BACKGROUND

Following on from Part 1:

MA Y1 U1: Exploring Aesthetics – Part 1 – Using photos

I ordered the silk printing from Contrado who provided an excellent service. The image I used was the final outcome from Part 1 – the Clifton suspension bridge, hot air balloons, Chinese lanterns and family photos collage. This blog describes the process I went through to do the Chinese painting on the printed silk. The largest Chinese painting I have done up to now had been A1 size and I ordered 1xA1 and 1xA0 for this experiment. The A0 piece was therefore by far the largest Chinese painting that I have attempted. The plan was to use this piece of work for the MA Interim show if it worked out.

Here is the finished painting and I will use it for the MA show:

METHOD

Since I have not done a Chinese painting of A0 size, I wanted to practice on paper before doing it on the silk. As mentioned in some of my Chinese painting blogs, Chinese brush painting is very unforgiving, you only get one go at doing a stroke, hence practicing was important.

Here is the set up with scrolls of Xuan paper stuck together to form a large sheet:

Using the brushes I selected in Part 1 and the composition that I practiced on A4, here is the attempt on A0 size after completing the wild plum tree branches:

Then the plum blossoms were added:

Finished trial painting on paper:

When ordering the printed silk, I had to decide whether to print a border. So I trimmed one of the printed samples to see what a borderless image would look like. I was happy with it and the prints were ordered without border, i.e. printing the image right up to the edge. I also ordered the option of hemmed edges.

In addition, I ordered a small piece of printed silk to test what backing should be used (a piece of felt which is typically used as a backing for Xuan paper painting or just use Xuan paper). Also to test the amount of brush loading and how the brush glided along the surface.

I was not happy with the felt backing because the moisture was not being absorbed fast enough and the silk therefore retained the moisture for too long and started to spread – as can be seen in the close up photo:

So the decision was to use Xuan paper as the backing material for painting on the silk. I started with the A1 piece as practice. Since I do not have a stretching frame for silk painting, I taped the whole piece onto a large board to stretch the fabric.

Below is the finished A1 painting. I was not happy with the painting because the brush loading was too heavy for the branches and as a result, the painting overly dominated the piece. I was disappointed in this but was pleased that I learnt this before doing the A0 piece.

I used the ‘stuck together scrolls’ of Xuan paper from the earlier practice as the backing for painting the A0 piece. It also gave me some rough positions of the composition. The edges of the silk was taped down to ensure the material was sufficiently stretched.

After doing two strokes, I could see the ink picking up the seams of the paper underneath which was not good at all. Once I started painting I was reluctant to stop because it would interrupt my ‘energy flow’, however, I had no choice but to put down my brush and lift up the tapes partially to pull out all the Xuan paper underneath. This was not ideal but had to be done.

With all the backing paper removed, the painting process could resume but with no backing paper to help absorb the ink, there was only the MDF board underneath which was a risk because I hadn’t experimented on MDF before.

It worked fine and I reduced the brush loading as well as the number of branches planned for the composition because I didn’t want to overwhelm the overall image with too dark brush strokes.

The plum blossoms were then added. I also reduced the number of blossoms and tucked some between the balloons and lanterns. I wanted to leave sufficient negative space on the left of the painting to create tension on the canvas juxtaposing the busy right hand side of the image.

After completing the Chinese brush painting, I had the choice of finishing it there, or adding some spray painting. I like adding street art style spray painting to my work because of my home city of Bristol being home to many great street artists and the city is full of beautiful street art. Hence street art is a big part of my heritage.

I was mindful that the canvas is already filled with images and I didn’t want to overdo it. Also I didn’t know how my spray paints would perform on silk. So I experimented with the A1 piece first:

I sprayed some two tone black and white stencilled letters on two lanterns saying ‘3RD SP’ for Third Space:

I was happy with the outcome so I started to lay larger stencils on the A0 piece:

‘3RD SP’ was too much, so I went with just ‘3RD’. I masked off the area and proceeded to spray one letter at a time.

It worked out fine and to take further risk, I added a ‘#’ to proceed the lettering to add a contemporary feel.

After spraying, I found that for some parts, the spray paint seeped through the thin silk and nearly glued the material to the MDF underneath. The silk was rescued in time and was safely lifted off the board.

The finally finished work:

Since I have decided to use this piece for the MA interim show, I had to work out how to hang it.

I have chosen to hang it off a piece of 1 metre x 10mm diameter wooden dowel. this means I had to sew the header of the silk to make provision for the hang. I wanted to minimise losing the images at the top especially to avoid losing my father’s face on the top right photo, I added a piece of silk material ‘tape’ at the top as follows:

The sewing was complete and the silk painting was hung off two metal brackets to simulate how it would hang at the show:

One of the reasons for choosing a thin 38gsm silk material was that I wanted the image to be visible from both sides if it was hung in free air. This is how it looks from behind and I am happy that the image is still visible:

REFLECTIONS

This whole piece of work has turned out to be a much larger undertaking than I imagined because of:

– Using family photos in my digital collage: aside from the emotions involved (which I have not fully resolved yet), there was much work involved in ensuring the resolution was good enough for printing on A0. The print company Contrado was excellent in checking through my design before I placed the order.

– Using new materials: I learnt a lot from choosing the right kind of silk material but it was also very risky because I had not worked with silk before and the thinness of the fabric made it very fragile to work with. The whole process was new to me and I had to make it up as I went along. Due to the costs and lead time involved in purchasing the printed silk, I had to take extra care in the experimental process to minimise wastage of materials as well as time.

– Going large: I wanted to challenge myself to create something new for the MA interim show, hence I went for A0. I found it very challenging because I am still very new to Chinese brush painting and that lack of experience made the process much more stressful than if I had gone for medium that I’m familiar with such as oil paint or acrylic.

What I was happy with:

– I learnt a lot in making this piece of work, documented here and in Part 1. I learnt about new methods, materials and processes. All the practices and trials were essential.

– Starting to use old photos in my digital collage. I still have many photos in my archive that I could use when I feel ready and able to. I have to manage the emotions and fragility involved in using such precious materials. But I have made a start.

– I was happy with the final outcome and was relieved that I have something for the MA interim show.

What I was not happy with:

– I should have anticipated some of the mistakes along the way, it was all useful learning despite being stressful at the time.

– Since the A1 silk experiment didn’t go well with the branches being too dark (overloading of the brush), I was overly cautious with the subsequent A0 piece. Also, my paint brush was not quite large enough. It was one of my mother’s brushes. There was a larger one but it would have been far too large, also, its bristles were starting to fall out and I didn’t want to damage it further since I want to preserve my mother’s brushes as much as possible. So I made do with the smaller sized brush. I would have wanted thicker branches for the A0 piece. Additionally, I could have loaded the brush a little more but I was worried that it would turn out like the A1 piece. Hence I was being overly cautious. It all comes down to my inexperience with Chinese brush painting. I hope this will improve over time with more practice.

Further reflections:

I have spent much of my MA first term developing methods to work with oil and cold wax, however, when it came to the MA show, I went back to an earlier method of transcultural layering where digital collages were printed onto a thin fabric then a Chinese brush painting was layered on top. I thought I would be more familiar with this latter approach but the change of fabric to thin silk and going large made it more challenging than I expected. I am pleased I went with this because it has renewed my enthusiasm for this transcultural layering method and now I have several other ideas in mind to try. I want to continue to pursue both ways of transcultural layering for my practice, namely:

1. Western medium as the lead with oil or oil and cold wax as the top layer, scraped back to reveal images pre-printed on the canvas. The canvas here would be robust such as woven linen/cotton or board.

2. Chinese medium as the lead with digital collages printed on silk and Chinese brush painting or calligraphy layered on top.

Which one to use will depend on the context and the kind of painting I want to make. My current plan is to continue to work on both methods.

LEARNING

– I learnt a lot about working with silk and will continue to use this material. I need to look into buying or making a silk stretching / painting frame that can accommodate large pieces of silk, A0 or larger.

– I gained confidence with my Chinese brush painting and there are no short cuts there – practice and planning are key.

– From the aesthetics exploration perspective, I learnt a lot from the mistakes in the A1 painting. It’s easy to overwhelm an image and it showed once again for me that negative space is so important. Often less is more and leaving space on the canvas creates tension that engages the viewer. I was hesitant in adding the spray paint but I really wanted to do it to bring in that aspect of my Bristol heritage. I am pleased that I did it and managed to reign it in.

NEXT STEPS

– Look into a better set up for painting on silk such as a large stretcher frame.

– Source a few larger good quality Chinese paint brushes for larger scale work.

– Do a new piece of transcultural layering work with a new digital collage of family photos for use with another silk painting or oil and cold wax.