In most western paintings, the moon is painted full, large and overwhelming. Â In Japanese scrolls, the moon is shown in all its phases. Â Waxing. Â Waning. Â Gibbous. Â Full. Â Crescent. Â Quarter. Â In fog. Â Alone in the sky. Â Through the trees.
The fact is, to paint the moon full is very simple! Â Catching its other shapes and moods is not so easy. Â I’ve tried to paint the moon over the years, attempting to catch a quality or mood in a few strokes. I’ll leave it to you to judge.
Yesterday was an unusual day for us here in SoCal – grey morning with sprinklings of rain. Â This is the kind of morning to take time to make breakfast and potter around doing nothing that is required by someone or something else. Â Being Saturday makes it all the more fun!
Last night the university (California Lutheran) my husband, Josh, attends had an honors dinner for those in their programs and department who have outstanding grades. Â His major is Computer Information Systems, and his GPA is definitely up there. Â Either he is the only one in his program, or else no one else managed to get decent grades! Â We went and, at our assigned table, met some lovely couples who also were being honored – all spouses. Â In a way, it was like going to a wedding! Â The meal was great, the bar was decent, and we were entertained by live music – sopranos singing old French songs and from the Marriage of Figaro, accompanied by a live piano player. Â As it was also a dinner to honor people, some students receiving awards gave speeches. Â One young woman, completing her BA in English, talked about poetry and the community at the school. Â It was so youthful (I felt ancient!) and hopeful, it made me realize that in my own too-busy life, the joy of discovery and the sense of an adventure just around the corner has been vanishing in the wake of one more job, one more job.
So, why the title of this post, Retrospective? I’ve been reading some blogs by people I enjoy from beginning to end.  Some span several years.  Written retrospectives, but written in the (then) present tense.  Fun to watch people change and grow, the process of life and projects, events unfolding.  
Artist retrospectives are as enjoyable – seeing, in a very visible line, movement and development within an artist’s journey.  Biographical books, with oodles of photos, also are pleasure.  One of my favorites is Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Around.
As I get older, I get a bit more harsh about things – less willing to be fluffy – but also take a deeper pleasure in simple things, like making breakfast muffins, the smile of our young nephew, the mockingbirds singing throughout the night.
What retrospection does is also point out that only in the present is anything accomplished. Â Life is a process, but one done in the moment. Â I don’t have too many misgivings about my life so far, thoughts of “I should have done this, not that.” Â I think I would like to travel a bit more – I’ve seen this country coast to coast – lived in about 15 towns – visited nearly every state – but have never been to Europe of Asia or Africa. Â I would like to read more books, classical and modern. Â I would like to use my French more, and learn Japanese. Â I want to paint more. Â And design and knit more. Â Unfortunately, I’ve been busy with program development, writing mandated curriculum for the State, and getting a teaching credential on top of it all. Â All but the credential is out of the way, and that is done in 2 weeks.
The small things in life give great pleasure. Â Yesterday I took the time to look at the flowers and plants around the house which have been sadly ignored. Â There is a fuschia redbud outside my studio window (or office, depending on how the room is being used!) which begins the year with bright pink flowers. Â These give way to dark red, heart-shaped leaves. Â This is how the tree looks from my window. Â In the early morning, the sun shines through the leaves. Â 
Close up, the leaves are quite lovely. As spring moves into summer, they become greenish red.
I decided to wander around the yard, looking at the flowers, and seeing what kind of quality I can get from my little Casio Exilim. I took macro shots of various flowers, using the “best shot” portrait setting. I use this for nearly everything as it has nine sensors that pop up on the LCD display. It seems to work pretty well, as you can see below. Colors are pretty nice.
I noticed the dirt near the redbud looked lumpy. And then I saw this:
This is one of the Asian lilies I planted last year. I think this is a yellow-spotted one. I’m going to try to photograph it everyday – a reminder to look at the small things, to not let life get overwhelmed by the rush of work. Check out the “Life of a Flower” page to see what happens!
These past few weeks I have gone through some of my past paintings. Â One of the things I have been trying to figure out are ways in which it may be possible to create a certain spontaneous, zen, sumi-quality in a painting done using western materials.
The absorbent paper, and other papers of Japan, China, and Korea are not readily available in the United States.  Mounting the very thin, Asian papers is a challenge. Traditional methods of wheat paste are difficult, and until the method is perfected, the artist can lose a lot of work if not careful. In Japan and China, there are shops to do the mounting for you – not so here. Other methods for mounting include using a framer, but the framer may not be able to get rid of the wrinkles for you. Dry mounting, using silicone release paper, such as used in photography mounting, may work, but even that can be risky – the wrinkles may still be there, or the adhesive may catch another part of the painting if you are not careful.
Western watercolor paper comes in rough, cold press, and hot press. Yupo is a Japanese synthetic paper, but sumi ink and gansai rinse away under running water. Thus, it seems, that the ideal is to somehow re-create the absorbent quality as best as possible using western papers.
The quality of xuan and tissue-thin sulfite papers is one of both absorbency and ability to portray each brush stroke. These are the ideal papers for sumi ink and sumi-e. Â Dry brush is easy enough on western paper. But that absorbency? How to achieve that?
