Freeze the balls off brass monkey

Come off it!  I am not referring to the euphemistic colloquial description of testicles.  Or am I ?

I am just recounting my own experience with words and language.  As a non-native English speaker I often wonder where some English words or phrases come from.  In fact I was taking those words literally for quite a while because it was embarrassing to ask for its true meaning, and that many are as clueless as I am, even for native English speakers.

So with the advent of the web, I can do a lot of searching on my own, its authenticity and correctness notwithstanding.  At least it is  a starting point.  Now I know the phrase probably refers to the iron cannonballs falling off a brass tray which holds them.  Freezing and unfreezing supposedly cause the cannonballs to contract and shift, thus the stack collapses off the brass tray.  However, even this explanation is refuted by some.

Recently I had an experience with a nationally televised program which title borrows from Confucius and food.  The show tries to explore the intricacies of Chinese cuisines and in a tongue in cheek way tries to identify the origin of different foods by asking questions of the competing cultures; allowing them to assert dips on the origin of that food.  An example is whether cured ham, cured meat, pizza etc. originated from China.  You get the picture.  The host chef would visit chefs from different countries to get their opinion, and sometimes the show would even seek archaeological documentation and historians to support the claim.  We all know that this is not going to settle anything, but the production delves into a wide aspect of food related topics and culture and practices and the spin is fun and educational and certainly entertaining.

In episode #203 the host chef summoned a lot of effort to explain to the audience that the Chinese word 食 (eat) is made up of 人 (man) and 良 (good) by writing the Chinese character out on a chalkboard.  The assertion was that the Chinese word "eat" means it is good for a person (to eat).  I suppose such gallant and theatrical effort augments the sincerity and the authenticity of the explanation.

Except that I found the explanation to be contrived. Novel, perhaps.

As a native Chinese speaker I had taken the word for granted and never gave it any second thoughts.  Fueled by my questioning mind I explored the etymology of the word.  I wished I had my 辭源 ( a Chinese dictionary compendium of meaning, application and etymology of Chinese words) with me, but failing that I resorted to Baidu.

In this Chinese version of web encyclopedia, it stated that 良 actually means  quite a few things; "nice", "quite", "docile", "eternal", "virtuous" are some of the choices. Thus the word 食 (eat)  which combines "man" and "nice" could be construed to mean " to eat is good for a person", as the program suggested.

In the Chinese dictionary 辭海, the word 食 is treated as a radicle from which other words are built upon and not as separate radicles of  "man " and "nice".  In other words, Chinese language and writing treats 食 as a single word, and not divided into two separate components as asserted by the food show program.  Allow me to draw a parallel with English words: alcoholic means containing alcohol, acidic means sour.  These are examples of separating a word into 2 components to get the gist of word.  The same rule however does not apply to the word "antic".  

Actually the word 食 has nothing to do with either "man" or "good" or "nice"  The word 食 is a transformation from ancient pictography which painted a picture of food with a cover on it.

The left symbol is the original oracle bones script version, depicting a lid on edibles; and the word on the right is the modern day version.

I also consulted a Chinese site Guoxuedashi (國學大師) and it again points to the hieroglyphic script that shows a roof cover or lid or top, with the middle part resembling the vessel that holds food and the bottom part depicting a base that supports the vessel and the lid.  For the viewers who read Chinese, here is the excerpt from the site

I am attaching a picture of one such item (perhaps ?) from my fireplace mantel to show the lid and the container with base.

Thank you to the programming for leading me down the rabbit hole to explore my own culture.

I contacted the program to share with them my findings.  Their explanation is that Chinese characters can be analyzed at multiple levels, and that they had consulted with people who are Chinese born and educated in Chinese cuisines.  Now the first part of the sentence is correct but the second part is as valid as asking an avid British air traveler about the history of their Comet Airliner.  Better yet, what is the meaning of the archaic word Husbandman?  Any guesses as to how many native English speaker know the meaning of that word (Answer: farmer). I am a native born Chinese for more years than I care to elaborate, and yet I didn't know the true derivation of the word 食.  So the program producer pitted one native Chinese against another.  I posed the same question to some of my ethnic Chinese friends, and none of them could give me the correct answer.  We, as native Chinese, have taken our own writing for granted.  Equating a native Chinese as the de facto authority in Chinese word etymology is a slippery slope.  I understand that the prime objective of the food show is perhaps entertainment and not accuracy.  As they put it, that is subject to interpretation. Perhaps they have bit off more than they could chew. 

