Reliving The Past

With Covid still unabated I needed to find something to do.  Something useful, something stimulating to do.

I saw the pile of old vinyl LP records leaning haphazardly on my bowing plank shelves and decided that perhaps I could digitize them so that I could have them in my music library and stream them at my leisure.  My records are 20 to 50 years old.  I still have a few that were my dad's.  I have my nice "audiophile"  turntable and my computer has the Audacity program installed.  Should be a walk in the park.

I eagerly cleaned off the dust collecting on the lid of my record changer.  Hooked up the RCA outs from the turntable to a 3.5mm stereo adapter and plugged into the headphone jack of my computer.

I acknowledged to my computer that I was plugging a line input; not a microphone; not a headset.  I then opened the lid to my turntable and pressed "On".

Nothing happened. 

My turntable is from the 90's.  At the time it could be considered a nice turntable and had the touch sensitive capacitance buttons for changing play speed.  I so loved this piece of machinery.  It was so futuristic.  It has not been powered up for at least 20 years.

So I had a failed power switch.  Removing the bottom of the turntable confirmed my diagnosis.  The plastic casing of the switch succumbed to the pressure from the spring inside.   I fired off an order to procure a new power switch that would fit my machine.

The new switch came.  I installed it.  Powered my turntable on and the capacitance buttons lit up.  I was almost like a new parent.

I pressed the "33" play button and it flickered for a bit and jumped to the Stop button; all by itself.  So this happy new parent grew very concerned.  My new baby was not healthy.

A quick research online revealed that my vintage turntable was prone to capacitor failure and described some of the problems I was witnessing.  I had tinkered with soldering and building my vacuum tube  radio when I was a teenage so I decided that replacing a few capacitors was not beyond my abilities.

One of the casualty of Covid was that a huge chain store which sells electronic parts for hobbyist closed its door for good.  I had no choice but to buy parts online.  I couldn't buy just one.  Capacitors came in strips of 5 or 10.  I suppose that was the price to pay for wanting to relive the past.

While waiting for my parts to arrive I decided to practice my Ji Ben Gong ( basic skills ) by painting orchids.  Orchid paintings are favorite subjects for Chinese brush painting and they require exquisite brushstrokes to emanate the beauty and the reclusiveness of the plant.  Strictly speaking the so called "painting" is actually a collection of calligraphy writings, and these calligraphic brushstrokes bestow the abstract and impressionistic qualities of such paintings.  

My training in orchid painting, like most of my Chinese brush trainings, is by rote learning.  Almost all my teachers demanded repeated studying and emulations of known paintings, and rehearsing the necessary brushstrokes to acquire the skill of orchid painting; all in the name of developing Ji Ben Gong.  Obviously the downside of this practice is that all orchid paintings look alike, since the same brushstrokes and compositions were practiced incessantly, not only by me, but by all serious students.

Since I haven't painted an orchid for a long time, I decided to start by doodling and trying to recall my muscle memory of orchid painting.

Honestly I was doing this to kill time, while I awaited the capacitors to arrive so that I could repair my vintage turntable and get on with my project of digitizing my old vinyl records.

I constantly looked at my tracking page from the vendors, as if this would hasten up the delivery of my needed parts.  I was being a kid again.

The day came when the brown delivery truck pulled up next to my door.  I ripped the capacitors from the packaged strip array of 5's, almost with the same fervor as trying to open up a package of prophylactic for the very first time, and impatiently waited for my soldering iron to heat up; fidgeting with the new capacitors to determine which lead was negative, so that I would not reverse polarity when inserting my new capacitors. 

I replaced two capacitors on the circuit board, put the screws back in and fired up my turntable.

Success!  My newborn had been cured.  I was a jovial new parent again.  Now I could use my vintage equipment to relive my past again.  In Da Gadda Da Vida, White Rabbit...........

Working with Audacity and iTunes was such fun.  My digitized music library was growing slowly and the past was definitely worth reliving.  I streamed part of the collection to my sound system, and it sounded awesome, the fact that I could no longer hear beyond 10 kilohertz notwithstanding.  

