When Is It Too Much Information

The classical Chinese garden in town asked for permission to use my rams painting for promotional purpose.  Obviously that was a feather in my hat, a shot in my arm.

I had done Chinese Brush demonstration for them in the past, so I dug up some of the drafts I did then.  The pavilion always interests me, so I shall do another one.

I really went to town with this one.

I was painting in a lot of details  Defined boulders at the pond's edge, well dressed Taihu stone, trees, shrubs, you name it.

I gave the darkest ink tone to the my main character, the pavilion.  The leaves that grew over the pavilion tiles and the lighter ink tone tiles in the back helped to describe distance.  I even employed a photography trick by painting in dabs of diffused ink on the right, not only to frame the scene but the out-of-focus look pushed the painting further back.

I tried to circumvent the busy content by employing a very simple color scheme, and I was selective in which objects to color.  All the while looking for complement and contrast.

At this point the painting still had that raw appearance and was begging for a finishing touch.
I thus painted in the reflections and shaded in the covered corridors in the background.

It is interesting to compare this work with my previous attempts.

My first attempt turned out to be the most vivacious, I mused.   I was driven by a notion and I tried to bring it out with my brush.  It had that unadulterated innocence. Simple brushstrokes described the pavilion roof ribs, tiles, boulders, Taihu stone etc.  The audience was given a lot of freedom to conjure up whatever they wanted to see or feel.

My second trial had a lot more information.  The roof tiles were painted in. There were a lot more lines to depict the boulders, the Taihu stone and I was even trying to line the leak window in the covered breezeway!   Instead of nurturing a notion, I was trying to reinvent a painting.

My urge to give full accounting of the scene drowned me out.  I wandered further away from what inspired me in the first place and got caught up by the nitty-gritty.  I seem to recall reading somewhere that Chinese Brush is sparse in details, lines and outlines are used to shape images with little shading or reference to light values.

Whereas I am not necessary pedantic with regards to the "doctrines" of Chinese Brush; whereas I am totalling accepting the Western influence and believe in the evolution of the Chinese Brush art form in today's environment, I sometime wonder if I drank the kool aid.

 Perhaps I paid too much attention to the photograph that I took of this place.  Don't blame the kool aid.

Banal not; Unremarkable, yes.

I had a chance to submit my Banal Fail  piece for critique by an art professor.  I was surprised by the comments.

As I mentioned I was particularly fond of the way I was able to "stop" the bleeding of color in its track.  I allowed the bleeding to form streaks on this semi-sized Xuan and before the streaks could homogenize I used a hair blow-dryer to dry them.  To me it was like going back to the dark-room days when one pulls the print from the developer tray into the acetic acid stop bath.

 

I thought I was so resourceful.

I fretted over whether to paint birds into this landscape.  When I gave in and painted in the migrating geese I thought it was cliche.

It turned out that the professor did not like my treatment of the streaks at all.  "Contrived" was the comment.  I was feverishly defending myself.  I was trying to hint the presence of trees without making them too real. 

I  urged to express the presence without making it so mechanical.  The bleeding streaks intimated themselves as an afterthought, as evidenced by the layering, rather than as a natural occurrence.  The birds fit in fine and were not ostentatious in this particular case. That was the professor's adjudication.

I wanted to say one man's meat is another man's poison but then something else hit me.   I was too immersed in the technical trickery that I forgot about the overall ambiance of the painting..  What I deemed a monument became a boulder.

As a painting, it was unremarkable.  As an etude, why not.  I still like it.

Works By High School Students

The little jaunt to a local high school to teach students how to paint with a Chinese brush was a huge success.

The kids were Juniors enrolled in the Mandarin class at this high school.  We had about 15 participants and most of them had not held a Chinese brush before.  I showed them the steps in painting a ram, as detailed in my last blog "Rehearsal" and here are the results. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The paintings were done on red construction paper for 2 reasons. 

 

Xuan might cause the ink to bleed too much, especially for a novice and construction paper should fare better in this regard.  The other reason, a major reason, is that the white native color of Xuan is to be avoided when painting New Year's decoration.    White is associated with funerals and only red should be used in joyous festivities.  The distinction here is that we were embarking on making New Year's charms rather than pursuing a piece of artwork per se.

 

Interesting to note that the student of the first painting was distraught that the ink bled too much and the eyes were obscured.  So I pointed out to him that in the Xieyi style of brush painting that might not be a bad thing.  If anything, the bleeding was more expressive, and allowed the audience to form their own interpretation of the eye orbits.

 

Also of interest is the second to last painting, where the student pinned a foot long tail to the ram.  That anatomical feature is incorrect and was not present in my demo piece.  This illustrates an interesting dilemma.  Should we paint what we imagined, or paint what we see.  In her case, she subscribed to the notion that animals should have a tail.

 

Finally the last image was by a "perfectionist".  When the other students had finished painting and was attempting calligraphy, she was still trying her fourth or fifth attempt, frustrated.  I showed her how to slant  the brush down such that she could use the belly and the tip to effect a shape, rather than just using the tip alone to form her painting.  She was able to put that into practice as evidenced by the ear.  Her lines showed good modulation too.

 

It definitely was a satisfying experience for me.  My only regret was I did not take pictures of all the works.  I lost track of which works I had documented.

