February 12, 2012 February 13, 2012

I have been struggling a bit with motivation lately. A fellow docent gave me a small book, Painting Chinese, and it came to me at the right time. It was written by a college professor living in San Francisco who had just lost funding for his program. He was 70, saw death approaching, and needed to find a way forward. He frequently walked through China Town and on a whim enrolled in a painting class at a Chinese art school. He started as the only adult in a class of beginners (5-8 year olds!). The book talks about how the practice and mediative nature of Chinese painting provided the solace, comfort and mental release necessary to help him find a new life and face death (he was not sick, just slowly decaying like all of us!) This book and a small volume I found at the library titled Art & Fear have been nudging me forward.

Last week I began practicing my Sumi-e brush strokes and working on mixing the different colors of ink. I seem to have forgotten everything I ever knew and have struggled, struggled, struggled. I worked on strokes for four days before I even tried a painting and then my paintings were over crowded and full of smudges. I also couldn’t seem to get the ink colors right in order to show depth.  I am still struggling but did finish one piece – not perfect but an improvement. I have to remember that less is more when it comes to composition!

Bamboo 1 (2012)

 

June 7, 2010 June 8, 2010

Yesterday was a lovely slow day. I have almost nothing on my calendar this week and my knee and back are healing nicely. First I wanted to show you my “enhanced” painting of the purple iris. I think the painting has more energy and depth. I am too timid with color sometimes! But

"Enhanced" Purple Iris

I learn a lot every time I try to enhance a painting I thought was complete (sometimes I “learn” how to make mudpies!)

Yesterday I spend several hours practicing the Zhuan Script. Zhuan is important to the history of Chinese manuscripts and is in the middle between pictographs and modern scripts. (9th century to 2nd century BCE) Characters are generally upright, level and straight. Below is the character for Holy. My proportions are a little off. Grab the top and the bottom and stretch it and you will have it.

"Holy" Zhuan Script

Fish - Zhuan Script

Sky and Horse - Zhuan Script

In this script I found the characters for the names of animals to be really interesting because they are so similar visually to the real thing. And I think the symbol for Sky leads you right into their way of thinking about their environment. Fun! I am learning new strokes with each script so this is really good practice.

June 5, 2010 June 6, 2010

I wanted to share just a bit about the Chinese Pictographic Script. It was originally  used to carve religious text foretelling the future on bone and tortoise shell. These are known as oracle bones. We know the script was used 4000 years ago and 5000characters have been found about half of which are readable. Research indicates that the characters were painted on with a brush before being carved. After being carved the pictographs were filled in with black, brown or red color to make them readable.

Rainbow Pictograph - ATC

Last night I decided to work on some ATC paintings. I wanted to reforce the shape of some of the characters I find beautiful. I used my watercolor crayons for the colored backgrounds. The symbol above is the one for rainbow. I think I will combine cloud, rain and rainbow in a slightly larger painting soon.

Self Pictograph - ATC

Cloud Pictograph - ATC

I also did two ATC’s based on practice work I showed yesterday. As I said, I am fascinbated by the association the ancient Chinese made between the breath and an individual life so I had to do Self. I also wanted to play around with the symbol for cloud since I will probably use it for my first multi-symbol painting. This is really fun and I am going to write the history on the back of the ATC’s before I give them to family as gifts.

I also wanted to share the name of the book I am using. It is The Complete Guide to Chinese Calligraphy by Qu Lei Lei. It includes the most amazing thing. It includes a pad of Magic Paper. This paper has sample symbols for each script printed on it and you use plain water to practice. When the water dries. The paper is again pristine. I also have used it to practice characters that are not included in the samples. I just write over the top and then they disappear! It is great!!!

March 9, 2010 March 10, 2010

I recently had a revelation and realized that to make art a routine part of my life I need a routine. As you all know life interfers with our best intentions. I want to use Mondays to learn and practice Sumi-e and Fridays or Sundays to draw, draw, draw. Painting, exploring materials, doodling will be part of the schedule any day, any where, any time. I just need to set aside some specific time for Sumi-e and drawing which I see as major skill builders. Well, of course, life stepped in and Monday we ran errands and worked outside and played with the dogs in the sunshine. Since my Tuesday drawing class with Irina is over, yesterday became Sumi-e day. Using newsprint and lamp black and charcoal watercolor (I was almost out of ink) I practiced the curving strokes needed to make dots, dashes, flower petals. I have four small prints that I bought from a catalog years ago. They sit at the top of my stairs to greet visitors and are of Chinese calligraphy for words like laughter and friendship. I looked at these and decided that two were too difficult for me to copy but that two had potential for my current learners skill level. I practiced and practiced. I am not sure if I am making all the strokes appropriately but here is my last attempt.

Laughter

I also worked on the painting of an orchid. The orchid is part of the Four Gentlemen that are used to teach the basic strokes. The four are bamboo, orchid, chrysanthemum, and plum blossom (preview of things to come!).

Orchid #2

Now the neat thing is that my order from Oriental Art Supply was delivered late yesterday so I was able to use better paper for my final practice. Both of these paintings were done using double shuen practice paper, Black Magic ink and charcoal watercolor. The book I am using is The Chinese Painting Handbook edited by Viv Foster that I bought at Barnes & Noble.