It was all in my head.  There was no better way to endure the pandemic by doing what I was doing.  Useful, stimulating.

Orchid painting can wait.  After all I was just trying to brush up my basic skills in painting by revisiting the past.  It really wasn't tops in my agenda.

Then one day the STOP button light on my turntable would not come on.  I thought my deck was unplugged.  The lights worked on the 33 and 45 buttons.  

Must be a burned out lightbulb.  How difficult could it be to replace the lightbulbs.  

Off came the bottom of the turntable.  I located the tiny lightbulbs underneath the capacitance buttons and switched out the bulb for 45 with the STOP, since I don't play 45's.  Put everything back and to my chagrin the turntable was saddled with erratic speed switching on its own.

Further research revealed that the circuit used the resistance of the lightbulbs in its capacitance calculations.  The tiny current draw by placing one's finger on these capacitance buttons was tied in to the lightbulbs and therefore this was a scenario where not just any lightbulb would work.  A  set of 3 lightbulbs for this particular turntable would cost me $21 to buy.  Should I just buy them and possibly exorcise my erratic speed demon?

I wasn't so sure at this point.  I looked at the schematic and it showed the correct voltage at different points of the wiring schematic.  I figured with a little patience I could retrace the different paths of the schematic and with the 6 different potentiometers on the circuit board surely I could adjust the voltage to spec without replacing the burnt lightbulb and my vintage machine would work again.  Besides this could offer me a new experiences to tinker or experiment with something.  Just like painting, I told myself.

As I was contemplating my moves, I went back to my Ji Ben Gong exercises.  Something to do to take my mind off the broken record player.  My muscle memory was slowly coming back.  I could see my brushstrokes getting better and more fluent within the matter of the weeks while I was toying with fixing my turntable.

In the spirit of toying and experimentation, with the same aplomb applied to trying to fix my old equipment, I tried painting on a matte photo paper.  Curious to see what it was like.

The result was not ideal.  The photo paper called me out by amplifying my indecisiveness in my brushstrokes.  They seemed a little pretentious and not spontaneous enough, especially with regards to the petals of the orchid.

In the days and weeks that ensued I realized that I was in over my head with fixing my turntable.  I did not have a basic understanding of the schematic or how the circuit was designed and I based my optimism on the assumption that I could somehow adjust the voltage to spec.  With 6 different potentiometers and a burnt out lightbulb that I kept turning and  switching around I had totally lost track of what I had touched and altered.  I was lost in a deep canyon with no identifiable landmarks.

Back to the drawing board, literally.

I started out with the leaves of the orchid plant.  As I had mentioned before in my blogs about traditions, I was mindful to keep the phoenix eye in the basic construct of the leaf arrangement.

Although the so called host and slave leaves were not well defined, the nuance of such a relationship still governed the composition in this complex arrangement.  Is this the only way to portray orchid?  I would hope not; but old habits are hard to break, especially for students of rote learning.  This type of presentation nonetheless provide a comfortable space, for both the viewer, and the painter.

So the pandemic is not relenting and my vintage record player suffered a fatal blow from my malpractice.  In retrospect the viral pandemic offered me more leisure time to do something that I normally wouldn't have done, and my desire to relive or to preserve the past led to my attempt to convert analog tracks to digital bits.  I see a parallel in my naïve determination to tackle something that I only had a superficial knowledge of and my painting by rote.  In electronics repair I thought I could follow the schematic and somehow attain the correct voltage without knowing what led to the deviation to begin with.  In painting by rote, I followed the traditions without clearly understanding what dictated that practice.  My saving grace is that sometimes I have more gall than brain and sometimes good things happen.  The truth is that my painting attempts could be serendipitous but luck is more stingy when dealing with technical issues.  One has to have Ji Beng Gong, or the basics, by hook or by crook.

How else could I be vacillating between euphoria and despair, but by sucked in by the romantic notion, that I could hold on to things in the past and relive them.  However, on this date, I bid adieu to my vintage turntable, a small but significant part of my past.  

