Cleaning up my mountain

Taking another look at what I've got so far.  Trying to see it from the point of view of a spectator and improve anything that doesn't make sense.

As my painting involves a snow scene and the fact that I am playing with alum solution, I must find areas in the painting that I can accentuate the feeling of snow.  One of such places is the lone tree in the snow field.  By darkening the areas around the horizontal branches, I bring out the contrast between the ink and the spots painted with alum.

I pick out strategically located conifers and go over them partially with darker ink.  Since the original footprint was done on the back of the paper, this add on ink from the top side creates a subtle effect of shadows and adds thickness to the object.

I must confess, this is a lot of fun, meeting the challenge of finding new ways to express with ink.

It is time to describe the foreground, the snow field.  I had laid down a few lines to divide up the flat space when I painted on the back of the paper, so it is merely a matter to make some sense out of those lines.

Using a bigger brush, I use a very light ink to paint in the areas in the shade.  Bearing in mind constantly that the brightest area, or line, is the high part of the field where it catches light.  The dark lines that I painted before effectively defined the contours and undulations of the otherwise flat piece of white.  

The plain expanse of white is transformed to the banks of a creek, drawing attention to the mountain in the yonder.

When dried,

I place my surplus frame over my unmounted painting.  I am just eager to see what it looks like

It seems to me that the sky and the snow are too close in values, so I need to make the sky darker.  After all the snow should be white, right?  

As I lap on a darker tone of ink the sky, some previously alum painted tree branches emerge.  This shows how nicely the alum solution worked.  It is apparent that I was overzealous in my original planning,  I had the trees taller than the present setup.

Now I think this is a little easier on the eye.

I recall a piece I did some years ago

I did this piece in a class that I taught.  I was showing my students how to employ the Lotus Leaf chuen technique.  I wanted my students to think outside the box, the fact that a classical Chinese brush landscape technique may be utilized in a non-traditional fashion.  I borrowed the effect of contrast to create the illusion of a protruding snowy peak.  The very dark background and the highlight patch on the flank of the peak made a stunning visual effect, albeit a technically much simpler piece done hurriedly in class as a demonstration.

It is interesting, and retrospective, to compare the 2 pieces of a snowy peak.  For me, it seemed much easier to define with color; perhaps it is the way we are hardwired to do.  It seems a more direct circuit for our brain to process color information as it relates to objects, thus emotions and consciousness.  The color piece that was done in a matter of minutes without too much effort carries as much drama as the black and white piece that I labored for days and weeks, at first sight anyways.  Perhaps this is a statement for the merits of spontaneity and extemporaneous creations, yet the black and white painting harbors so much more information.  It is like an onion with so many layers to peel off.  To truly appreciate it, one must read it like a book; sentence by sentence, page after page; hence brushstroke by brushstroke.

Continue to trek my mountain

Had a chance to let my mountain dry thoroughly.  Some of my obligations got in the way at the most opportune time and forced me to give the painting a rest.

It's time to flip the paper over and see what I've got.

Not too bad.  Looks a little subdued.  First of all we are looking at the back side of the paper.  Whatever shows up now actually is what comes through from the other side.  Secondly the alum solution acts as a resist and helps to shield the tone somewhat.  Also because the alum fixes the ink
rather quickly, the ink does not have a chance to migrate, creating the different tones naturally.  That's why the painting looks a little flat and languid.

My first order is too ever so slightly give the sky a wash of light ink.  The darker sky helps to define the contour of the mountain and brings out the snow pack.

Next on the to do list is to work on the shading of the mountain a bit.  The mountain is meant to be a backdrop so I don't want to exaggerate it to much.  I just darken a few places to bring out the features of the mountain and let its majestic stature speak of itself.

It is a presence after all.

I proceed to use dark ink to bring out the foothill woodland.  This is going to be my darkest value and it should work as a good contrast against the mountain and the sky.

I plant my trees along the ridges of the foothill to bring out the elevation and to add perspective.

This is when the previously painted areas with alum solution reveals its magic.

Notice the mottled look in the dark areas. Do you not sense the suggestion of branches and tree trunks and snow?    So these are the areas I must protect by not overworking it.  I don't want to lose this quality.  I have come to realize the reason I did not have too much success in the past.  I was too much in a hurry and tried to lay on the darker tone before the alum had a chance to dry.  The fact that I am forced to stop messing with the painting for a couple of weeks allows the solution to cure and makes a mellifluous partnership of ink, paper and alum.  Eureka.

 Taking care to preserve the occasional white patches through the trees, the painting is gradually taking on a personality.

Conquer the mountain

I am having so much fun experimenting with my Ancient Secret Chinese Solution that I am constantly searching for appropriate subject matters to paint with.  Somehow I am obsessed. 

I had fun with the snow contrasted by the dark water.  I thought it looked stunning.  My new project must involve snow and dark water.  How about placing a snowy mountain with the foothill woodland in the background for good measure.  A screen saver used by the local Public Broadcasting audio channel fit the bill perfectly.  I'll paint that.