Picture me trying to elucidate "freeze the balls off brass monkey" by placing a monkey made of brass on a table and try to freeze its balls off?  Pretty absurd, isn't it?

Our local culture venue clearly had the same assumption by inviting Chinese calligrapher and painter to do demonstration of the brush art.  As these artists gyrated their brushes, slanting the shafts of their instruments into a dance, the audience, and the venue deemed beautiful and credible art was made.  The audience was given an opportunity to learn about the art of Chinese calligraphy and painting.  That was the intention.

This is an example of the calligraphy of the day

Notice the lack of definition in the turns in the blue circle.  This is due to failure to control the down force, forcing the hairs of the brush to work beyond their capability.  The heavy line preceding the blue circle is an indication of this impending doom.

Contrast that with this example

notice how all the twists and turns are resolute and decisive.  The energy of the brushstroke does not diminish throughout the writing.  The calligrapher had utmost control of the writing instrument.

The red circle again signifies a heavy smudge resulting from a failure to lift the brush.  As if to extinguish a cigarette.   In other words, lack of control of the brush.

Now look at an example of a proper brushstroke

notice in the first character within the blue circle, the lift to a point immediately preceding the dot  and also notice the dagger like down stroke from the second character.  And while you are at it, appreciate the twists and turns in the brushstrokes of this calligraphy piece. They are resolute and carry the energy through the strokes.

The green circle is a most abhorrent example. When it comes to the extended brushstroke, the tip of the brush must absolutely be smack in the center and the energy of stroke must be demonstrated as relentless. The stroke should feel and look like a dagger or a lightning rod, ready to discharge.  The calligrapher that day put down a dead snake with severed vertebrates and skin peeling off (my graphic animation is not meant to be derisive but to make a point).  It is obvious that instead of putting the tip of the brush right down the middle, he instead placed it on the left.  This is the same as driving a car with incorrect toe-in or toe-out angles.... your front tire is worn unevenly on the sides.  Then he decided to dress up the writing by making the line longer and pressed down again.  Unfortunately he never had the correct placement of the tip to begin with, so now the belly of the brush sat down and formed the triangular sliver hanging by a thread.

This is how it should be done

Thus the calligrapher of the day was not paying attention to the tip of the brush and that is the basis of Chinese brush calligraphy.  The tip to Chinese calligraphy is to know your tip.  He was clearly outside of his tessitura, to quote a vocal term.

When it came to painting demonstration, another artist presented a example of his work to validate his skill in brush painting

and then proceeded to give the audience something like this during the demonstration:

It simply did not compute.  Where did he learn to paint a highway lane dividing line as contour line of a mountain.  How did the brushstrokes from his sample work deteriorated into pencil drawing?

What I am alluding to here are examples of the failure of learning by rote.  We as students learn and study by emulating, copying works from classical masters.  This is true for calligraphy students and painting students alike.  Except that a lot of us, myself included, fail to internalize the fundamentals of the craft.  Thus we are forever in a state of emulating, stifling any sense of originality.  The result is when the source material, the Tie for example in calligraphy, is taken away, we are left with striking an awkward pose, like an amateur model.

Incidentally, Chinese seldom refer to brushstroke as a brushstroke per se.  We use the word 筆觸 (brush contact, brush touch) to denote brushstroke.  Thus more emphasis is placed on the contact patch than the simple act of motion of the brush.  There is a subtle yet critical difference in the interpretation of the brush movements.

It is not my intention to be especially harsh or nitpicking with these artists.  It is perhaps my fervent desire to separate fact from fiction; fad from substance.  Chinese brush art is a somewhat arcane form of art and some of the aesthetic cues are not evident to the casual onlooker.  The fact that some native Chinese can write something with a brush doesn't automatically qualify him as a Chinese calligrapher or a painter.  For that matter, anybody who wields a Chinese brush.  By knowingly maintaining my silence and not pointing out the proper yardstick to use  I would be contributing to the ignorance and the platitude.  To me, Chinese brush art appreciation and wine drinking, especially the red variety, share some similarities.  A wine consumer does not necessarily have to know the science of tannins, but one should be able to at least tell the difference that tannins contribute to the brew.  The average red wine drinker might not be able to identify a Shiraz from a Malbec, but should be at the very minimum able to taste the difference.  I am just trying my best to show the tannins in Chinese brush works.