Ox painting, the final saga

After four attempts at painting my ox, realizing incremental improvement after each trial, I was left with a void, a less than satisfying feeling, still.

I couldn't quite pinpoint what prompted this notion.  Perhaps my painting didn't tell a story, like my Year of the Rat or Year of the Rooster paintings did.  Perhaps the ambience of the painting wasn't befitting a New Year's theme and was too monolithic.  Or could it be that it wasn't "Chinese" enough, since I was ruminating the connotation of whether a painting is "Chinese" or not.  How could I translate a sentiment that is beyond my capability to be succinct about; beyond my wisdom to verbalize.  

One thing that was within my reach was to try to tell a story with my intended painting, beyond just a representation of vigor and might.  My reason to start painting the ox painting was ostensibly due to the arrival of the Year of the Ox, but also the desire to expel anything that went awry during the Year of the Rat.  My painting of the Ox could be the rostrum for such proclamation.

Thus my painting would tell the story of an ox evicting the rat. More than merely a changing of the guards.

Honestly I was getting a little tired of painting the same ox over and over again.  I was never a good student because I loathed practicing.  I always wanted something fresh, and fast.  So for this painting I substituted a stiff hair, totally worn round brush for my regular round brush.  I intended to rely on the dry ink mottling, with the help of the regular wash, to render the shading of my beast.  A worn out brush is ideal for this purpose since its hairs form hundreds of points rather than the one single point when new.  Thus I never threw out my worn brushes.  I was hoping the dry ink mottling would add interesting texture and credibility to my ox.  I trust subconsciously I was trying to emulate the smudging of a charcoal painting.  Also I've read somewhere that part of the intrigue of Mona Lisa was the fact that there were no harsh lines on her face, adding to the organic expression of facial emotional contents of a human.  Regardless of my true motivation, I was ready to enter the game.

I cut out a stencil to help depict the skin folds on the nose ridge, adding interest to the structure.

My urge to keep the painting process fresh and interesting had led to this experimentation.  I must admit, I was like a school kid finding a dollar bill on the playground, pure joy!

Chinese or not, here I come.  I expanded the stencil technique to add skin folds to the back of the ox.

Using a rather dry brush, I scriggled lines to represent water, in which my ox was half submerged.

The water solved two problems.  It hid the legs of the ox, so I didn't have to be concerned about their placements.  It also took up a large portion of the painting; less for me to paint.

The other protagonist in this story was the rat.  I painted it white to make it stand out a bit but it was still difficult to see due to its size.  Incidentally I painted last years rat in white, so there is continuity in my story now.  I had the rat scurrying across the water, away from the ox, as if it was being chased away.

I am calling it quits.  This is my final attempt at the ox painting, and I named it 

"The Ox evicting the Rat"

Ox painting, third and fourth attempt

Having realized that my attempt in painting an ox resulted in a painting of a lamb with Dumbo ears, I was determined to give another try.

To remedy the identified shortcomings of my last two ox paintings, I obviously had to make the ears smaller, but I also decided to make the horns having a pronounced upward turn, to shy away from getting confused with the head of a lamb.  I decided to situate my ox in grass, to give it a little context.

I painted the mouth and nostrils, rendering them a dark shade because I was very conscious of avoiding  the pig like snout.

Instead of a rigid triangle for the ridge of the nose, I took the more conventional avenue of shading in the ridge.  The shading brushstroke also defined the white area suggesting the front of the nose and mouth.  I liked this rendition far better than my previous attempts.  

I also decided to dress up the eyes a little better by giving them eyelids.

I realized that I lost sight of my moisture control of my brush, so the ink was bleeding more than I had intended.

My inattention was further exemplified by left front leg, which was fit for an elephant.  Instead of a hoof, I put down a meaty pachyderm foot pad.

At least the beast was animated enough to bestow an attitude, an energetic disposition.

Encouraged by the palpable improvements, I decided to give it another go.

I wanted to try a different treatment of the mouth and nostrils this time around, so I left the area as a void.

Through looking at pictures of a cow, I became aware that the area between the nostrils and the mouth opening had different colors and texture, and was not a simple black or white.  Armed with this revelation, I tried to emulate.

