Ohara Koson - Bird serie

Heron in the snow - Ohara Koson

And the last one of the Ohara Koson's bird...

Kingfisher II - Ohara Koson

Seasonal...

(paintings not yet mounted hence their appearance, especially the left one...)

Snowy kingfisher

Finally...

This one definitely won't end up on a wall, but at least, it kept me busy for a little while ;-)

Kingfisher

Chang-eh

While browsing through the examples of hare/rabbits in chinese painting that were provided during my last class, I found a painting depicting Chang-eh, the goddess of the moon, with a hare on her laps. I thought the painting was amazing, very delicate, with lots of strong colours...
Knowing that I had two days off the following week, and thinking about the meters and meters of thin silk I had at home, I decided I needed a copy of this painting ...
I usually really struggle to paint at home, alone, but when it comes to painting on silk, it is such a pleasure, that it doesn't matter if I am part of a group or not.
So I spent yesterday afternoon (3 and a half hours) doing the contours and almost all the colouring. I spent two hours today finishing the clouds, painting them, adding the moon and a sort of wash that I am not extremely pleased with.... but never mind, nothing I can do now! And here is the result...

The picture is not great as the silk is quite wrinkled, shiny, and trying to take a pic with artificial light at 6.00pm is not great anyway!

Insect...

The November class is going to be all about insect. Insect you said? Like crustaceans, I am not exactly looking forward to that class, but like crustaceans, I guess I might end up really enjoying it. So wait and see... and the day I will be brave enough to work on my own compositions rather than copy existing ones (will that ever happen?), it might become very handy to be able to add this little cricket here, or this little shrimp there... ;-)

So I have been looking in my archives, and I found a few crickets I did in my class in Cambridge...

Gongbi and birds

In April 2009 I traveled to Shanghai to attend a friend's wedding. I was there for 6 days and I think every second day I was walking up and down along Fuzhou road, looking through the myriads of paper/books/paint/brushes shop. A heaven!
One book shop was especially amazing. You could find there everything you have always dreamed about. The choice was so vast that I couldn't get myself to chose one book...
So the third time I went into the shop, I decided that 'that was it'. Now just pick one you like... so I selected the fine brush flower-bird painting album of Yu Jigao.



What a fantastic book! I have since tried to copy 3 of the paintings from the book and I am currently doing the fourth one.
Here they are...






This was the first one that I copied: 'Magnolia and Waxwing'. I started doing the bird during my last group session and when I came home, I decided to try and finish it, adding the magnolias and experimenting with blending lots of colours on the branches. I am actually quite happy with the result.




Then, I got carried away and decided to copy another one... straight. I picked 'Paradise flycatchers and plum blossom'. Everything was going ok (even if I still preferred the first one), until I decided to mount it... I wanted the little bits of yellow pollen to be really visible in the painting, so I painted them with a quite thick mix of yellow and white. And it was fine, until I applied the glue on the back, and as the glue was quite liquid, my yellow started running all over the picture. You can't really see it from a distance, but still... it was quite a disappointment!


But never mind, I straight selected another one and got started with it. 'Early spring of south of the five ridges'. I loved the composition, the strong colour of the red flowers and the contrast with the two white birds. And I think I did manage to achieve that... I hope!

Gongbi – Geisha – Kimonos

‘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: