BACKGROUND:

This is an experiment to complete one of the actions from an earlier blog – Exploring media – oil and cold wax Part 6. The action was to:

– Experiment with a barrier or masking fluid to prevent the oil from seeping into the Chinese brush painting images.

This experiment is required because the Xuan paper (rice paper) used for Chinese brush painting is very thin and absorbent, therefore if the paper was laid over materials such as oil in my transcultural layering work, the oil paint underneath would seep through and ruin the Chinese brush painting image as happened in Part 6 of this blog series.

METHOD:

The three barrier fluids chosen for this experiment were: Dispersion liquid; PVA glue and matte Mod Podge.

Some small images painted using Chinese ink were used for this experiment. The back of each image was painted with one type of the barrier fluids with one image left bare as ‘control’ for the experiment.

A paper canvas was painted with a mix of oil paint and cold wax:

The Chinese painted images were cut out and pressed onto the oil and cold wax. The images were pressed hard onto the painted canvas using a palette knife to robustly test the barrier performance.

Below is the result – an overall image followed by close-ups of each test area. 

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Result: The best outcome was the Mod Podge.

REFLECTIONS

I am happy with the outcome of this experiment. This was a quick experiment but a very important one because, as shown in this blog series, it has been challenging to incorporate Chinese brush painting onto oil or oil and cold wax – the latter being my chosen ‘Western’ medium for my current series of transcultural style development work. The outcome of this experiment has helped me to find a viable way forward and I can now move onto developing colour palettes and aesthetics for my style knowing that I have found a way to combine the materials from different cultural origins without losing any material integrity.

LEARNING  

The learning here is a straight forward one. Mod Podge worked well as a barrier fluid to protect the Chinese ink work before incorporating it into the oil and cold wax ‘collage’.

NEXT STEPS

Pick up from the previous post (Part 6) and resume the next actions from there. The immediate next action will be to research and develop colour palettes that can help to communicate my transcultural narrative.

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ADDITIONAL EXPERIMENT

I was given two pieces of specialist Chinese painting paper by my Chinese art teacher. They are:

– Beijing bark paper, and

– Cicada wing paper (because it’s so thin that it resembles the wings of cicadas).

Both types of paper are of beautiful quality and feel very delicate. They are both very thin which would be ideal for what I’m looking for in my transcultural layering work. I.e. overlaying Chinese brush painting onto a more viscous medium such as oil.

I repeated the above experiment with these papers. I wrote some Chinese calligraphy characters on each sheet:

Then painted part of the image on the reverse side with Mod Podge as a barrier and leaving part of the image bare to compare:

Once the Mod Podge was dried. The two sheets were pressed onto a base layer of oil and cold wax. A palette knife was used for the edges, blending the paper with the oil paint to bury the edges. Then I used my finger to press the image into the oil:

Below is the outcome with the cicada paper performing well compared to the Beijing bark. The cicada paper appears to have an inbuilt barrier to protect the image, meaning that a barrier liquid would not be required as there was no perceivable difference whether Mod Podge was used.

Then more oil and cold wax was applied on top to blend in the image whilst avoiding the characters. Final result:

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REFLECTIONS / LEARNING

Out of all the Chinese painting papers that I have tested in this series of exploration, the cicada paper was the best material for the purpose of my transcultural layering work involving Chinese brush painting and oil based medium.

Additionally, it was useful to discover that a barrier liquid (e.g. Mod Podge) would not be required with the cicada wing paper. This will help to reduce the process complexity.

NEXT STEPS

– Create a new piece of work that uses the new discovery with the cicada paper to refine the process and to learn more about the material.

– Source more cicada paper and find a long term supplier for this paper.

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This experiment ends the series of blogs on ‘Exploring media – Oil and cold wax’.