The eyelids were made conspicuous and protruding by judicious use of shading brushstrokes, which were nothing more than a few lines.  

The repeated exercises in painting the same animal had definitely improved my muscle memory and I learned what to avoid, as far as making mistakes was concerned.  I could see painting maturing with each attempt.

I had tried four times now, trying to paint my ox.

Ox painting, first and second attempt

 I wanted to paint an ox for the Chinese New Year to replace the Rat of 2020.  A lot of the Ox paintings portray the ox as lounging around in the meadows, or being strung along by their nose rings.  That was not the image of the ox I wanted to paint.  Another favorite setting for an ox painting would be some little kid riding the ox playing a bamboo flute. 

 Poetic but banal.

Come to think of it, I don't even know what an ox looks like; I might have it confused with a water buffalo?   Does it matter if the zodiac animal is a buffalo or a dairy cow?  Personally I want my animal to have horns and be fierce, sort of like a bull, and certainly not passive.  I've had enough stagnation this past year.   So perhaps I'll paint what I deem is a bull ox, or ox bull ?  Something that could breakthrough the thick miasma from last year.  Not in the cliché sense of auspiciousness but actually taking charge.  Is there such an animal?

Perhaps too much bovine scat here, wink wink.

Thus I started out with a sketch,

I wasn't sure what this animal was, but it sorta fit the bill, so I proceeded to paint in on Xuan paper.  I was using the rough, fibrous kind.  The thick fibers gave a special nuance to the finished product, and functioned as incidentals to hide any imperfections of the painting.  Like trinkets on an empty wall, you get the picture.

I began with the horns and legs, basically trying to establish a general body proportion.  The ears were written as flower petals or leaves, using side tip brushstroke.  The horns and the tail were strictly center tip brushstrokes.

Then I moved onto the mouth and eyes

It was interesting to note that the brushstrokes pertaining to the mouth and eyes lacked the spontaneity exhibited by the horns, tail and legs.  The fact that I was trying to locate the eyes and nostrils in a proper location somehow zapped the energy out of the brush. A gingerly apprehension was evident.

I painted a triangle to represent the ridge of the nose and defined what the plane which housed the nostrils and the mouth.  I meant to darken the area above the eyes to show orbital ridges of the skull but ended up with two very conspicuous eyebrows.

Final touches to fill in the rest of the body,

Immediately the painting looked weird to me.  It finally dawned on me that mouth and nostrils were not only too rigid, as I had mentioned earlier, but I was too conspicuous in my efforts to define that mouth/nose plane and I ended up with the snout of a pig?

After I was done amusing myself, I decided to re-do the painting.  I tried a different profile, with the animal facing the right hand side this time.

I decided to darken the problem area of the mouth/nostril to make that area seem less flat.

Still something didn't look right.  I thought I could make it better by giving the painting a little sepia coloring, but it didn't help.  In my training I've been indoctrinated that ink itself is a color and that's why the ability to manipulate and display different ink tones is held in such high regard in Chinese brush panting, so I couldn't explain why I would even consider a recue by color.  I suppose when one is desperate, one tries anything under the sun.

I eventually came to the conclusion that my animal had too high a dome and resembled a lamb; too big were the ears and it reminded me of Dumbo!

That meant I needed to try my luck with the ox painting again, someday.

For now, I've had my laughs.  

It was definitely entertaining. 

Happy Year Of The Ox

 

Farewell Rat

Hello Ox

Not Chinese Enough

 I switched the frame of my Wetlands painting.  It used to be a poster frame with thin black borders.

So I paraded my newborn, as a proud parent would have done.

Immediately I heard mumblings of "your painting is not Chinese enough".

As I said in my previous blog, I had intended to make an overtly "Chinese" painting because of the type and color of the paper I was using.  The fact that people recognize that this was an attempt at the Chinese genre, I have halfway succeeded.  But "not Chinese enough"?  Really?