Speaking of being esoteric, I retrieved a painting from my friend's garbage can.  It was discarded because my friend thought the painting was a failure, obviously.

I looked at the painting and was amazed at the quality of the brushstrokes.  To me, that was a prime example of how to "write" a painting.  I was in fact, jealous.

It reminded me of a past encounter, the Iquazu Falls, only more poetic

One has to appreciate all the discrete brushstrokes; the way the thundering water is depicted:

No smudging, not much of a wash.  Absolutely not a fill in the space with color type of "painting".
Even the simple birds are written strokes and not painted strokes.  As if a word is being written.

and be engulfed by the turbulent torrent.

So I convinced my friend to reconsider.

She did.

Incidentally the only alteration she did to the piece after reviving it from the garbage can was to add in the flock of birds to give the waterfalls some perspective.

The painting was entered in a local arts showcase competition but failed to jury in.

I know art appreciation is very subjective, but I also know that not all jurors here possess the education to properly appreciate Chinese brushwork.  I believe a lot of them are like the audience and the sponsors in the demonstration; skimming the surface and being ignorant of the tannins.  This is not a passive consolation or sour grapes.  It is just my perceived reality.

So my friend entered her painting at an international Chinese brush painting competition.  Second Place she was awarded.  Perhaps this is due to the nature of the competition, being limited to the genre of Chinese brush painting, instead of the local open call.  Nonetheless, justice and vindication at last.

Again, I am not trying to be a snob and be critical about the Foodie program or the local art scene that I described, not in a malicious way anyways.  I am trying to point out the less obvious and to address some of the misconceptions; about somethings that we often take for granted.

I am grateful that the Foodie program stirred me to find meaning in something as fundamental as 食.

I am grateful that the brass monkey is not a primate.

I am grateful that balls of brass monkey are not anatomical features.

Now I just need to investigate how cold the witch's tits are.

Wet Mounting

Having experimented with heat mounting with plastic food wrap and failed, I resolved to staying with the traditional wet mount.  The caveat being if I wanted the float effect, then I would go for my proprietary Suliao Xuan Ban method.

I have the "no roof" version of the Korean Maidens that needs mounting.

I had described my Xuliao Xuan Ban method in detail in past posts, so in the interest of allowing equal time, I would describe the process of wet mounting in this blog.

There are some basic tools needed for the wet mounting process, which is in itself quite esoteric, so bear with me.

We need

1. a clean and smooth surface sufficiently large enough for the painted work
2. a hard, dry surface for the mounted work to dry
3. 3 brushes: one for applying starch, one for initial pressing and a more robust one for final pressing
4. starch solution
5. stack of newspaper
6. spray bottle of water
7. clean rags
8. an underlayment paper, typically another piece of  Xaun
9. steady hands and patience

The starch solution can be prepared by mixing regular household all purpose starch in an aqueous solution of alum.  Sometimes a sprinkle of camphor powder is mixed in.   I still don't have a clear understanding of why the alum is needed.  I was told that it helps to ensure color-fasting of the painted work.  The camphor helps to ward off silverfish.  Use the camphor sparingly, as the fumes can be overpowering.  The starch and alum solution should be mixed thoroughly and all lumpiness are eliminated.  We don't want the initial suspension to be too diluted, as we need to add boiling water to this mixture to obtain the starch.

It is a common mistake to thicken this suspension by boiling over a stove, as in gravy making. This will result in too thick a product which is not suitable for mounting purpose.  The trick is to boil a kettle of water, and drizzle that into the starch suspension with constant stirring.  The end stage is revealed by a change of the appearance of the suspension.  It will take on a glistening, translucent look, with a consistency of skim milk.  If your finished product looks pasty, add more boiling water.  This thin starch can be stored in a refrigerator for quite a few months without losing any viability.  The stored suspension will separate.  Fret not, it works just fine by stirring and reconstituting.

