This is what the venue looked like
Here are a few of the examples of the day's work
I honestly don't know who's more happy, me or the participants.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Rooster Painting at Cultural Fair
I showed how to paint a rooster in my last blog, and I am happy to report that the scheme worked!
This is what the venue looked like
Here are a few of the examples of the day's work
I honestly don't know who's more happy, me or the participants.
This is what the venue looked like
Here are a few of the examples of the day's work
I honestly don't know who's more happy, me or the participants.
Sunday, February 12, 2017
Demonstrating Rooster Painting
My rooster painting caught the attention of a few organizations and they have asked me to do some demo sessions for them, as part of the Chinese New Year celebration.
One of the organization is putting up a Cultural Fair and I was invited to man a booth to show people how to paint a rooster.
I entertained the original proposal of painting a rooster for the visitors as they drop by my booth and rejected that idea rather quickly. I didn't want to be a face-painting-ish event for me. Not that I have anything against people who do face paintings, but I had the vision of being a tutor who will show people how to paint a rooster. I envisioned that visitors would have some hands on experience and paint their own roosters, and get to keep them as their own painting. I wanted a participatory venture. I wanted people to share the joy of painting and the satisfaction of making a painting, regardless of whether they know how to paint or not.
For this I need to devise a fail safe method. One that would work for 6 years old, as well as 60 years old.
I created a whole bunch of stencils, such that visitors could trace these templates onto their drawing paper.
The stencil ensures a basic shape for the visitor to start out with their painting, and takes away the apprehension that associates with many first-timers.
A traced outline from the stencil
For the sake of simplicity, I decided to use just ink and a single color red for the rooster. Red is essential because it is the auspicious color in our culture. We can't celebrate a new year with the color red.
First order after establishing the basic outline is to add in the beak and the eye.
Now paint in the neck feather
Now load the brush with ample water and ink and write in the feathers on the chest and body using discrete dabs
Write in the leg
Complete the toes and the leg in the back which is curled up
Tie in the leg to the body with additional brush dabs
Write in the big rooster feathers
Using red color, begin to write in the comb
Completed rooster with wattles, ear lobe and face.
I shall be putting this to practice pretty soon.
One of the organization is putting up a Cultural Fair and I was invited to man a booth to show people how to paint a rooster.
I entertained the original proposal of painting a rooster for the visitors as they drop by my booth and rejected that idea rather quickly. I didn't want to be a face-painting-ish event for me. Not that I have anything against people who do face paintings, but I had the vision of being a tutor who will show people how to paint a rooster. I envisioned that visitors would have some hands on experience and paint their own roosters, and get to keep them as their own painting. I wanted a participatory venture. I wanted people to share the joy of painting and the satisfaction of making a painting, regardless of whether they know how to paint or not.
For this I need to devise a fail safe method. One that would work for 6 years old, as well as 60 years old.
I created a whole bunch of stencils, such that visitors could trace these templates onto their drawing paper.
The stencil ensures a basic shape for the visitor to start out with their painting, and takes away the apprehension that associates with many first-timers.
A traced outline from the stencil
For the sake of simplicity, I decided to use just ink and a single color red for the rooster. Red is essential because it is the auspicious color in our culture. We can't celebrate a new year with the color red.
First order after establishing the basic outline is to add in the beak and the eye.
Now paint in the neck feather
Now load the brush with ample water and ink and write in the feathers on the chest and body using discrete dabs
Write in the leg
Complete the toes and the leg in the back which is curled up
Tie in the leg to the body with additional brush dabs
Write in the big rooster feathers
Using red color, begin to write in the comb
Completed rooster with wattles, ear lobe and face.
I shall be putting this to practice pretty soon.
Monday, February 6, 2017
( NO ) Strings attached
Two of my paintings needed mounting and framing. They got juried into an exhibition. One of those was the one I named Oblivious; the "have eyes but won't see" painting. This was especially uplifting, as I felt vindicated, after being rejected twice by other venues. I was told by the curator that the reason for rejection was "the faces are not familiar to the west". I didn't know I was signing up for a course in Bovine Scatology! On the other hand, it exemplified the caliber of the show! Might as well!
Again I mounted them in the Suliao Xuan Ban fashion, and again I stained my frames with the same ink I painted with to achieve that tonal continuity between the painting and the frame.
I devised a new method to combat the bubbles that popped up under the paper. This was probably due to defects in the silicone layer. I used a stress ball as a roller to help tamp the Xuan onto the heated silicone surface. The ball was very pliable and made even contact with the surface when pressed. The added bonus was that I got to massage my acupressure points in my palm (wink, wink).
I modified my hanging string this time.