I have always maintained that my style is neither western nor Chinese and this has struck the wrong chord with many a purist; but to have someone point that out to me, especially behind my back somehow cuts into me a little bit.  I couldn't help but be reminded of the time when I was hawking my paintings at a school bazaar when some patron wanted to look at my works and her Asian friend told her to shun me because in her words "his work is not good Chinese painting".  I remember muttering, in my head at least, "give me a break, what do you expect for a lousy 75 bucks!"  Not that the price is a reflection of whether my paintings are good or not, but you get the gist.  So now it seems that I'm faced with the same dilemma again, to fit into the "good Chinese" genre.  

So what is "Chinese".  Does it have to be a Mandarin in pigtail?  Must I accept the remark that I use shoelace as my blindfold?  One would say wait a minute, these could be construed as racist overtones these days and certainly we are not talking about that.  Can the perception of a race be translated to things like songs, paintings clothing, buildings, food, etc.  Does a Chinese painting carry the same weight as Chinese food for example?

So does the "ethnicity" of a piece of work have anything to do with the "ethnicity" of  person and is it defined the same way.  Do stereotype and preconception apply to a piece of work the same way as to race?  Are we just talking about appearance?  My wearing a suit and tie does not make me a westerner anymore than an American blond girl wearing Cheongsam a Chinese maiden.  Now if I could obscure her head and hide her identity could she convince us that she's Chinese under that qipao dress?  If I say that she's still "not Chinese" enough, what causes me to say that.  Could it be her bone structure, her body frame, her posture or her mannerisms?  I think we need to be able to be comfortable in discussing the nuances in how we perceive race and cultures without being narrow minded.

Now let's look at the following 2 works,

I know this is not fair since the top painting clearly shows a Kimono donning lady so one would assume that it was not a "Chinese" painting.  I know this is a weak argument since it is also entirely possible for a Chinese painting to depict a Japanese figure, so right away we are led to another cul-de-sac that we could address.  But there are many similarities in the 2 paintings.  Both paintings show a female figure in ornate robe and headdress.  Both paintings show exposed fingers and toes.  One might detect a distinct difference in the portrayal of the face however.  Actually the top Courtesan painting is a work by Vincent Van Gogh.  Thus for the sake of argument, is there anything from that painting that tells you the work was not "Asian"?  If there was, then how "Asian" was that painting.  Could one accuse Van Gogh's painting of being "not Asian enough" and if so then what was the criteria?  Are we able to witness a difference in the brushstrokes here?  Are we observant enough to see that one of the painting was not done with a round brush?

What about the attire of the subjects in a painting.  Does that influence our sorting or perception?

Which one of the two paintings below is "Chinese"?

The bottom painting clearly shows halter top and skirt and anklet that one normally does not associate with the Han race, and yet the painting was done by the great master Zhang Daqian.

What can one tell about this painting:

The above is a Gongbi style painting and this is the more formal and rigid type of rendering, with outlines and filled in color, quite different from the Xieyi style painting which deals with spontaneous brushstrokes.

Now compare the above painting with the this one:

It seems to have been painted in the same genre as the top one and utilizing flower as a subject. Actually both paintings are works by Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian Jesuit missionary to China in the 1700's.  I am almost sure that most of you are surprised that these are works from a westerner.  So is one of these 2 paintings more "Chinese" and if so what betrayed it.   Can one use the caption that it is a Chinese painting, just not Chinese enough?  Does the bottom painting remind one of a Chinese in suits or a western blond in qipao?

 A 5th century artist Xie He established the Six Canons of Chinese Painting, which governs and defines the 6 main attributes of Chinese painting and they are :

1. Rhythm
2. Strength in brush strokes, reflecting the spirit of the artist
3. Fidelity to nature
4. Appropriateness of color
5. Composition
6. Learn by emulation

When I attempted my piece on Wetlands, I tried to utilize that as my mantra.  I thought I established pretty good rhythm by utilizing consistent brushstrokes in the form of lines and dots.  I believe my brushstrokes were all calligraphic in nature,  thus the rhythm was similar as in carrying a prose.