I use a porcelain trough for my starch basin, the wide brush is for applying starch.
The red taped brush is for initial pressing, the bubble pack wrapped brush is for final hard pressing.

I used a large piece of Plexiglas (4 ft x 5 ft) as my work surface.  It was thoroughly cleaned with water and alcohol before use.

My Koren Maiden painting laid face-down on the Plexiglas ( notice the maidens are on the left now since we are looking at the backside). Now the entire painting was sprayed with clean water.  This was done to relax the fibers of the Xuan.

This is when patience is needed.  Typically huge bubbles would form and the painting would not be sitting flat on the Plexiglas.  Rather it would appear like a fresh piece of naan bread with the bubbles.
Our natural tendency would be to lift the wet painting and reposition it to assume a flat appearance.
Don't do that, unless of course you want to shred your painting.  The water added weight to the painting; along with the suction that was formed from the two wet surfaces sticking to each other created an ideal formula to form tears.

Wait this out.  As the painting slowly dried it regained its integrity while being relaxed at the same time.  Now we could tenderly lift and manipulate the moist painting to lay flatter on the Plexiglas.  It didn't need to be perfect, as the starch application would even things out.

The broad brush was primed with the starch solution and brushed onto the back of the painting.  Starting at the center of the painting and using firm but appropriate force spread the starch towards the edges and the corners.  Since the brush is made of firm bristles and the starch solution is wet and slimy, the brush actually glided on the backside of the painting with ease, all the while smoothing out and leveling any creases.  Stubborn creases could be eliminated by repeated wetting of more starch and passing over with the brush.

The repeated starch application and passing over the paper caused abrasion to the backside of the Xuan.  This was evidenced by the appearance of clumps of paper fibers.  No worries, these would blend nicely with the starch solution and would not be noticeable in the finished product.

In order to thoroughly apply starch to the backside of the painting, we were over brushing.  Before the next step in the wet mounting process could be done, we must rid any errant starch with a clean wet rag around the edges of the painting.  There shouldn't be any starch other than on the back of the painting.

Now we need to apply the underlayment paper.  The underlayment is typically another piece of Xuan which is similar to the one used for painting.  This piece need to have a border of about 3-4 inches around the painting to be mounted.  The underlayment is folded and creased along the short and long edges of the painting.  This is for the purpose of positioning the underlayment onto the painting.  Since the underlayment is larger than the painting itself, when applied over the back of the painting, we would be covering it in the blind.  Thus we needed some way to know exactly where the painting is.

Thus the folds represent the edges of the painting.  It would be relatively simple to line up the folded edges of the underlayment with the edges of the painting, which is on the Plexiglas, with starch applied to the backside.

Once the edges were lined up, we unfurl the underlayment onto the starched painting, with the help of the smaller red tape brush.  The brush is made of palm fiber bristles and is therefore stiff.  Using rapid up and down strokes the underlayment is brushed onto the starched painting.

The underlayment would begin to take on the starch from the backside of the painting.  It would look moist  and perhaps showing some minor raised ridges from the uneven wetting of the underlayment by the starch.

This is the time to pile on newspaper onto the underlayment.  I would use 3 to 4 layers of the newspaper.  The newspaper served to purpose of soaking up excess moisture, but mainly to protect the underlayment and the painting from the harsh pressing with the palm fiber brush.

I wrapped my brush with bubble wrap to help protect my fingers and my palm.  During the pressing process I would start from the center and press firmly outwards.  The purpose was to press the underlayment firmly onto the starched painting, forcing out any air bubbles and flattening any raised ridges.  The rough fibers could cause blisters to form on my palm and fingers if I didn't shield them properly.

The stiff palm fibers actually flattened out from the exertion of force

This is what a properly pressed and flattened underlayment looked like

So we now had a sandwich of underlayment and starch, with the painting on the bottom, facing down.  Hence it was critical that we wiped off any excess starch because we didn't want this sandwich to stick to the Plexiglas work surface.

Now we applied a judicious amount of starch along the edge of the underlayment, paying utmost attention to avoid the painting itself, which we could discern.