I had used the regular metal picture wires before for the cross string. That was until my confidant pointed out to me that the wire was visible through the clear margin that I had painstakingly designed. My reason for that clear margin ( in lieu of a traditional mat) was to exaggerate the float effect of the painting. I also wanted to free the painting from the immediate enclosing feeling of the frames. So after having these thoughts executed into the design of the setup, I ruined it by allowing the viewer to see a metal wire through the acrylic pane. That was more than a fly in the ointment. This is a mistake that I often make. I am always in a hurry to finish a project that I would not think through the last few steps. I will write these steps off as being incidental and trivial and not critical. I just have no patience; too eager to call it done. That's the bane of my life.
To make the hanging wire less visible, I thought of the leader system of fishing hooks, harking back to the days when I would ford the streams and fish a little bit. I would use the regular metal hanging wire, but instead of the entire length, I would tie both ends to clear fishing lines. This way the clear fishing lines were under the clear acrylic margin, and were not readily visible. The reason I did not use fishing line for the whole length to begin with was because the length of the wire was too long in the landscape setup. The weight of the wood frame and the plastic caused the wire to stretch too much, resulting in the hanging hook visible above the frame. That destroyed the presentation. I wanted to frame to just appear on the wall, without any obvious means of hanging or attachment.
I drilled a 90 degree angled passage in the narrow wood frame and passed my fishing line through that. I then tied a huge knot; one that was big enough to not slip through the tiny hole, thus securing the line. I then tied the clear fishing line to the metal hanging wire. The beauty of this design was that no hanging hardware was required, and the hanging hook would be hidden by the painting itself.
This is how the finished product looked on the wall.
No visible hooks or wires!
Again I mounted them in the Suliao Xuan Ban fashion, and again I stained my frames with the same ink I painted with to achieve that tonal continuity between the painting and the frame.
I devised a new method to combat the bubbles that popped up under the paper. This was probably due to defects in the silicone layer. I used a stress ball as a roller to help tamp the Xuan onto the heated silicone surface. The ball was very pliable and made even contact with the surface when pressed. The added bonus was that I got to massage my acupressure points in my palm (wink, wink).
I modified my hanging string this time.
I had used the regular metal picture wires before for the cross string. That was until my confidant pointed out to me that the wire was visible through the clear margin that I had painstakingly designed. My reason for that clear margin ( in lieu of a traditional mat) was to exaggerate the float effect of the painting. I also wanted to free the painting from the immediate enclosing feeling of the frames. So after having these thoughts executed into the design of the setup, I ruined it by allowing the viewer to see a metal wire through the acrylic pane. That was more than a fly in the ointment. This is a mistake that I often make. I am always in a hurry to finish a project that I would not think through the last few steps. I will write these steps off as being incidental and trivial and not critical. I just have no patience; too eager to call it done. That's the bane of my life.
To make the hanging wire less visible, I thought of the leader system of fishing hooks, harking back to the days when I would ford the streams and fish a little bit. I would use the regular metal hanging wire, but instead of the entire length, I would tie both ends to clear fishing lines. This way the clear fishing lines were under the clear acrylic margin, and were not readily visible. The reason I did not use fishing line for the whole length to begin with was because the length of the wire was too long in the landscape setup. The weight of the wood frame and the plastic caused the wire to stretch too much, resulting in the hanging hook visible above the frame. That destroyed the presentation. I wanted to frame to just appear on the wall, without any obvious means of hanging or attachment.
I drilled a 90 degree angled passage in the narrow wood frame and passed my fishing line through that. I then tied a huge knot; one that was big enough to not slip through the tiny hole, thus securing the line. I then tied the clear fishing line to the metal hanging wire. The beauty of this design was that no hanging hardware was required, and the hanging hook would be hidden by the painting itself.
This is how the finished product looked on the wall.
No visible hooks or wires!
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Sulio Xuan Ban and Xuan Boo in action
I have mentioned my unique ways of mounting Chinese brush paintings in my blogs. Xuan-Boo is how I mounted Xuan on canvas. Suliao Xuan Ban is mounting Xuan on plastic.
I have been labelled as being "gimmicky" by the camp of traditional brush artists. In my defense, I was motivated by circumstances.
The traditional way of mounting Xuan on paper or silk is great. Unfortunately, having paintings mounted in a scroll format demands skilled craftsmanship. There just aren't too many of these floating around when one is in a town where such crafts are rather obscure and esoteric. I could have mounted the Xuan on paper and present it in a picture frame, but I see two limitations. The first one being the glass frame imposes a glare, and museum grade non-glare glass is not economical and not often available in the odd sizes. The second factor is that the painting loses the vivaciousness once dried. I like the wet look so much better.