The lines and  even the wings and bodies of the birds were written and not painted per se.  One can trace where the tip of the brush landed and lifted.  The painting was definitely faithful to nature, as evidenced by the photo I attached in the last blog of the actual wetland.

Now the color might not be carry the same aforementioned fidelity but I was trying to create a mood for the painting by just keying on two colors.  I mean I could as well paint the entire thing in ink and water and just rely on my ink tones; but I didn't have the correct paper to paint on for that style of work.  Plus that wasn't my intention to begin with.

I thought my composition was pretty good.  I somehow was able to account for foreground, middle-ground and background.  I cunningly eschewed the details in the middle and let the viewers decide if the void was water or vapor.  It is not uncommon for Chinese painting to leave the body of water or clouds as a blank space without a smidgen of information.  My birds in flight were heading towards the flocks in the background, forming a connection.  The strong deliberate wings were a good contrast to the scattered specks in the distance, the yang and the ying, in Chinese vernacular.  

My interpretation of  trees were strong indication of the traditional presentation of mixed trees as presented by the gold standard Mustard Seed Garden:

and the ground these trees sat on wore a distinctly Chinese appearance, judging by what Mustard Seed Garden had revealed:

Thus compare the Mustard Seed Garden examples with my rendition:

I must say I did a pretty good job of emulating while didn't stray too far from he actual scenery.

If I had satisfied the 6 prescribed canons of Chinese painting, why is my painting "not Chinese enough"?

Is it the picture frame; the fact that the painting was not mounted and bound by silk cloth into a scroll that one could hang?

Is it the subject matter; the fact that I was not painting the traditional landscape of soaring ethereal mountains in Shangri-La like presence?

I did the painting above some years ago and I had it professionally mounted and bound in a scroll format.  Does it look "more Chinese" ?

What if another Chinese person comments that the painting is "not Chinese enough", is that person being tribal or does his comment hold any more weight.  It is not my intention to be polemic.  The reason I am raising these points is perhaps beyond a wounded ego, this might actually be a reflection of struggling for identity.  The simple truth is, I'm trying to defend myself.

One thing is for sure, I had planned for a certain identity in doing this painting, no matter how superfluous it might be.  When one uses a rice bowl and chopsticks one eats rice or noodles, right?  My agenda was to make it overtly "Chinese",  ostensibly triggered by the yellow calligraphy paper I was using.  In doing so I forgot the innocence in painting and the "profite de l'instant".  I happen to subscribe to the notion that the artist often leaves a piece of his soul and identity in his creations.  In my case I am a Chinese transplant, which is very obvious in my diction when I speak, in spite of my 5 decades of immersion here in the States.  I am sure there are a lot of tangible and intangible attributes of the western culture rubbing off on me. Thus the more likely indictment would be that I am "not American enough".  So why was I trying to be "overtly Chinese" knowing that I am Chinese; that seemed like an oxymoron.  Perhaps all these years spent away from the Chinese culture has made me "less Chinese".  I also know that I could be accused of extending the ethnic flavor hyperbole into ethnic identity, but what if there is some correlation?

Another way to look at it is a traditional Chinese painting, landscape painting in particular, is seldom a work of en plein air, and has very little to do with the actual trees or rocks.  Often times the painting is an assimilation of thoughts, philosophies, fables and euphemisms.  As such the painting might be mired in details, but the details are not as black and white as in western landscape paintings.  Often times there are waves of details and incidentals in a traditional Chinese landscape painting that guide and propel the viewer to cascades of reflections and deep thoughts; sometimes based on political turmoil or personal losses.  They are more like settings and situations than actual sceneries.

In the end the painting perhaps was a little contrived, as in striking a static pose.  Perhaps I was trying too hard.

I'm still at a loss as to what is meant by "not Chinese enough" after all the rambling.  I am convinced that it has as much to do with the flavor as with the appearance. The enigma is in defining "flavor".   If we see a dragon dance parading with various high school bands and drum corps down Kearny Street in San Francisco to celebrate Chinese New Year, would we say the event has a Chinese flavor or a western flavor?  Could the event be "not Chinese enough" since the style and contents are not exclusively Chinese?  Is one being pedantic or is there some merit to the accusation? 

