Adding Colour to Painting

Here is a picture of the painting of yesterday's blog, with a clearer and more accurate depiction of the colour.      A key feature for Chinese landscape is subtlety in colour and nuanced variation in the colour tones.  Look closely to see how it varies both within each land-form blocks, and also between them.  This variation is obtained by putting on colour in layers (glazing).   Chinese watercolours are mostly transparent, so that the layers will add on top of one another.

First make sure the colour pigments are well dispersed in water.  Maintain a not-too-wet brush and take the colour at the brush tip,  Then use a broad brush stroke to quickly apply the colour to the element in the painting.  The element could be a rock face, a tree trunk, a slope, or one layer of land-form.  Work,  in sequence, on each block/layer/element as one unit.  Another glazing layer can be added when the paper is dry, or almost dry (just moist).  Maintain a lively variation.  For example, in this painting, while the whole colour scheme is one of sepia/brownish, some blocks are more reddish, and some are yellowish.   Of course, the shaded or shadowy areas are bluish.  Glazing of layers produces these.  The sky, water and cloud/mist are maintained as white, even though there may seem to have other tints, artifacts of digital photography.

Doing Rocks and Landform

Landscape can be thought of as lumps of landform layers stacked from front to back on the painting.  Each layer is separated from each other by an edge, which can be depicted by an outline stroke.  So to build the landscape, we use a series of outlines.  To illustrate, we use the painting below.  On the left is the painting.  On the right, I show the outline strokes used.  The red show the foreground rock outcrop.  As you can see, it is built from a series of lines, rendering the layers... Each layer has its own shape, and the texture strokes provide that.  Texture strokes are shown as orange patches.  The layers's edges are further strengthened by dots, which are the trees and shrubs, shown in green.   A similar scheme is deployed for the far mountain.  The strokes are shown in blue.  A careful comparison of the left with the right should be useful.  The rest of the landform can be constructed in a similar manner.
 After the outlining, texturing and dots, colour will be added.  The very distant mountain is done with a broad stroke.

Class of Winter 2013

The following prototype trees can form useful exercise for brush practice.  Remember the brush can be used for drawing lines for outlines.  It can also be used for painting broad strokes.  Experiments with different wetness in the brush -- use the brush in an upright centered manner, or slanted as in a side stroke.  Dots can be made large or small, elongated (like short lines) as in  pine trees.  Use the pine tree to practice these short strokes, as well as the texture on the tree trunk.  Have fun.

Tree trunks can be single stroke or outlined on two sides.  Dots can be a repeat of a pattern (cluster) of a few dots. 

Pine needles consist of a cluster of pointy strokes, and the clusters are put into groups using overlaps and irregular positioning.

The pine tree is a tree of strong character, and has a definite stance and gesture.   Noting these features help to render the trees.   Start the trees in the middle main fork, and work up and down, adding texture, needles and twigs, while being mindful of the overall shape of the tree.

Final Stage of 'Cloud Mountain'

Here's the result of putting color (i.e. glazing)  onto the picture.  The glazing process consists of two parts, which is repeated to build depth.  One is done dry, i.e., the color is put on the initially dry paper.  This serves to color the various parts of the composition according to its natural color, e.g., a brownish color for land form, greenish color for leaves of trees etc.   Additional color is added to enhancing the 3-D shape of the elements, i.e., to create shades and shadows.  The second part of the process is a wet-in-wet wash, with the paper already wet.   This is useful in creating forms with fuzzy soft edges, especially suitable for clouds and mists, the sky and distant mountains.

Repeating the glazing process a few time on the picture, we obtain this result.

Daffodils

A daffodil picture help celebrate Chinese New Year!  Welcome, DRAGON!

Stage 2 of the Monastery in the Clouds

Here is stage 2 of the painting.  Use darker ink to add more details to the trees (near -- pine needles; mid-distance -- dots for leaves; twigs and branches).  The buildings are modified, and clarified.  The edges between different layers of scenery are also clarifed, by darkening and adding dots.  Hints of the clouds are introduced by a dry brush rubbing with light ink tinged with a little blue.  This treatment suggests the boundary of the white cloud enveloping the mid-elevation of the mountains. Distant mountains are added with  lively brush strokes.

Cloud-mountain Exercise

Here is a first stage of a composition of a monastery in the mountain above the clouds.  The effect to focus on is the relation between mountain and the cloud.  Use a "dry" brush, and make sure the ink is not too dark in mid-distance elements.  We will darken it in later stages.  Just frame out the overal composition.