 





 

 

 

 

 

Happy New Year, Year of the Ram

                                                                   
                                                                       Happy New Year
                                                                        
                                                                        Year of the Ram



                                             

Rehearsal

It's almost Chinese New Year.  February 19 is just around the corner.

I painted a horse last year to welcome the year of the horse.  The guest of honor this year is the ram.

I've been entertaining the thought of doing a painting for a ram.  This is not a subject that I've painted before so it would be fresh.  Luck would have it that I've been invited to do a couple of painting demos for school children, to honor Chinese New Year.  I'll have added incentive now to research my subject and embark on  the painting, except the stakes are  higher now.   I have to actually show that I could paint.

I seemed to have developed an affinity for phthalocyanine Blue.  That was the first color I reached for.  I sketched out a couple of rams in my scrapbook.

My emphasis will be on the posture.  The way the ram holds the head defines the painting.  However, I don't want to skim over the details of the facial features.  Perhaps I could paint a ram with attitude, if somehow I can grasp the expressions.

This is where I was having tons of problems.  Was I painting dogs.


How did the saying go; if you never made a mistake, then you've never tried.  After my incessant
giggling stopped, I began to analyse my mistakes.

The snout was too pointed.  I needed to make it thicker.

Time to get down to basics.  Stop being a cowboy.  I actually started to identify the components of a ram's snout.  I was sketching with a mission now.  The way I work around the problem was by creating a cylinder for the snout.  I could therefore control the diameter of the cylinder and made sure it didn't turn into a cone!

I also reached back to my high school days, when I was sketching animal skulls.  I do remember the strong  mandibles of  herbivores so their molars could grind up the grass they eat.

Feeling a little more reassured, I tried my sketching again.

I decided to break down the painting process into discrete steps.  Normally I am dead set against it.
I've met too many students and colleagues who would shy away from painting something just because they've never "learned" how to paint it.  I believe the fault lies in the system of rote learning.
We were taught to paint by memory, and not by observation.  It is my assertion that all these "How to Paint" books actually do more harm than good.  We become limited to, and by, these so called steps and this explains why most Chinese brush paintings look alike.

I suppose this is not the time to stay on my high horse.  I need to show high school kids how to paint a ram with a Chinese brush, within an allotted time frame.  Breaking the ram painting into discrete steps is the only way to get through it.

I would start out by painting the nose and the lips (steps 1 and 2).  This is followed by the 2 circles forming the two ends of the cylinder, or snout (steps 3 and 4).  Then we paint in the eyes, ears and the horns, and they all contribute to the spirit of the animal.  Finally how the ram carries itself, i.e. the neck and the limbs, speaks to the body language of the animal. 

It's time to make it bold.  I (the ram) mean business.

Banal Fail

I looked at my bastardized piece for a few days and I really didn't like that son of gun too much.
Since I couldn't possibly do anything more to hurt it, I whipped out my brush and started to paint in a flock of geese.  Migrating Canada Geese.

I was wrong.  I could make the painting worse. 

The painting now looked even more constrained, and trite !  It actually looked more like a snapshot than a painting.  Although I did not paint this from a picture, I still think it is a valid illustration of why one should never paint from a photograph.

I had to loosen up the painting somewhat.  Again I resorted to the titanium white.  I selectively blocked out some of the birds and a few valleys to take away some of the uniformity.   All these white-out moves unfortunately went against the grain of Chinese Brush methods.   I might as well be doing oil or watercolor.  The only thing Chinese about this piece was the calligraphic brush strokes of the geese; at least I tried.

I think I was able to loosen up the painting a little, but the caveat is it is still cliche.

Bastardization

While still locked in the mode of describing those distant hills I saw while driving on the freeway, and having crusted wells of Prussian Blue along with Phthalocyanine Blue left over from the punting painting to consume, I decided to paint more hills.

The reminder I jotted for myself was simple; a dramatic fore/aft gradient and a  transition from warm to cold as the distance mounts.

Again I used the sized Xuan, keying on its tolerance to color moving and building.

After the color had dried, the painting looked very soupy. I must confess the thought of painting a dreamy landscape did cross my mind.  Perhaps not as featureless as my Glimpse painting, but nonetheless fluid.   But the rolling hills were too representational; I could not escape the realism.  The painting was begging for better definition.

Ahh, the foreground is better defined.  I also rearranged the contour lines a little.  They look less haphazard now.

I liked the way my color was bleeding from the brushstroke and I wanted to preserve those little tendrils before they are absorbed into the background. They resemble tree trunks poking out in the haze.

My hair blow-dryer came to the rescue.

The sized Xuan had a pinkish tint to it, especially against this blue theme.  My hills in the background could use a little toning down also.  I debated hard about using titanium white for this purpose.
I was taught by my first teachers to never use titanium white in landscape paintings.  Streams and rivers and clouds and mist are just virgin real estate on the paper.  I should never consider titanium white as a color.  The only exceptions were when mixing with other color to paint flower petals for example; especially the two-toned ones.  How dare I entertain such evil thoughts; first by using a hair blow-dryer, and now using white to mask colors? 

I am bastardizing the painting.

Time to say my Rosary and beg for forgiveness.  I had only good intentions.  I just wanted to experiment.

Now I shall be at peace with myself and see if I should commit the next cardinal sin of painting a flock of geese over this landscape.