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Chinese painting: Poinsettia and Sumi-e

| elizarawlings

EXPERIENCE – PART 1

I attend a Chinese painting class once a month. This month being December, the topic was Poinsettia. See below images. They were copied from worksheets. These are skills practice exercises so I will only do a brief reflection.

REFLECTIONS – PART 1

I have enjoyed these work sheets more than the owls from the month before because I found it easier to be free with my paint application with this topic. I think it’s because I feel more confident with the subject. So this is good learning for me, that when I do abstraction work, I do better when I feel confident. When I am hesitant then brush strokes seem too deliberate and also prone to becoming too illustrative.

EXPERIENCE – PART 2

Introduction to Sumi-e painting

I was introduced to a new topic, Sumi-e painting, which will last the next few months. Sumi-e (水墨 water ink) painting is painting with ink and water and focuses on the simplicity of form. For this first brief introduction, the tutor asked us to practice mixing five shades using only black ink and water. Then we practiced doing different types of leaves.

I picked out one type of leaves and made a painting using only that type as practice. Below is my first Sumi-e painting.

REFLECTIONS – PART 2

Sumi-e is very challenging! It will take a lot of practice to get to know the materials – the simplicity of materials makes it hard. Just water, ink and the performance of the brush and paper used all come into play. I have always found Chinese brush painting very unforgiving, it is not easy and most of the time not possible to correct any mistakes – in that sense, it is more like water colour than oil or acrylic (that I am used to) where mistakes can be rectified quite easily. Sumi-e’s unforgiving-ness is at an even higher level. I can imagine practicing for a long time and still not perfecting that leave that I have tried to paint.  

I enjoy this challenge and I would love to be competent at Sumi-e because I like a good challenge; its simplicity of form and potential for semi-abstraction is what I find appealing. I am looking forward to continuing my learning of Sumi-e painting.

MA Y1 U1: Exhibition visit – Ofelia Rodríguez, Spike Island

| elizarawlings

EXPERIENCE

I visited Ofelia Rodriguez’s exhibition Talking in Dreams at Spike Island, Bristol. Below is a video summary of the visit compiled using the iMotion App. I learnt to use this app at a CSM online workshop and I wanted to experiment summarising a gallery or exhibition visit in this way:

REFLECTIONS

– Rodriguez’s work has really inspired me because I can relate to her work as someone who makes art about her homeland while living far away. In particular, I like her work with the bright colours and her chosen palette gave me a sense of the place she was describing. I feel I should explore a colour palette that describes my childhood home city of Hong Kong, this might help me when I am stuck on ideas about work to make.

– I was also inspired by the textiles used and the stitching in her work. Stitching into my paintings is not something that I have considered before but I have often thought about using fabric in my work. So this is an area that I will explore.

– Another thought arising from the above point… I have in the past made expanded paintings where I had eradicated the traditional canvas. I could make paint-based fabric to incorporate into my work.

– Rodriguez used a lot of found objects in her work which is fascinating to look at. However, right now, it is not an area that I am interested in because I already have several strands of enquiries going on and I feel I should make some progress before adding more variables. But I wouldn’t rule it out and I may come back to this at a later stage.

LEARNING

– Technically, I am happy with using iMotion in this way because in the past I often ended up uploading many photos from a show making the blog unnecessarily long. So I’m happy with this new discovery. Things to remember are to export the file as a GIF from iMotion to my Photos app to minimise file size and to upload the GIF to WordPress as an image and not a video. Also to give it time to upload.

– Other learning have been captured above under reflections.