When I first fooled around with Xuan-Boo, I was instantly attracted to it. The texture of the canvas and the color luminosity being restored by applying the protective gel. The application of gel was to protect the surface of the painting from the usual indoor elements. I had no idea that it added to the depth of the color. That truly was serendipity in action.
I really like a lot of the "metallic" prints of photographs and the way they were presented. No frames, just sort of floated from the wall. That was my inspiration for devising the Suliao Xuan Ban technique. I compromised on the absence of frame by creating a clear margin around the painting, allowing it to float on the display wall.
There are ongoing debates about the merits of wet versus dry mounting. Chinese wet mounting has been the gold standard in the traditional way. Having done both I would say that a nicely done wet mounting is superior to the dry mounted one. This is especially apparent when one can hold that piece of work in your hands. It just feels organic and not mechanical. A point that the wet mounting camp stresses is that a dry mount is irreversible. Museums have been know to re-mount a piece of deteriorated ancient work and restore the painting. This would not be possible with dry mount. But then again, how many pieces of our works gain immortality? Of course the main reason for dry mounting is that the execution generally requires less skill, and is definitely not as time consuming.
Some people at the local galleries balk at the idea that the painting is mounted. They asserted that the painting must retain the flexibility of being able to be presented in the frame of the customer's choosing. In other words, the consumer might not like the way I presented it, and would need to replace the frame. They are in effect paying money for the painting itself and nothing else.
Recently I had a chance to present exclusively my two methods of mounting at an exhibition. I did that obviously to satisfy my own biases and I really don't expect the audience to know one way or another.
It was gratifying to see how my presentation was so vastly different from everybody else's.
These are paintings done in the Xuan-Boo fashion:
These are done in the Suliao Xuan Ban fashion:
Call me a goofball, call me a gimmick, I'm just not satisfied with the status quo.
I have been labelled as being "gimmicky" by the camp of traditional brush artists. In my defense, I was motivated by circumstances.
The traditional way of mounting Xuan on paper or silk is great. Unfortunately, having paintings mounted in a scroll format demands skilled craftsmanship. There just aren't too many of these floating around when one is in a town where such crafts are rather obscure and esoteric. I could have mounted the Xuan on paper and present it in a picture frame, but I see two limitations. The first one being the glass frame imposes a glare, and museum grade non-glare glass is not economical and not often available in the odd sizes. The second factor is that the painting loses the vivaciousness once dried. I like the wet look so much better.
When I first fooled around with Xuan-Boo, I was instantly attracted to it. The texture of the canvas and the color luminosity being restored by applying the protective gel. The application of gel was to protect the surface of the painting from the usual indoor elements. I had no idea that it added to the depth of the color. That truly was serendipity in action.
I really like a lot of the "metallic" prints of photographs and the way they were presented. No frames, just sort of floated from the wall. That was my inspiration for devising the Suliao Xuan Ban technique. I compromised on the absence of frame by creating a clear margin around the painting, allowing it to float on the display wall.
There are ongoing debates about the merits of wet versus dry mounting. Chinese wet mounting has been the gold standard in the traditional way. Having done both I would say that a nicely done wet mounting is superior to the dry mounted one. This is especially apparent when one can hold that piece of work in your hands. It just feels organic and not mechanical. A point that the wet mounting camp stresses is that a dry mount is irreversible. Museums have been know to re-mount a piece of deteriorated ancient work and restore the painting. This would not be possible with dry mount. But then again, how many pieces of our works gain immortality? Of course the main reason for dry mounting is that the execution generally requires less skill, and is definitely not as time consuming.
Some people at the local galleries balk at the idea that the painting is mounted. They asserted that the painting must retain the flexibility of being able to be presented in the frame of the customer's choosing. In other words, the consumer might not like the way I presented it, and would need to replace the frame. They are in effect paying money for the painting itself and nothing else.
Recently I had a chance to present exclusively my two methods of mounting at an exhibition. I did that obviously to satisfy my own biases and I really don't expect the audience to know one way or another.
It was gratifying to see how my presentation was so vastly different from everybody else's.
These are paintings done in the Xuan-Boo fashion:
These are done in the Suliao Xuan Ban fashion:
Call me a goofball, call me a gimmick, I'm just not satisfied with the status quo.
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Painting Rooster
This is the year of the Rooster so that explains my motivation for painting the rooster.
It is customary for a lot of Chinese businesses to print and give away complimentary calendars to celebrate the New Year thus an example of a rooster painting would not be difficult to come by. I would say that most of these paintings would have the quintessential arrangement of a rooster with other elements of Chinese brush painting; such as wisteria, chrysanthemum, bamboo, Taihu stone, peony.