A horrible thought came to mind.  A small painting was not going to emanate the aura of a grand landscape.  I should try something bigger perhaps.

Luck will have it that I bought a surplus frame for very little moolah and it measures 4 ft x 2 ft.  My Xuan stock is 54 in x 27 in ( notice the 2:1 ratio ) so I have no problem with the raw material.
Armed with the new found curiosity and confidence, and perhaps a little arrogance, I started my painting.

My big painting.

I shall start from the foreground and work my way to the mountain in the back.  I shall be using the alum solution to depict snow.  Thus instead of leaving a void I am actually painting the void spaces too, albeit with the clear alum solution.  What I am going to do a little differently this time is to paint everything on one side of the paper first instead of constantly switching from front to back etc.  I ended up confusing myself since I liked the effects from both sides of the paper.  After I am done with the one side, I will flip the paper over and work on the back side and make my call after everything is done.

So the foreground is basically a large spread of flat snow covered ground with a stream running in the middle.

I painted in the left bank of stream, creating a few slopes to add interest to a otherwise flat feature.

Placed my right bank, using a little ink to create shading, giving the bank dimension.

I finished constructing the banks of the stream.   I wasn't going to do anything to the rest of the snowy plain, since it was going to be white.  I folded a crease in my paper and that would be the edge of the woodland at the foothill.

Time to conquer my mountain.

I began by writing in my snow using the alum solution.

I used a smaller brush because I wanted to make smaller lines, wanting to add texture to the snow.

With my brush soaked with ink and alum solution, I started my tree planting exercise.  The creased line in the paper facilitated in the positioning of the trunks.

Took the opportunity to write in many dots with the alum solution.  The plan was to have these dots appear as lighter than the surrounding, giving an air of snow cover on leaves and branches. 

Using a darker ink, I filled in the stream.

It was interesting to see the darker ink tried to obscure the alum solution painted snow, but only partially.  I seemed to have found a way to express submerged snow or ice.

Using different tones of ink now, going over the areas of the mountain and the woodland, I brought out what was hidden beneath the ink tone.

Continue with my alum solution painting

After further treatment to the background to make the white pop a little bit more and decided that this is the side I preferred as the top, I arrived at a point when I was ready to paint my elk in the middle, as I did the last painting.

But then I noticed the void at the bottom left.  I needed to address it.

Should I treat that as mist and paint that accordingly?  If it was mist, I would have liked it to appear at a few more locations to permeate the entire woods.  I looked for additional locations where I could plant my vapor.

I struggled with that thought for a few days and decided against it.  I wanted something fresh.

Let me transform that corner into a riverbed.   I could say that the trees ended at the banks of a river or a creek.

Using alum solution I painted in the bank, flanked by rocks and boulders in the middle of the stream, again covered with snow.

 I decided to use ink to represent the water ( at night, in the dark?).  I enjoyed the contrast of the dark water against the background.

The effect was pretty stunning visually, I told myself.

But this attempt had me discombobulated, sort of.  The bottom left drew so much attention now and seemed disconnected with the rest of the painting,  especially the vertical void in the middle.  The path I had allocated seemed out of place now.

My remedy was to extend the water into the middle of the painting.  I painted in a couple of rocks to establish the other bank of the water.

Again using ink to depict water, I extended my river across the middle, and the tree at the center became the foreground, partially blocking the view of the water.  Working from the back of the paper I took out the path in the center by painting in more trees, and tried to hide the rest of the voids as an amorphous vapor.

So now my painting became a snow covered woods along a river or creek.  This was very different from what I had planned originally.

I was not ready to give up my animal.  I thought I would try a different species.

How about a mama black bear with her cubs?  That would be cute.  If nothing else, they could make the painting more personable?

It should be clear by now that the way I employed the alum solution was to exploit the way it interacts with ink and Xuan.  I should also make it succinct that I was using both sides of the paper during the course of the painting, to the extent that I often get confused myself and couldn't decide which side showed more nuances.

To illustrate my point, I hung my painting against a window and took pictures of both sides:

In the end, this one gets my nod.

More Alum

Having time to step back and re-examine my last painting, as I was having problem deciding which side would be my "top side", I've decided to display the animal with its head pointing to the left side of the paper.

I prefer this orientation perhaps due to the slight slant of the road edge, giving the frame some direction, for which the animal is responding to.  It's hard to say;  it's just a feeling.  I also thought that the straight lines of the lodge pole pines are less obtrusive.  The same lines seemed a lot darker on the other side of the paper;  perhaps that was the side I painted on.  I am thus in effect looking at the back side of the painting now.

Looking at what I wrote in the last blog, this is exactly the case.  I started the painting by painting the elk with its nose pointing to the right of the paper.  I am therefore using the back side of the painting as the top side now.

