As I so much enjoyed illustrating haikus, I decided to set up a challenge for myself. I bought the following haiku book, and decided to illustrate them... maybe not all of them, but I intend to do most of them, little by little...
Before the summer holidays in 2008, my art teacher gave us an assignment… I might be too academic, but as far as drawing/painting is concerned, I have always enjoyed assignments. That’s probably why I find it so difficult to get motivated to paint when I am on my own. I do have a lot of imagination, but when it comes to translate this imagination on a canvas or piece of paper… I can’t. So having an assignment somehow forces me to get started.
The assignment was to pick a haiku and illustrate it.
Hmmm… what’s a haiku? Well, I didn’t know at the time. A haiku is a form of Japanese poetry, consisting of 17 syllables.
And a haiga is basically an illustration of a haiku. Or, more precisely, according to Wikipedia: a haiga is a style of Japanese painting based on the aesthetics of haikai, from which haiku poetry derives, which often accompanied such poems in a single piece.
So here I was, flicking through a haiku book, searching for inspiration. I finally found one, which was something like
‘Having cut the peony that evening, I felt distressed’
And here is what I came up with – it might not be great, but I love it because this exercise forced me to be creative rather than just trying my best to copy something.
The calligraphy and the seal are still missing. I am working on it!
During one of my painting class, we learnt how to apply light grey ink in parts of the painting to suggest shadow.
‘A Chinese brush painting is created using lines and dots, marks made on the paper to produce a likeness or impression of plants and animals, mountains and skies, fish and insect’.
Chinese brush painting is suggestive more than descriptive, unlike westerner’s paintings That’s what attracted me in this technique, initially.
But as I progressed, I was introduced to Gongbi – the meticulous side of Chinese painting. And being highly meticulous myself, I really enjoyed this technique. To me, it is the perfect combination between traditional painting as I know it, and Chinese brush painting.
As I got started with Gongbi, I got very much into a new subject of painting: geishas and their absolutely beautiful kimonos. I loved the fluidity of the kimonos and some patterns are really exquisite.
Here was my first geisha (top left), now framed and displayed at home. I was very pleased with it – the seal is really missing to finish the picture, but I still do not have an appropriate seal. I am working on it…
A few other geishas followed, amongst which those two:
Following the black and white landscape painting, I was introduced to a new technique – wrinkling.
Wrinkling is used to provide texture. I crushed the paper to be used into a ball. I then smoothed out the paper and gently run a loaded, not too wet, brush over it, defining the shape of the mountains.
In a little pot, I prepared a rather liquid blue paint that I then poured onto the paper, in the desired location. Once dry, I worked on the ‘texture’ of the mountain, just adding different sorts of trees here and there. I finally worked on the foreground, just with various shades of grey.
On the mounted work, the creases disappear and the texture remains.
And it was also my first two original paintings!
Only a few months after I started Chinese painting, my teacher announced that he would like to exhibit some of our paintings at the Japanese centre in Cambridge for ‘Japan Day 2007’.
Rather reluctantly, I provided him with some chickens… I can’t help thinking that the plants in the background really look like asparagus and that my seal (designed under pressure) was everything but Chinese.
This however triggered an interest in birds painting and several herons followed… I was quite happy with the one on the black background, especially because I started this painting on a white paper and gradually built up a black wash on the back of the paper to reach this really strong black background.
Chinese favour using black ink on white paper. This combination provides the utmost contrast in the simplest possible way.
It’s been a while since anything happened on this blog. I seem to have stopped it after only 2 posts… I guess, not having internet at home played a role and so did moving house and traveling to But I am back now, well decided to keep this blog alive. I have actually been working on it over the past few months and have quite a few posts ready to go. I will probably be posting a few new entries today and over the next few days. In my previous post, I mentioned the four gentlemen: bamboo, plum blossom, chrysanthemum and orchid – the basics of Chinese painting. I went through my old paintings to find an example of each of the gentlemen, and here they are…
