Plum Blossoms in Crimson

I painted several more plum blossoms last night and here they are.

Bamboo and Plum Blossoms, on variously colored backgrounds

These are chinese brush paintings on colored cards of various hues, each perhaps bringing its own blend to the mix.



Here the gold color does not seem to jive with the light purple background, lending a rather nebulous feel to the gold-colored bamboo stems and leaves.

Eightfold Paths, in calligraphy accompanied by drawings of nature

One of the core teachings of Buddhism is the Four Noble Truths, they being:

There is suffering;

There is a cause or origin of suffering;

There is an end of suffering; and

There is a path out of suffering.

And the path out of suffering is embodied in the Eightfold Paths comprising the elements depicted in sequence below:

WISDOM:
Right Understanding

Right Aspiration

MORALITY:
Right Speech

Right Action

Right Livelihood

CONCENTRATION:
Right Effort

Right Mindfulness

Right Concentration

Lotus on the rise, again

Continuing from where I let off, here are three more lotus paintings done in the same manner.

The Rise of the Lotus

These lotus paintings are patterned after the drawings appearing on the covers of several Chinese Buddhist texts. They seem subdued in those settings and I have rendered them more vivid here to highlight the purity of mind that can emerge amidst the heady world that surrounds us, not the least perturbed by the turbid undercurrents.

Painting the GongBi Style

Here's another "GongBi" styled chinese brush painting, patterned after the Asian Art 2008 Calendar published by Office Depot but made in China that "gives you a fascinating glimpse into the ancient Chinese art of brush painting". Here I would like to acknowledge the selfless tutelage provided by my Arts teacher, Mrs. Fan, whose similar works but on ladies in traditional Chinese dresses done a couple of decades ago were featured in hubby's blog here. As you can see, I still have a long way to go, but I have the passion, and time to keep trying. That's what counts in my book.

Another "meticulous" painting

Today's "meticulous-style" painting, a term that I coined previously (the Chinese term is GongBi), is patterned after a sheet calendar. Since the background is non-white (like biege, the color of our very first car bought in 1978, a Datsun (that's Nissan for the American market) 120Y, which I think is out of production now, or replaced by later models), we dropped by AOE Arts Supply to try to get a non-white rice paper, at the advice of Linda who has seen it sold there.

But alas, we went through every sheet (it only comes in free sheets, and not in rolls as is the case for the white rice paper) in every drawer with the shop attendant, and the only non-white color available is slightly darker than white. I just have to make do. On top of that, it has some kind of floral watermark on it. But I doubt it will show up in a photo shoot. So here it is, after a couple of days of labor. (As usual, please click on the image for a larger view whence the underlying floral design can be clearly seen.)

Painting the Meticulous Way

Short of a better English word, I have elected to use the term meticulous painting to describe the mode of painting that entails continuing touching up until the level of details desired is reached. These two are patterned after the images available from the Artistic Chinese Creations website, but no tracing, which I find to be straining on my already deteriorated eye sight, was involved. So they are not replicas of the originals, plus I have introduced some minor variations here and there. But I do want to acknowledge the guides and ideas found in the originals.

Bamboo in Free-flowing form

These are some older bamboo paintings that I have completed some time ago, on rice paper, experimenting with a combination of different shades of gray for the bamboo stems. Previously, I have done the same for the leaves to reflect the different shade covers to give a sense of depth. This time the technique applied to the stems seems to render a tonal difference breadth-wise.

Thus far, we have been concentrating on what has become known as the one-stroke style. As its name implies, each stroke is completed in one continuous motion, in a free-flowing way. Lately, the Arts class has switched to another more time-consuming style that entails meticulous touching up. These would appear next.

Flower Array

This morning I watched a TV program on the PBS station (Channel 16) about painting cut roses in acrylics, in a slot called "Hobby Lobby". It's a university-run TV program by USF with the tagline, Watch and Learn. So I learned the approach but applied the technique, using acrylics throughout, to painting roses and other flowers, yielding the following array of flowers arranged vertically.