Keeping the paper damp, so the color or ink is drawn into the paper fibers is critical. Â I don’t want the paper so wet that everything bleeds, but damp enough so the character of the ink or paint is caught. Â This is so hard to describe!
This painting of bamboo is done on Fabriano 100% Cotton Cold Press paper. First, it was masked off with drafting tape onto a board, and then a layer of water was lightly brushed over the surface, and then a pale wash of lemon yellow added.
As in traditional sumi-e, the idea was to paint without outline, and to create a focused, yet spontaneous, painting. The shape of the bamboo stalks was considered, and painted without the drawing of outlines. The brush was pushed onto the paper, or paused in areas. I touched the paper to assess its dryness or dampness, and waited for more drying to occur, or added water as needed. To get the color gradations, I loaded my brush with pale-medium-dark paint, but at times I helped it along by adding color on the edges of the stems, or lifting as necessary. The result seems to have been successful.
With Arches 140# Hot Press paper, the technique is similar, but the smaller the sheet (as in the small size for ACEOs), it becomes apparent that the paper can warp more easily the wetter it becomes. Weighting down the finished product seems to help, and so does ironing!
These next pictures were done on ACEO-sized Arches. For the maple leaves, the background was given a very light wash of yellow, and then, as you can see, a wet-into-wet technique done with the branch on the far right. It has a very soft effect. The lighter leaves were painted first and allowed to become nearly dry before the darker leaves were added. Brush movement of pushing down, or turning and lifting, were done to create the shapes of the leaves as well as for the tiny maple seeds. Overall, fairly successful.
The plum tree below is also done on an ACEO-sized sheet of Arches 140# Hot Press. Here, the effort to utilize the damp paper succeeded to a degree. I did load my brush with successive levels of ink, light to dark, but I did not succeed in its showing up. Perhaps the paper needed to be a bit dryer than it was, as the ink shades all blurred to create one shade. Still, the final result was not too bad.
I think that with more practice I might be able to achieve the effects I want, but it will take analysis and experience. In the meantime, I am trying – still! – to master the mounting of xuan with silicone release paper. Â But, to tell the truth, I rather doubt I have the patience for it.
Many, many moons ago, as a young and novice sock knitter, I produced my first socks. Â I read my book. Â I followed the directions. Â I made the heel flap, turned the heel, picked up stitches, did the decreases and — and — and!
I had holes at the very top of my gusset.
I ripped it all out. Â I read my book. Â I followed the directions. Â And there, once again, was those pesky holes.
I ripped out. Â I read my book.
You get the idea.
Finally, in frustration, I just knit some extra stitches and did some strange things, and the holes magically disappeared. But, I had not followed the rules laid out in the sock pattern directions, and felt that, somehow, my inadequacy as a knitter was to blame.
Now mind you all, this was back in the days before internet, when yarn stores did not exist except far and between. Â Libraries and books and relatives and friends were the only sources of information. Â No one I knew knit socks. Â I was on my own.
Fast forward a century or two. Â Nancy Bush’s book Folk Socks debuted. Â More sock books were published. Â Sock knitting was In! Â And The-Hole-at-the-Top-of-the-Gusset came out of the closet.
These memories tumbled out of the past as I was browsing YouTube. Â This little jewel of a video shows you that nasty hole and how to conquer it. Â Thank you KatAutumn!
Water birds – wading, fishing birds – are a common theme in many Asian paintings. These include cranes, herons, egrets. There is something incredibly beautiful and fierce about these birds.
Seeing these birds is an incredible experience. When I was a student at UC Santa Barbara, my dormitory looked out over the lagoon. Great Blue Herons nested in the eucalyptus trees. One day, an escaped pink flamingo began living in the water! Hiking in the Matilija Creek area of Ventura County, I sat down and suddenly, within inches of my head, whoosh! – out flies a heron! Egrets wade in the marshy areas of local rivers.
Imagine yourself as one of these birds. Suddenly, your legs bend forward at the knee, not backward. You don’t have hands. You have long, wide wings, with feathers rippling out from the sides of your body as you bring them forward. Your nose is now long, longer, longer . . . how long is a bill? Is it a bill or a beak? And your nose is also your mouth – snap! A fish, a frog for dinner. And then, there is your neck. Long and undulating, suddenly your head is able to turn to look behind you, it goes up and down a long distance (certainly longer than mine!). And eyes on either side of your head, not looking out in front of you. How does it affect your vision? Lack of depth but awareness of movement?
Take a walk in your new bird body . . . feel how your shoulders hunch, how your wings expand, how you walk in the water . . . expand the crest on your head, fluff your feathers . . . launch yourself into the sky like a rocket, stand still and then, faster than can be seen, snatch your fish from the creek. How do your claws feel as they dangle when you walk, when you come in to land, when you launch from your nest in the reeds? What do you see around you? Leafy trees, swamp grasses, other birds. What do you hear? Rain on water? Wind in the trees? What do you feel when the wind rustles your feathers or rain pours off your back?
Photos are incredible resources for studying birds. There are many public domain sites from which photos can be copied. The snowy egret above came from the digital library system of the US Fish & Game site: http://images.fws.gov/. Take a look . . . imagine . . . think about how your brush can create a feather, catch a movement. What shades of grey? White? Ink only?
Ink, Yarn & Beer 