Sunrise at Huangshan

I recently took a trip to Singapore.  I wanted to experience Lau Pa Sat (old market) and I wasn't disappointed at all.  But that is not the reason for writing this blog.

As I was packed in the middle isle in the back of the belly of a 777, I pretty much had no vantage point of the view outside of the plane.  Well the blinds were all closed anyways so the passengers could spill "Z"s at 40K feet.  So I wasn't missing much. Then one of the passengers sitting by a window raised the window blind.  The cabin was immediately bathed with a streak of reddish amber light, arcing across the walls of the dimmed economy class holding pen, as the plane floats across the thin air.  

The sun was rising.

I stretched my neck and yawed my head, trying to maintain a line of sight to the rising sun outside the window, sidestepping the dark silhouettes of passengers' heads.  I was trying to absorb that image as much as I could.  I know it would be futile for me to take a picture with my phone, I would probably end up with a little amber oval amidst a dark field of heads.  The glow was so encompassing, I felt its presence more than simply seeing it.  

I found my old "run of the mill" piece of Huangshan after I returned home.  A piece that I did years ago, honing my painting skill.  I wanted to revive that painting by making the sun come up from behind those rock formations.

Yes, that encounter with the rising sun from inside a plane had done something to my psyche.  

Normally a painting done on Xuan paper is not meant to be painted over.  Fortunately I was toying with different ways to present paintings done on paper, I mounted my painting on cement board.  I also coated it with a gel medium to protect the surface, since I intended to display that without a glass cover.

That meant I could paint over my original work.  What a novel idea !  (I am sure oil painters do that all the time?)

I started out by "softening" the scene by accentuating the cloud and mist to make the painting less "rigid".

Then I added the sun, with its rays; as any textbook would have shown.

It looked OK, but something was missing.  I didn't "feel" it.  Perhaps it was too "storybook" like.  Too much like a page of illustration.  Who Knows.  I was just having a soliloquy.  Mumbling, actually.

Somehow I thought of Photoshop, a tool that I often use with my photography.  "Layers" to be specific.

What if I created a layer of the rising sun and superimpose that on the original painting.  Hmmmmmmm.

There's only one way to find out.

First I needed to see the effect of a piece of cicada skin Xuan superimposed on my painting.  I needed to know the degree of transparency I was dealt with.  Unlike Photoshop, I would not be able to adjust the transparency of my "layers" here.

Satisfied that the cicada skin Xuan was transparent enough to not totally obscure the painting underneath, I began to prepare my layer for the sun.

Before putting my feet to the fire, I did a dry run.  I took a picture of the top layer "sun" and superimposed it onto my bottom layer of the original painting.

This might actually work!

 

Two finches in a pear tree

Christmas has come and gone but the proverbial Twelve Days of Christmas song somehow keeps playing in my head.

          On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me a partridge in a pear tree

          On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me two turtle doves, and a partridge in a                  pear tree

I am reminded by the lyrics of my painting of pear tree flowers.  I have always loved that simple painting and to me it demonstrates the merits of Chinese round brush painting, although one would not associate it with the "traditional" Chinese brush painting.  Everything in that painting was done with discrete calligraphic brushstrokes, as if I was writing multitudes of "dots".  On top of that, it was sort of a plein-air painting.  I sat in the backyard, writing all dots as blossoms from my pear tree.  With that said, I've always felt that something was missing.  It lacked a story.  It lacked a plot.

How about borrowing from the Christmas carol and place a couple of finches in my pear tree.  I don't have partridges in my backyard but I do see finches.

I don't want to make my finches too ostentatious.  The finches I see usually betray their presence by their chirping or by their flickering, seldom by their colors.  The black-head finch, or the yellow-body variety would blend in too much with my painting of pear tree flowers.  I mean, I do want my finches to be sort of obscure, but not to the extent of puzzles like  "Where's Waldo" ( aka Where's Wally ).  I think the red-head finch best fit my purpose.  They use the color of their red head as calling cards, but their bodies blend in pretty well with their surroundings. 

This looks like a good spot to hang out,

 

Then there's this part of the painting that I don't quite like.  I must have been too faithful to what I was observing.  I painted two branches forming a 90 degree angle with each other.

Perfect place to place my other finch, to hide the oops.

My finch is going to be perched with its head turned back, interacting with its playmate below.  I like the pose for the simple reason that it creates movement, and forms connections.