To quote a famous philosopher, perhaps it is the same as pornography; you know it when you see it!

Wetlands

 I am blessed with a couple of wetlands within an hour's drive from home.  These wetlands are managed marshlands that municipalities use for water treatment and filtration, along with providing a preserve for migratory birds and other fauna and vegetations.  Ducks and Canada geese are common visitors and I am especially fond of the geese because of the contrast provided by the black neck and the white band on their tail feathers, hence I model them often.  My last blogs of Explorers and Reflection are examples of geese and wetlands being the source for my inspiration.

I've deemed these destinations as one of the few places that I could still go visit without violating Covid protocol.  They are outdoor venues and I could easily avoid nexus with other humans by maintaining a 2 meter bubble.  So I went to this 600 acre wetland that started out as a site for water waste disposal until enough complaints were registered to convince the city to mitigate the offense.  Now it is home for a well managed eco-system punctuated with vast lakes and sloughs oozing from culverts and providing respite for domesticated and wild souls alike.  I snapped a few photos for reference, and planned my next painting.

For this exercise I chose a Xuan paper that I bought for practicing brush calligraphy.  This is not the maobian paper that I alluded to before but is yellow all the same.  Unlike the more fibrous maobian this one is crisp and smooth.  This paper is good for calligraphy because it is quite absorbent and the ink does not bleed easily.  It can also withstand repeated rubbing from the brush without roughing up the surface into felt.  The drawback for this paper is that it is not good at rendering ink tones and the lack of differentiation could make the painting sort of insipid.  Nonetheless I picked this paper mostly because it has been a while since I last used it and I wanted to reacquaint myself with it.

The yellow Xuan paper reminded me of the aged scroll paintings in museums, so I wanted to do this painting in a decidedly Chinese fashion.

I started out with the trees in the foreground.  As far as I was concerned classical Chinese paintings had a very distinct way of depicting mixed shrubs and trees.  Whenever one sees a grouping of trees being painted a certain way, one knows immediately that the painter had left a calling card to say that this was a Chinese painting.

Typically the trees would be of mixed species, often times conifers and deciduous together and assuming various pleasing poses.

I placed the trees on an incline to aid the composition and solved the problem of not having to fill in as much the center portion of the painting.  I didn't want to give too much detail about the ground, so a few side-tipped brushstrokes delineated the topography.

The curved furrows left by tractors and the observation shed were points of interest when I visited the preserve, so I was determined to work them into my painting.  Those were the landmarks that I associated with this particular wetlands preserve.  I tried to adhere to the scheme of using just two colors and employed the classic dotting method of describing shrubs, stones or grass; and in some cases just for decoration and adding interest to the contour lines of the hill.

Modeling after the pair of Canada geese in my photo, I decided to use the middle void in the painting as the flight path for my geese.  I loved the simple silhouettes of these birds.  Their simple lines were conducive to treating them as Chinese fonts rather than birds.  One could literally write them out instead of filling them in with ink.

  

I would be seriously remiss if I didn't set the stage for the hundreds of birds that swamp the preserve.  They come and go in brigades of flopping dots in the distance and it was quite a sight to behold and to ponder if there was a vast body of water yonder obscured from my line of sight.  Their cacophonic chattering broke the stillness of the area, without being annoying.

Almost all of these could be written with two or three strokes using the very tip of the round brush.  It was fun to try to mix up the positions of the wings so they didn't look too unison.  After all the fowls were not marching.

Was there any symbolism in painting paired geese flying towards the flock in the yonder?  Could the grass be greener on the other side?

I had hoped for the formless brushstrokes in the distance, especially the strip on the upper right hand side to assume a much lighter value.  I painted them with my brush wash, thinking that would be light enough. As it turned it, it wasn't.  The culprit was the paper.  This kind of Xuan paper is good at registering brushstrokes but not in showcasing ink tones. 

The painting was wet mounted on a piece of regular white Xuan and then framed.

It provided me with something new to look at for a while.