I want to present my bird in a stylized manner. I want to emphasize the pose as being intrepid, arrogant. My personal perception of a sassy bird is one with an attitude, one that struts with swag and raises its tail feathers like a proud peacock. I also want to dispense with the usual incidental elements that I mentioned earlier. I wanted my painting to tell a story, instead of a still life arrangement.
I don't want to be too far from the truth with regards to anatomical features, so I looked at a few pictures of the head, paying attention to the comb and the wattles and how they relate to the eye and the beak.
I did my practice exercise
I just realized I left out the ear and the ear lobe!
I also wanted to get the feet right, Not trusting my memories of years of munching on chicken feet, again I gathered reference material; and realized that a painting with a 5 or 3 toed rooster is an erroneous depiction.
I sketched out the pose for my bird first, and went to work. I chose a non-bleached paper with visible strands of fiber, for that informal, home made, folksy feel.
I filled in the plumage
and adorned it with my attitude piece de resistance, the rooster tail. I painted it high and proud.
I thought the lone cock is too austere for such an auspicious occasion and a companion is needed. I thought for a long time about the composition and I arrived at needing a hen that faces the other direction. I want the birds to be doing do-si-do and not promenade. I think this arrangement carries more theater.
I found this picture on the net
My wish was granted.
I used the shaft of my brush to extend a line of sight from the rooster's eye and placed the hen there. I needed to show what he was interested in. This is a key element in establishing the relationship between the main characters.
Not afraid of running the risk of being trite or pedantic, I decided to complement the rooster and the hen with a family.
After I texted this image to my confidant, I was reminded that the 2 chicks were placed too evenly and suggested I add another member to the brood.
I am thankful for that advice.
I like the emotion and the energy this painting portrays. I can sense the movement and interaction in this family. The parents' focus was in each other, and the chicks begged only from the mother. Of course I am biased.
What I don't like is the rooster looked a little slim to me. I would love to have painted a fuller lower body. I think I painted his foot wrong. Had I painted his toes facing the viewer, it would have suggested a body turning towards the viewer, thus presenting a narrower girth.
The angle of the leg stance did not seem right either. It was too straight. I was so carried away by the thought of standing pound and tall that I ignored the natural stance. Had I superimposed the leg skeletal structure onto my rooster to begin with, in my mind at least, I would have avoided this mistake.
The above illustration shows the relative angles of the femur, tibia and the tarsometatarsals of the rooster's leg. It is obvious that the leg does not go vertically up and down. Just to prove my point I digitally moved the leg to the new position. I think it looks much better this way. What a difference 9 degrees off center makes!
Again, Happy New Year!
It is customary for a lot of Chinese businesses to print and give away complimentary calendars to celebrate the New Year thus an example of a rooster painting would not be difficult to come by. I would say that most of these paintings would have the quintessential arrangement of a rooster with other elements of Chinese brush painting; such as wisteria, chrysanthemum, bamboo, Taihu stone, peony.
I want to present my bird in a stylized manner. I want to emphasize the pose as being intrepid, arrogant. My personal perception of a sassy bird is one with an attitude, one that struts with swag and raises its tail feathers like a proud peacock. I also want to dispense with the usual incidental elements that I mentioned earlier. I wanted my painting to tell a story, instead of a still life arrangement.
I don't want to be too far from the truth with regards to anatomical features, so I looked at a few pictures of the head, paying attention to the comb and the wattles and how they relate to the eye and the beak.
I did my practice exercise
I just realized I left out the ear and the ear lobe!
I also wanted to get the feet right, Not trusting my memories of years of munching on chicken feet, again I gathered reference material; and realized that a painting with a 5 or 3 toed rooster is an erroneous depiction.
I sketched out the pose for my bird first, and went to work. I chose a non-bleached paper with visible strands of fiber, for that informal, home made, folksy feel.
I filled in the plumage
and adorned it with my attitude piece de resistance, the rooster tail. I painted it high and proud.
I thought the lone cock is too austere for such an auspicious occasion and a companion is needed. I thought for a long time about the composition and I arrived at needing a hen that faces the other direction. I want the birds to be doing do-si-do and not promenade. I think this arrangement carries more theater.
I found this picture on the net
My wish was granted.
I used the shaft of my brush to extend a line of sight from the rooster's eye and placed the hen there. I needed to show what he was interested in. This is a key element in establishing the relationship between the main characters.
Not afraid of running the risk of being trite or pedantic, I decided to complement the rooster and the hen with a family.
