Chinese painting aesthetic asks for a yin/yang balance regarding busy and not busy, dry brush and wet brush, dark and light areas, etc. It’s a good discipline, especially for me, as I too easily would tend toward a too wet, black work or all dry brush. (The huge amount of white or open space in Chinese paintings is present to offset and balance the painted areas.) The need for balance forces me to balance thoughts and moods.
I have been trying all sorts of landscape techniques and am focusing on working with dry brush (with some offsetting wetter areas), an honorable landscape tradition. I learned a lot re dry brush in the bit of time I studied with Arnold Zhang in New York, though a lot of practice lies ahead. I’m also looking through my art books for ideas to steal.
Allan
A few days after writing this I moved back to plum blossoms, though this time to white blossoms. The white blossom meihua are different from red blossom meihua paintings in more ways than the obvious. They have, it seems to me, a more mellow feel, and black dots in profusion often dominate. That will be clear whenever I post a white blossom plum tree work to the web site. I continue to sketch ideas for landscapes.
January note
I recently posted two works in progress to the meihua set. (Neither is a white blossom work.) The one with the strong horizontal branch at the top is probably finished and likely to be mounted shortly. Sue thinks it’s one of my best works. It will show better once flattened and mounted.
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