Category: Composition

Line & Color, ii

YELLOWS

Another picture of the outline:

The first underlayers are begun: a lemon yellow, which is a yellow with a greenish cast to it, and a warmish yellow, one closer to orange than green. The idea is that the underlying lemon yellow will aim toward a cooler green, and, obviously, the underlying warmish yellow, will aim toward a warmish green. Two separate photos are provided – the first with the lemon yellow applied, then the orangish yellow.

As you can see in the next photo, the warmer yellow – I think it is a cadmium – has been added to the outline drawing. Sometimes there was more pigment in the brush, sometimes less. The intensity of the yellow varies. There is a definite difference between the two yellows. Some of the leaves have the lemon yellow for the sub-painting, but most have the warmer color.

I don’t know if this is “traditional” in color or approach, but it should be fun to see the results!

Line & Color, i

Today, I am just writing off the top of my head.

I have been working on a handmade paper, experimenting with it as far as color, line, and ability to withstand wetness in the form of washes and in the form of repeated layers of color.

So . . . the next picture was a free-hand outlining of chrysanthemums, trying to create lined areas with logical beginnings and ends, and then painted with the saiboku. I think the results are much better. Remember the coloring books of your childhood? Staying inside the lines was “good” – and actually, with “meticulous” painting, staying in the lines is “good” too!  And, it was fairly easy to do. I filled the lines in with mixtures of colors, in one layer, except for a couple of small areas where you will see areas of orange in the green of the leaves. I recalled, last minute, something I read about applying multiple thin layers of colors, to gain a translucency not possible with a single layer of paint. Thus, I dabbed in a bit of orange, while the paper and paint had not yet dried. I like the results.

And this leads to today’s doings, which I hope to photograph along the way. It may be done today, but as the day is dampish, and other things are going, it may be a project of some duration.

To begin, I return to the chrysanthemums. Ink ground, I did the outlines, some with darker ink, some with lighter ink. What I plan to do is to do thin layers of paint, and then photograph the picture before beginning the next layer of painting. Never having done this before, I will be looking to some texts, such as Fritz van Briessen’s The Way of the Brush: Painting Techniques of China and Japan. Others will be mentioned as used.

White Space

In Western painting, white space is often something to fill up. The closest I can think of in Western painting where white space is used as a part of a picture is vignetting.

Vignetting occurs when a painting blurs towards its edges, creating a shape inside a border of white or another color. The white space encases the central object of the picture in an oval or round shape, acting as a frame to the picture itself. This is a conscious use of white space by the painter to frame a picture – it contains the picture, but does not interact with the painting itself.

When French painters of the 19th century became aware of the compositional elements in Japanese prints it was quite an eye-opener. Parts of a picture were suggested rather than seen – the imagination was used to fill in beyond the edges. Thus, in this same context, a piece of white paper has the potential for so much more than being filled in!

In her book Japanese Calligraphy: The Art of Line & Space, Christine Flint Sato writes “The calligrapher, facing the blank white page before beginning to write, does not ponder how to fill it, but how best to activate it” (p. 55). This suggests a dynamic relationship between artist or calligrapher with the white space – the white space is vital and alive, an element with its own life, its own potential, its own heartbeat and breath.

How then does the artist approach this white space? In ink painting, or in calligraphy, white can show through breaks in the ink as it is laid down – but the relationship with the remaining white continues. How the artist or calligrapher proceeds can energize the white, creating an exciting and active alliance between ink and blank paper – or kill it dead. Sato refers to this dead white as kukyo, meaning “emptiness” (p. 61). You can see Ms. Sato’s work, and some details of this book, at http://sumiwork.com/

Many books dedicated to the art of sumi-e write about its immediacy, but in practicing the art of sumi-e, I have found that I must practice to create that immediacy. This means knowing how wet my brush needs to be, how thick the ink, where I want to paint, where I do not want to paint. Japanese calligraphers, according to Sato, practice and repeat until they can produce a spontaneous – but a controlled spontaneity – calligraphic artwork.

Ink painting, as with all arts, requires practice and experience, and a willingness to “just do it”! In “doing it” skill is gained, and the mastery of the brush, the ink, the paper, the white space, give the artist a language of experience that allows, at last, that expression of self to flow so easily . . . practice those bamboo leaves every day!