This is a graphic representation of what we had so far

Now lift this completed assembly and move it onto a dry, hard surface.  I used a half-door for my purpose.  So now we would be throwing the assembly right-side-up onto the door, with the starch on the bottom, along the edge of the underlayment.

We fixed the top edge onto the door first, tamping the edge down with the red-taped brush.

move the brush down along the surface of the painting and along the edges

The starch that was applied to the edges of the underlayment held the mounted work in place.  So now we had the painting with the right side out, starched onto a piece of underlayment, which again was starched along the edges and affixed to the door.

This assembly was left to dry.  The slower the drying process, the better would be the result.  The drying shrank the paper, and along with the starch rendered the painting flat and taut.

Remember your starched shirts?  Nice.

So this wet mounting process gave stiffness and provided white balance to the painting.

After complete drying of the assembly, the painting was harvested by lifting the underlayment off the door, or by cutting along the edges of the underlayment.  The oversized underlayment provides a nice place to apply mat tapes if one chooses to display the work with a matted border in a picture frame.

In my hast, or rather, lack of care, I eyeballed my folding positions on the underlayment.  The final result being the painting was not in the middle.  It tilted to the right.

Fortunately I had sufficient border left for the application of starch along tall he edge of the underlayment.  I lucked out.

After careful examination there was only one defect on my mounted painting.  I missed one of the creases and didn't brush it out so it was folding upon itself.  Fortunately the omission was minor and most people would not have noticed.

I have the examples of the wet mount and my dry mounted Suliao Xuan Ban for comparison.
The no-roof version is the wet mount and the roofed version is dry mount.

Mounting with plastic food wrap

Someone told me about using Saran Wrap as an adhesive for dry mounting a painting.  The information from this person was sketchy, definitely not first hand.

Obviously that triggered my curiosity.

Mounting is an integral part of the Chinese Brush painting.  The Xuan that we use is fragile and tissue like and it needs a backing for support and white balance.  Traditionally we use a starch solution for the wet mount and the steps are not too difficult, but esoteric none the less.  One of our tourist trap here would display work done on Xuan un-mounted.  The work is displayed in a transparent plastic photo holder the paper would never lay flat and becomes wavy.   I could think of two reasons why people don't mount their Xuan works.  I would like to think that lack of resource is one of them, and the other one could be unabridged ignorance, regrettably.  People are after the flavor, but not the substance.

These are examples of un-mounted works done on Xuan with all the waviness in its glory, and distracts from the works.  This illustrates the absolute necessity of mounting works done on Xuan before displaying them.

My painting of water was just floating around aimlessly so I decided to put it to good use.  I don't have any Saran Wrap at home, but I do have generic plastic food wrap at my disposal.  The way it was described to me was that under heat the plastic wrap would melt, thus binding the sheets of paper together.

Off with the experiment.

I laid a piece of blank Xuan on a flat surface, and covered it with my plastic food wrap.

I then laid my painting face-up onto the plastic wrap, sandwiching the wrap.

onto this sandwich I put a piece of paper to protect my painting and apply heat to this sandwich using my heating iron

Every so often I would lift the cover paper to see how my sandwich was doing.  I turned up my iron when nothing seemed to have happened and I started to not move the iron around so much as in ironing clothes.  I stationed the iron over an area and was counting to 10 before moving on.  When that failed to produce any tangible results, I turned up my iron even more and counted to 20 for each stay over an area.

That was brutal to my OCD.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight ............twenty!  One, two, three, four, five, six .........twenty!

In the meantime the miasma of heated plastic wrap permeated the room.  My dilemma was to apply sufficient heat to melt the plastic without incinerating my painting.   Should have measured my heart rate.  Another retching experience!

So the process seemed to have worked.  My short stack was intact!

Except for this corner, where it wasn't totally bound.  So I obliged with more heat.

After this sandwich cooled down, I tested its integrity by attempting to separate the layers.  Proof of the pudding is by eating it, right?

And the proof is

I could peel off the Xuan backing ( which is a heavier stock than the painting) with ease, except for a few spots where it actually stuck to the paper, as evidenced by the white tears.

