullest extent.

Most of the time when I digressed to painting roses, it was because I was trying to salvage interest in my spiel;  (I mean there were times that I really wanted to do something nice for the moms) thus I had to paint fast.  Kids don't have patience.   In any case, quite a few moms received a extemporaneously painted rose as a memento for their visit on Mother's Day.

I was pleasantly surprised that some of these attempts turned out to be nice.  The hastily painted roses were spontaneous, lively, and did not seem rote.  I call that Mother's Day Serendipity.

A Minor Tweak To My Goose

Boy that title sounded a little off color.  Now that I have your attention, I was referring to the slight change I made to the geese painting.

I know I was worried that I sucked the life out of my painting by making the geese too real, yet I just couldn't resist my innate urge to make something life like.  Call that platitude or whatever, that has been the bane of my endeavors in painting.

I decided to punch it up a bit by altering the contrast and definition of my geese feathers.  I got that idea by playing with the "clarity" attribute in Windows photo editing app.

I thought of a way of re-defining the feathers on my goose.  I used a small Chinese brush and loaded it with the tea/ink mixed color.  Onto the surface of this loaded brush, I piled on some white gouache with another brush.  Imagine a Klondike Ice Cream Bar, where the ice cream is coated with a thin layer of chocolate?  This is the effect I was looking for; except tn my case, the brown color is on the inside, and the shell is white.

With the brush so loaded, I pressed firmly using the side-tip technique on to my goose.  Thus each brown dab would be surrounded by an outline of white.  By experimenting with the placement of such dabs, I was giving my feathers more realism; creating the pretense of blades of feathers. 

At the same time I selectively applied pure white gouache to certain white areas, to accentuate the original white gradient.

Well that was fun for an afternoon.

Canada Geese

I did a painting of water grass and reeds in a pond, playing with lines and dots ( my blog on Lines, March 4, 2017 ) and it is time to take advantage of this backdrop.

What spurred this impetus on was the fact that I was  tired of looking at a canvas frame that I made a few years back.  This frame has the 2:1 aspect ratio, one that approximates the native ratio for traditional Xuan stock.  In a daring move, I decided to mount my pond backdrop on my canvas first before I added to the painting.  My reeds in a pond painting did not subscribe to the 2:1 aspect ratio, but I forged ahead anyways.  I was not holding any prisoners.

Turned out to be okay.  I flipped it upside down and see if that would work

The upside down version did not work.  I thought the lines were generic and  non-descript enough that I might be able to pull the switch off but I was wrong.

Once the mounting was dried I could see that my mounting was not quite up to snuff this time; there were a lot of creases and wrinkles.   I had fortuitously picked a piece of blobs and dots and lines, so my mounting inadequacy blended in unobtrusively.

I thought about painting in some water lilies but I didn't think the petals would blend in with the reeds.  Frogs and fish were not "poetic" enough.  How about something colorful like a Mandarin duck?

It is cute, bright and placates well potentially with the unsuspecting audience since it fits the stereotype.  Perhaps I am over-thinking it but I am desperately determined to circumvent this platitude.  Besides I am really not familiar with Mandarin ducks and I rather not paint from pictures of them.

I decided on painting something I know intimately, Canada Geese.  Their white chin-band on a black neck and head fits the over-all monochromatic and graphic nuance of the pond painting.

Now that I know what to paint, how to paint the geese became a problem.  Normally I would be painting on unmounted Xuan and the paper would offer me its water and color absorbency parameters in full.   Once my pond back-drop painting is mounted however,  the paper behaves very differently because of the starch backing.  Additionally, I don't want to wet the painting too much if I could help it, for fear of disturbing the starched sheets.  Wetting will cause separation and new wrinkles on the mounted piece.

I needed to use as dry a brush as possible and minimize going over and repeating my brushstrokes.  I decided to rough-in the birds to position them more succinctly, in my mind at least.

Employing a rather dry brush, I proceeded to write in the neck and the beak; trying to be loose and precise at the same time.

Adding in the white chest and underbelly seemed to affirm the presence of the geese.

Tea color fortified with ink was used to paint the body.

I was tempted to leave the painting just like that.  It had a sort of simplistic innocence to it.  But my pragmatic right brain told me that it looked unfinished.  I ruminated on that for a day or two and decided to continue adding to it.  Perhaps I would regret my judgment.

So I decided to change a completely glassy pond to one with just a few ripples.

Then it occurred to me that the bright area under the body goes against the logic that this is where the shadow or reflection should go and therefore should be darker.  And also, the body looked much bigger from a distance because the light area was perceived to be part of the body.

I picked up my brush and obsequiously put in a darker value, hinting a reflection or shadow of sorts.

I just hope that I didn't suck the life out of this painting by rendering it too "real".  I was once told that the two dimensional feel of Chinese brush painting is what make the art form impressionistic.  I was told to dispense with  minute and trivial details of shadows and reflections and what not.  Obviously I am a product of my environment and a lot of western influences show up in my works.  I am having a hard enough time debating my allegiance to the traditional or a more contemporary expression; I just pray that I am not obfuscating my own perceptions.