I don't quite like the way the feet look.  The claws are not clasping like a typical bird would.  The claws need to be longer for starters.  I suppose I can try to hide them with flower petals.  I do like the fact that the greyish plumage blends in nicely with the existing painting.  

The finches do transform my painting.

Happy Year of the Dragon

Happy New Year

猛龍過江

https://www.greetingsisland.com/ecard/pqbrwcy0kdcq

Water and dragon

I am running out of time to carry out my tradition of doing a painting for the Chinese New Year.  I do that for self amusement and I also render the painting into a digital greeting card so I can send it out to my friends and family.  Eventually I hope to have a collection of all the 12 Zodiac animals.  

Dragon is the protagonist for the upcoming New Year.  I am reminded of an old saying that proclaims "the water doesn't need to be deep; it will have spiritual energy if a dragon resides in it"  "水不在深, 有龍則靈".  Thus I am ruminating my thoughts around that theme.

Obviously the first thing is to try and paint water.  My hypothesis is that the dragon would be fierce, and it is not going to be doing a free style swim, but more like a butterfly stroke.

So the water should be splashing and churning. 

I am trying to augment the void spaces by drawing in white lines using a white gel pen.

I am not liking it.  Too contrived.

So I am using a little more restraint and patience and also using a rather dry brush to try to work the void spaces now.  I am trying to learn from the last attempt.

So a dry brush is definitely the way to go.  I can control the bleed much better to control the shape of the voids.  I do get the sense of waves crashing.

How about a little color and attitude?  Just go for broke?

Family Zodiac completed

Finally I wrapped up on the Family Zodiac project.

Whether the finished product has artistic value or not is beside the point.  I'm sure it appears to be utilitarian or commercial, but the appeal of the painting is in its meaning.  Obviously I am prejudiced since I understand the nuances.

So the painting follows the doctrines of I Ching, where Tai Chi produces 2 Instruments, represented by the Dragon and the Snake.  The 2 Instruments produces 4 Images, comprised of a Rat, a Rooster, a Hen and a Baby Ox.  These 6 animals happen to be the constituents of the family I am doing the painting for. 

The Snake is fashioned in the shape of the word Loh, our family name, in cursive.

The cosmic swirls emanate from the two complementary/opposing energies, modeled with the proverbial Tai Chi or Ying Yang insignia.  In the swirls one finds a purple haze.  The significance of the purple haze is that it represents imminent auspicious events.  

The recipient of the Zodiac painting is a Rat, thus I was going to print my New Year Rat painting on a piece of white silk as an added memento.  Unfortunately I didn't know what print setting to use so the color came out awful.  I grabbed my brush and color and painted over the printed areas.  That was fun and was easier since all I had to do was to cover up the dreadful colors.  I decided to use gold acrylic for the writing instead of ink.  This actually reminded me of the practice of photo saloons coloring black and white portrait photo prints in the old days.  Perhaps I could find a job doing that.  

Just as I was going to close the books on this project, I remembered that I had made a seal for myself in the past; a toy chop if you will.  I had a friend whose hobby was into clay and ceramics and she had her own electric kiln.  I used some of her clay remnants and fashioned a seal for myself.  It showed the Big Dipper housed in a hulu gourd.  The gourd is omnipresent in our culture, not only as a vessel for storage, but also as a symbol of medicine and an extractor of negative energy.  In short, it is an auspicious object.

For the astute Chinese readers, the seal that I use for a lot of my paintings says 大熊 (great bear).  My dad named his children after the stars in the Big Dipper, the Ursa Major; so we all borne the name of a star in the Ursa Major.  Fortunately my dad did not have more than 7 children.  My siblings and I were all addressed as bears ( as in Great Bear constellation) as a way of endearment.  Our legal name was strictly for the school and government use.  Hence the significance of my using the Big Dipper as a seal.  I am paying homage to my dad and my family.

With the inclusion of this seal, the painting takes on a new meaning and significance, for me anyways.  In the grand scheme of things, I trust it is fitting for using this seal, since we are dealing zodiac topics.  In a backhanded way however, you can accuse me of manufacturing some bravado to an otherwise vapid piece of work;  perhaps.  

Rooster and Hen

Happy New Year!