I am having second thoughts about my added brushstrokes to the snow covered path.  My intent was to describe the undulating surface of the road but I fell victim to the equally spaced rhythmic strokes of my brush.   Instead of random irregularities of the road surface, I've made it out to be a mogul jump event now.  I regret that I've over-produced this piece of work, as a sound engineer might have said.  Whereas at a sound studio one could take attenuate or even delete individual tracks, that luxury is non-existent here.  Oh well.

So I thought I would give painting with alum another try.  It was definitely excited about exploring the nuances of painting with alum.

For this attempt, I decided to be a little bit more methodical.  I wanted to paint the same scene, but instead of placing a lot of dots and dabs of alum solution, I tried defining each tree.

Basically I was treating the snow laden branches as petals of a flower.

Using a light ink wash, I covered what I have laid down to help reveal the white patches and margins left by the alum solution

The back side of the panting after the initial ink wash

The alum solution in the brushstrokes helped to fix the ink before it migrated out too much into the Xuan, and also made the paper less permeable to future coatings of ink.  Thus by judiciously manipulating the tone and placement of additional ink, the appearance of snow was achieved.  

The above was the side I painted on.  

Picture below was the the back side of the same painting.  A little bit subdued and dreamy when compared with the painted surface.

Painting with alum solution

Those of you who followed my blog know that I've on many occasions used alum solution for my painting.  I've affectionately called alum solution as my Ancient Chinese Secret Solution.  I believe my first attempt was marked by my "Splash" painting.  I've also tried to experiment with egg whites and epsom salts but was disappointed by the results. 

The role of alum for me has been relegated to a supporting cast status.  I intend to give it a major role in the sense that my painting would be dictated by the artful utilization of alum.  I plan to use alum as my "color".  Alum solution is used to size Xuan, the paper we paint on.  My friends who does Gongbi style brush painting use alum as a mordant when they paint on sized Xuan or silk.

I like alum solution because it works as a masking solution for me.  I know watercolorists use a solution that dries to form a rubber mask to conceal void spaces.  I am referring to the Resist solution.  One can paint over such areas and then peel off the rubber mask to reveal the protected area.  The fragility of the Xuan absolutely prohibits such practice.  The rubber mask would destroy and tear the paper when attempting to lift it off the surface.  The fact that alum imparts some impermeability to subsequent coloring could be attributed to the fact that it acts as a fixer.  It fixes the ink or pigment that is mixed with it.  Because the ink or color is fixed before the brushstroke dries, and as the rest of the solution in the brushstroke continues to slowly migrate through the fibers in the paper, a clear margin forms around the imprint of the brushstroke.  This clear margin is exploited to give the effect of  back-lit subjects.

I started by exploring the nuances of painting with alum solution.   I scribbled various lines on my Xuan, employing alum solution along with various tonal colors of ink.

Notice the clear demarcation around the individual brushstrokes.  

Then I tried something with a little more drama.  I used a very wet brush loaded with alum solution with ink on the tip of my brush.

All those brushstrokes were meant to be contiguous, and yet there were clear margins around each brushstroke.  

The above is the backside of my doodling.  The photo itself does not tell the whole story.  I believe the smartphone has built in level adjustment, thus making the image more vivid than it truly is.  Nonetheless, I think the effect of the demarcation is even more pronounced than the front.

What I wanted to paint was a snow scene.  I would attempt to paint my snow with alum solution.  Instead of reserving a blank space for snow, I used alum solution, combined with various shades of ink, to paint the appearance of snow.

First I started with the element of interest in my painting.  Following the rule of thirds, I folded a line that is one-third the height of my painting and that's where I spotted my elk.

A close-up of my animal.  The presence of alum solution in my brush rendered each brushstroke distinctly.

My next task was to see how I could effectively portray snow covered trees.  I decided to model the trees after the firs and lodge pole pines that are so prevalent here.  I began my trial and error by using simple dots.  Dots of different shades of alum solution.  Note that I painted on the back of my paper.  The fact that the images on the back side looked better than top side gave me that direction.

I tried using two brushes.  One with alum solution and the other with ink,  I wanted to see if I could effect a more realistic representation of snow covered trees.  I painted the darker poles on the top side of the paper,  hoping the interplay of front and back side would add to the ambiguity and therefore the nondescript feel of snow covered trees.

So far I was dotting my "snow" and painting in the tall poles of fir.  The vertical lines of these fir trees should give my painting a structure.

The above was the back of the snow brushstrokes but the top side for painting the tree poles.  Confused?  That was my premise.  Exploiting the translucent Xuan by employing  both surfaces as my canvas.

For the other half of the painting, I changed my method of painting.  I painted individual trees and tried to assemble the additional members in a cohesive manner.

Close-up if my snow effect.  Notice the translucent dabs formed by footprint of my alum solution.

The same image on the reverse side of the paper.  Again, it seemed to present the feel of snow better.

So this is what I ended up with

I can't remember which side is the front or back now.

So is this a painting about a snow covered woods or about an elk?  I'm re-living my moments of painting my Korean Maidens.