After I texted this image to my confidant, I was reminded that the 2 chicks were placed too evenly and suggested I add another member to the brood.
I am thankful for that advice.
I like the emotion and the energy this painting portrays. I can sense the movement and interaction in this family. The parents' focus was in each other, and the chicks begged only from the mother. Of course I am biased.
What I don't like is the rooster looked a little slim to me. I would love to have painted a fuller lower body. I think I painted his foot wrong. Had I painted his toes facing the viewer, it would have suggested a body turning towards the viewer, thus presenting a narrower girth.
The angle of the leg stance did not seem right either. It was too straight. I was so carried away by the thought of standing pound and tall that I ignored the natural stance. Had I superimposed the leg skeletal structure onto my rooster to begin with, in my mind at least, I would have avoided this mistake.
The above illustration shows the relative angles of the femur, tibia and the tarsometatarsals of the rooster's leg. It is obvious that the leg does not go vertically up and down. Just to prove my point I digitally moved the leg to the new position. I think it looks much better this way. What a difference 9 degrees off center makes!
Again, Happy New Year!
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Same Roots, Different Feel
Now that I have two paintings of banyan tree roots, I'm left with the task of deciding which one I like better.
The one on the right is methodical, deliberate and manicured. The one on the left is devoid of discrete lines and comprised mostly of shadows.
The right one gives a very detailed accounting of where everything is. There seems to be order in the chaos, if one is interested and motivated to find out. The one on the left just stares at you; you either hate it or love it.
Somehow the left one elicits a stronger emotional response from me. I can't really put a finger on it. Perhaps it's my dark personality. In fact as it stands right now, the more I look at the one on the right, the more anemic it seems.
So now I have to choose a piece for an exhibition and I am still vacillating between the two.
In a way I would really hate to lose the one on the right, if by some weird luck I manage to sell the piece. I want to be able to savor the fruit of my labor a bit longer, especially after the enormous amount of time and effort into it. Something tells me that painting is not fully done yet.
The fact that there are leaves depicted in the painting added another layer of symbolism to the work. Chinese has a saying that as the leaves fall, they return to the roots. The meaning could be literal, but it actually describes the cycle of life. Leaves mature, fall, and decompose and return the nutrients to the tree to be recycled. We also have another saying; whenever one drinks water, think of where it came from. So along with finding one's roots, one also appreciates the natural cycle of life.
One might say that the one on the left is a shallower painting, but only I know the hidden meanings. So I will go with my gut feeling, put the darker one into the exhibition, the one that is more superficial yet elicits a stronger feeling.
I also want to show the translucent property of the semi-sized Xuan. Ink from the brushstrokes totally penetrated the paper, such that the back side of the paper showed a painting in reverse.
Here's the back side of the one on the left
and the back side of the one on the right
This is the reason I worked on my process of Suliao Xuan Ban; on the process of mounting on plastic. I wanted the effect of a float that can be viewed from either the front or the back. Perhaps the painted panes on a lit lantern illustrate my point.
The right one gives a very detailed accounting of where everything is. There seems to be order in the chaos, if one is interested and motivated to find out. The one on the left just stares at you; you either hate it or love it.
Somehow the left one elicits a stronger emotional response from me. I can't really put a finger on it. Perhaps it's my dark personality. In fact as it stands right now, the more I look at the one on the right, the more anemic it seems.
So now I have to choose a piece for an exhibition and I am still vacillating between the two.
In a way I would really hate to lose the one on the right, if by some weird luck I manage to sell the piece. I want to be able to savor the fruit of my labor a bit longer, especially after the enormous amount of time and effort into it. Something tells me that painting is not fully done yet.
The fact that there are leaves depicted in the painting added another layer of symbolism to the work. Chinese has a saying that as the leaves fall, they return to the roots. The meaning could be literal, but it actually describes the cycle of life. Leaves mature, fall, and decompose and return the nutrients to the tree to be recycled. We also have another saying; whenever one drinks water, think of where it came from. So along with finding one's roots, one also appreciates the natural cycle of life.
One might say that the one on the left is a shallower painting, but only I know the hidden meanings. So I will go with my gut feeling, put the darker one into the exhibition, the one that is more superficial yet elicits a stronger feeling.
I also want to show the translucent property of the semi-sized Xuan. Ink from the brushstrokes totally penetrated the paper, such that the back side of the paper showed a painting in reverse.
Here's the back side of the one on the left
and the back side of the one on the right
This is the reason I worked on my process of Suliao Xuan Ban; on the process of mounting on plastic. I wanted the effect of a float that can be viewed from either the front or the back. Perhaps the painted panes on a lit lantern illustrate my point.
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