My family zodiac painting still needs two more inhabitants to complete, two chickens.  In Chinese zodiac, the translated word should have been the gender non-specific "chicken", and not "rooster" as what is popularly referred to.  I suppose the "Year of the Rooster" sounds better than "Year of the Chicken" in the western society.  In this particular case, there happens to be a male and female chicken in my family zodiac.  

As in the case of the Rat, I've done a painting of the rooster for the Lunar Year of the Rooster, so I proceeded with not much planning or plotting.  Perhaps it was more like uninspired; I had done this before. This was not my first rodeo, right?

I kept looking at this and I really didn't like it.  There was something wrong with my painting but I couldn't put a finger on it.  It was just a feeling. 

Perplexing!

Today the fog finally lifts.  My rooster looks frazzled.  

The tail feathers just don't look right.  The brushstrokes of the black feathers are nowhere near the quality of the lighter brown ones.  They look thin, dry and malnourished, like the hair of someone afflicted with terminal illness.  Definitely not befitting a proud rooster.

I'm trying to recall the way I painted those black feathers.  I recall that I was really concerned about the silk that I was painting on; it didn't disperse nor allow bleeding like a normal piece of unsized Xuan paper would.  I was also concerned about the backing paper might separate from the silk itself, since I had absolutely no prior experience with this craft "silk" and I didn't know how much abuse by wetness it could take.  Thus I was using a brush that was perhaps too small and too dry for the required brushstrokes.  The result was a bunch of overlapping black streaks, each brushstrokes attempting to hide and modify the previous one.  They were very different from the blades as described by the brown ones.  I was no longer "writing", but sketching! Compare the black brushstrokes with the brown ones, and my analysis should be quite evident.  

I am hoping this can be ameliorated by using a bigger brush, and better ink.  This requires some bold moves on my part.  I am using the "blackest" ink in my inventory for this attempt.  This is an ink that I normally shun, due to the "shine" it imparts.  It gives the brushstroke a glossy finish.  Maybe I can exploit this, as heathy feathers are shiny?

I am also pre-wetting the destined brushstroke with a clean wet brush first.  I am hoping that the wet track would make the subsequent dark ink flow a bit, perhaps bleed a little, so that it is more in line with the Xieyi style of Chinese Brush. 

Much better!  That's more like a rooster.  More forceful and calligraphic brushstrokes, and there are actually natural areas of voids or lighter ink within the brushstroke, thanks to the pre-wetting by the clean wet brush.  The brushstrokes are now alive with nuances, and no longer just dead markings. 

Onward with the Rooster's partner, the Hen.  Having enjoyed some success with correcting the Rooster, my brushstrokes enjoy a moment of unrestrained zeal.  They appear and feel much freer, with more aplomb.

I am so happy that the straight-on perspective turns out to be sufficiently convincing.  

Here comes the Hen.

Water

I did something quite different with my "tedious project", and that was trying to paint with a Gongbi style workflow.  That involved drafting a copy of outlined objects and then filling in the blanks with color.  That tedious project had to do with reflections and ripples in a duck pond.  What made that particular project tedious and perhaps unique ( different from your typical everyday Gongbi style paintings of birds and flowers ) was that my painting had a mosaic appearance to it.  Quite impressionistic to say the least.

So I am going to visit that format again and try my luck.  With nothing but ripples this time as my subject matter.  I am hoping to digitize if you will, the analog experience of constantly shimmering ripples.  Forever morphing and yet appearing so orderly as to be cavalries swarming across the surface.

I am starting out by defining the bright areas of the water first.  Typically these are the fronts of the ripples.  Thus these areas might seem random but they actually remind me of U-shaped staples arranged in rows.

There are going to be tons of these bright spots and I really don't want to confuse myself by all these wriggly lines.  After 5 minutes of this I could no longer distinguish which areas are bright and which are dark.  To help my ailing cognitive brain I am cheating by filling in the dark areas as I go.

In a typical Chinese Gongbi style painting, the quality of the brushstroke for lines is of utmost importance.  They need to be evenly applied, like the gold rims around a fine china plate or cup.  My brushstrokes here really do not pass muster.  My excuses are that I am preoccupied with the expressiveness of the shimmering water, and I am eager and anxious to lay down the next piece of the mosaic before I lose my train of thought.

So there is order in my madness.  The red lines in the following photo show my perception and identification of the ripples as they dance on the water. 

This is more tedious than I have anticipated.  Time to pin this up on the wall, allow myself some distance from this mess of untidy lines and reassess this project.