Dots -- tree leaves and beyond

Dots -- tree leaves and beyond (2), a photo by Paul&Siu on Flickr.

Dots are very useful in landscape painting.  To depict tree leaves, often we have to do a lot of them, and to do them willy-nilly can lead to chaos.   Thus, it is helpful to do them in clusters.  Examples of such are shown in the above figure.  A cluster of 4 is shown in the upper left, and comes in pointy or blunt variety.  A blunt type was used in the the Daijin picture.  The clusters are best done with some overlap, and distributed irregularly.  For a lively effect, the distribution should be irregular -- some overlap, some spaced apart, some concentrated, some dispersed, etc.

Clusters of 5 arranged like the petals of a flower are in the upper right.  Note the 5-configuration can have variations in itself, some arranged in a round pattern, some in a flat pattern.  I also show this pattern crowning the rocks.

Vertical dots dots are shown next.   These are best done using a very dry brush with bristles somewhat splayed.  The stroke starts off heavy (top) and ends light (bottom).  Then one can go over them with lighter ink strokes to give depth (after the strokes have dried). This is the common practice to give depth.  The horizontal dots can be done as a dragging motion of the brush at a shallow angle, again with a dry brush.  Going over with light ink again adds depth.

A few final words.  Vary the pattern.  For the 4-cluster, vary the orientation, length, width of the 4 strokes  For flower pattern, vary the arrangement as discussed above.  Vary the ink tones.  Vary the size and width; (vary the pressure of the strokes and wetness and ink content in the brush).   In dotting a tree, the dots at the periphery of the tree are most important.  They show the most clearly, and should be done with more care.

Dots -- tree leaves and beyond

Dots -- tree leaves and beyond, a photo by Paul&Siu on Flickr.

Dots are very useful in landscape painting.  Here's another segment of the Daijin painting of the previous blog post.  It provides examples of various dot patterns.  To do dots, it is helpful to do them in clusters.  Examples of such are shown in the next blog.  Just note that in this painting, the trees towards the left are done with a dot pattern of a 4-cluster.  The tree toward the right, above the bridge, can be considered to consist of a flower cluster of 5 (though the picture is too fuzzy to make out with confidence).  The rocks and landmasses are crowned with dot patterns as well.  It is useful to think of these also as consisting of distinct clusters;  a 5-cluster appears to work in most cases.

Then there are the overhanging trees in the upper part of the picture.  One has vertical strokes for leaves, and the other has horizontal strokes.  These are typically done with a dry brush, with the bristles somewhat splayed apart.  Note that these linear strokes fall also under the category of dots.  "Dots" in Chinese painting is a broad concept.

In the next blog we discuss how to do these dots.

Happy Autumn 月是故鄉明

Happy Autumn 月是故鄉明, a photo by Paul&Siu on Flickr.

To celebrate the Autumn Equinox, and the Chinese Mid-autumn festival, and to welcome in the fall Chinese Painting class at Kensington,  here is a landscape with a moon added.  The original painting was by Dai Jin 戴進, from the Ming Dynasty.   Titled "Ten thousand leaques of the Yangtze River 長江萬里圖",  it is a long scroll with a long horizontal continuous scenery.  I extracted a small segment,  added the moon and calligraphy, and imbued it with a blue hue using Photoshop Touch on my tablet.  Just for fun 贺中秋！

Using the Samsung Note 10.1 for quick sketch

Using the Samsung Note 10.1 for quick sketch, a photo by Paul&Siu on Flickr.

One key attraction for this tablet is the touch-sensitve pen integral to it.  The pen works well.  It can produce lines with flow and energy!  This sketch took just minutes.   The red and the black go well together,  very bold and sharp.

Happy Year of the Snake

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! This greeting card is created using the stylus-equipped Samsung tablet. It has quite a bit of potential as a creative tool! There is enough control and flexibility in the stylus to render lines and shapes in an artistic manner.

 Wishing everyone a successful new year, with good health and happiness.

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.