While attempting to remove the plastic wrap from the back of my painting, I could see that the wrap had assumed a burnt color.

I attribute my failure to a couple of factors.

My iron might not have been hot enough, perhaps I was at the cusp of success as indicated by a few adhered spots.  I could have used a higher heat?,  Oh but that stench.

The other plausible reason is that I didn't use the proper brand of plastic wrap?  I know different brands of the wrap work differently for wrapping food, some better than others.  But I'm not going to find out.   Besides I am not sure about the health hazard of breathing in the fumes of melted plastic.

I'll just chalk this up as an interesting experiment.

Korean Maidens

Having seen the digitized roofing of my Hanbok painting, I decided to do something I rarely do.

To re-paint my painting.  This time with a roof.

For some reason I really resend having to do anything over again, not only paintings.  It is as if I was giving birth to something, whatever comes out is whatever I'll get.  When I work on a project, I seem to give it all I have at the moment, albeit that it might not be enough.  Perhaps I get bored rather easily, and can't bear to retrace my steps.   I'll have to live with the finished product, regardless of whether it's a success or failure.  Such is the bane of my life.

In order to re-invent this painting so that it will be fresh for me, I decided to start off with the background first.  Which means I need to reserve the spaces for my protagonists.

I suppose in oil or drawing, one just sketch out the space and leave the designated area untouched.  In watercolor I can use masking fluid, which is like a rubber cement and one could just paint over it. Unfortunately the Xuan that I use is like a glorified tissue and it cannot withstand the erasing, peeling of the dried film.  I need to devise a way to save my voids.

So I was invigorated.  I found something to tackle.  I was no longer bored.

I sketched out the intended silhouette of my protagonists on paper.  One of the changes I wanted to make in this new attempt was to align the clothing to the more authentic style of hanbok;  making the "A"  frame of the chima more Korean, and less of a skirt of the western flavor.  My first attempt at sketching out the figure had all the proportions wrong.  The body was too short.   Perhaps I was reading the chima still at the waist level rather than at the bust level.  I had to resort to the proportion of the body being approximately 7 and a half times the height of the head to double check myself.  As you can see I ran out of paper.

I drew two silhouettes facing each other and cut them out such that I could stage them the way I wanted.

I then positioned them on my Xuan

In essence I was hoping that the paper cut-outs would function as my masking fluid.  I could paint over them without violating the allotted space for my maidens.

I started with my support columns, knowing that a few of them juxtaposed with my maidens.  These are the skeletons on which the flesh of the painting attach to.

I removed the cut-outs after the background architecture was finished.  I was left with a void space in the shape of the silhouettes I fashioned.

The idea worked.  I was definitely not bored.

So I proceeded to work on the hair and the bows and ribbons on the hair.

I finished dressing one girl, and decided to take a rest.  I knew better to be headlong in the painting process.  There need to be a fine balance between the creative drive and the calm examination.  I had revealed my Id, now I wanted to give Ego a chance.

The critique I gave myself was that the girl looked too stiff.  By that I meant the brushstroke, or rather the absence of brushstroke.  The girl figure had a paint-by-number look to it.  The space was filled in with color and not brushed in, giving it a rather uninteresting feel.  Perhaps the fact that I was painting into a prescribed void left by my paper cut-out had something to do with it.  Subconsciously I was following a outline, rather than a form.  I became rather restricted.

Having diagnosed my own problem, I needed to paint the other girl with a more expressive brushstroke.  That was the note I handed myself.

I also decided on assigning a more "traditional" color to her costume, at least the stereotype that was perpetuated to me.  Again I am not trying to slight another culture by my own ignorance, I am just saying it.

I am hoping that you all agree with me that there was a lot more energy in the brushstroke for the girl on the right.  Chinese brush is such an unforgiving tool.  It can be so uncompromising, especially in exposing weaknesses.

By the time I painted in the shadows, the feet from the girl on the left disappeared.  I did not handle to dark tones well on this part.

Perhaps I was being pedantic but it bothered me to no end that I had lost her feet.  I would bet that nobody else but me would miss them feet.  I just couldn't get over it.  So I decided to put in light dabs of titanium white mixed with ink and gave a hint of something being present beneath the skirt.  

I know.  I am hopeless.