A LIQUID MIRROR, (Process of a painting.)

On Sunday, July 20, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

'One showing is worth a thousand words.'

~ Zen saying.

I just now completed a painting, titled A LIQUID MIRROR. It took around four days, in five hour sessions on average. I work at a snail's pace, as the process requires full attention to subtle exactness. There is nothing dramatic or emotional about it. It's a form of meditation.

At this stage, i am familiar with my method as to rarely encounter an obstacle that i can't resolve. To say i learned the hard way is an understatement. Probably the best way to learn.

The worst thing you can do is give up. No chance of that though, as it's my preferred kind of challenge, endlessly interesting. To abandon creativity is to embrace self defeat.

Never lie down on the battlefield or your spirit may abandon you. But it's an increasingly peaceful battle, no blood, no sweat, no tears, at all.

That being so, instead of capitalizing on it, (you can't put a price on intrinsic worth) i intend to share all of it. I keep the painting, you gain rare insight into how to do it yourself.

A gift is something shared, why bring commerce into it ?

The measure of art is not how quickly you can part with it in exchange for 'paper.' Or how much paper you can get. Anyway why be in a rush to part with the embodiment of your spirit's pleasure ? You're welcome to a print of it for free. A fractal of the source with essence intact.

So now i will give you a magic medicine. A distillation of what's going on here, complete with images, so you can see the process in progress. There's no loss in simplifying, on the contrary. Because descriptions always seem more complex than the action itself, till you get it.

I'm sharing dependable practical principles of procedure here. Along with feeling, so forget 'technique'. There is no technique, it's not a trick, or a knack, and you won't get far with only a mere technique. Technique is for people whose feeling is not involved, and active expression is intuitive feeling in action. So...

THE THREE BASIC COMPONENTS.

1. ~ CONTOUR OUTLINE.
2. ~ SHADOW AREAS.
3. ~ COLOUR/TEXTURE.

Image number one, CONTOUR OUTLINE.

Simply the visible boundaries of form. What we tend to call, 'things.' When we refer to 'things', we're just pointing out portions of the whole and giving them a name. No 'thing' was ever separate in reality because no one thing ever existed in isolation, being merely a concept based on exclusion, or to be exact, ignoring.

Apparent visible boundaries always have their own uniquely distinct character. That's an important word. This is what line delineates; the distinguishing characteristics. Without specifics there's no character, only vague generalization.

Trees differ from clouds, or rocks, or creatures,

but all coexist together in exact relationship, 'by virtue of one/another', both visually and actually.

So, in drawing a line, be sure it typifies the thing depicted. This entails a lot of looking without inner distraction. Just seeing, without undue effort to 'look.' Attention is present by itself, unless we think 'about' it. It's simply truth to present experience. Composition is seeing where it is, in balanced relation with everything else.

Unpracticed people are unable to depict what they see, without something to refer to directly. For example, how does an ash differ from an oak, or a cauliflower? I remember a teacher in school saying; "And don't make your trees look like glorified cabbages !" Now there's an idea, though it wasn't wasted on me, already engaged in turning over a new leaf.

So if you're drawing directly from what you're seeing, 'one look equals one line.' You can always erase it and correct it. That's the opposite of a mistake, we learn by correcting mis-takes. I'll draw the line there and go into the shadows.

Image number two: SHADOW AREAS.

William Blake is said to have said: "It's not so much the colour as where the dark areas are put." (Approximate quote.) Shadow areas follow contours, literally, as well as chronologically.

When you fill in the shadow areas you already have the emergence of form and volume. It's a nice way to start, as you already feel you're making progress. A procedure is helpful because it helps you to know how to proceed.

Shadows are a deeper tone of the colour of the substance on which they fall. So if you're starting with the shadows within foliage it's a darker green, (mix a tiny touch of black with green. Or even its opposite, violet, tentatively as that's a strong pigment, and opposite colours neutralize one another.)

If it's autumn, or rocks, or earth, dark brown is always a good foundation for shadows and shadow pockets within contours.

You'll see what it looks like in the photo. It's a nice feeling filling in the shadows. Now you already have contrast and depth, the yin and the yang. The polar parameters of wholeness.

So you can take a tea break or whatever, comfortable in the knowledge all is in order.

Image number three: COLOUR/TEXTURE.

I include colour and texture together as they're obviously not two things usually. At least in nature they occur together. Colour is the most luscious stage, as you're working with frequencies of feeling, like when the bare bones and structures bloom and blossom like flowers in summer.

I'm well aware it's possible to paint using only colour, having explored many diverse avenues.

What i'm presenting here is an all purpose practical simplification of the elements of drawing and painting combined. Just one conceptual triad to serve as a guide for further free improvisation. There are no rules, you're free to invent them or discard them.

Colour is infinite permutations, combinations, of subtle modes of feeling and associations like flavours of foods, aromas and moods of frequencies of pitch and radiance, relational resonance as within the realms of music, and i'm always patiently impatient to get to this stage, where there's no area of blank canvas left to be accounted for. Admittedly a typical occidental as opposed to an oriental notion, and you can quote me on that, if you like.

But all colour is relational, vibrating differently according to its context, whether harmoniously or discordantly, just like people. You can modulate and retune, fine-tuning and balancing one against another, blending or mutating, and who's to say precisely where red becomes orange and so on, all the way through the circular spectrum of the rainbow?

Vincent Van Gogh aspired to juxtaposing one pure naked colour against another, approximating the depth of harmonious loving feeling of one human for another and he did a pretty good job. Especially with the sunflowers and the irises which continue to resonate in divine sensual harmony despite silly irrelevant rumours that he didn't have much of an ear.

So forget "green is envy, red is anger, blue and green should never be seen, because you're yellow and black is evil and i've got the blues".

Or that some colours "clash". When it's simply that they're complimentaries of exactly the same tone, which is fascinating in itself.

Because these are all negative cliches of popular disinformation, disseminated by uncreatively incurious and terminally wounded life haters with jaded palettes who couldn't even tell you the exact colour of a sour grape and need to balance their chakras. Enough to make a rainbow cry!

So to round it all off and bring the process to fully integrated fruition, you bring the linear shadow tone back in. To fine-tune and weave- in the "dragon lines" (Chinese term) and minute dots and dashes of surface texture.

Binding it all together like a tapestry of veins,

'arteries', of rivers and streams through fertile land. The devil is not in the detail but angels may well be.

You behold the timeless tranquility of a living scene made manifest. Reflected in the rippled surface of A LIQUID MIRROR.

"I wish i had that gift", you say.

Well, i just handed it to you. Didn't i ?

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Makes Rainbows~

Artwork:
        A LIQUID MIRROR, martin law, 2014