I'd like to play some erhu music while you are viewing my blog.

On January 28th 2011 I was giving an erhu concert at IU International Center--"Friday Noon Concert" series.
But the piece you hear is played on Chung-Hu (中胡), similar instrument as Er-Hu (二胡), slightly bigger in size, and five tones lower. By the way, the audio part used to work well until not long ago I totally lost the sound track of my erhu playing. Sorry, if you failed to hear it. My son knows how to fix it. When he comes in July 2012, I will ask him to put it back, if possible. Hopefully we will once again have an audio-visual appreciation of calligraphy, painting as well as music.

Dramatic cloud formation

Then I pitched in some dramatic clouds sweeping across the sky over the landscape. This adds some new emotional dimension to the painting. Now the sky is connected to the land while the fisherman in the boat seems to pay no attention to the ever-changing environment....

Rembrandt and me in landscape

In mid-September 2011 I checked out a book on Rembrandt and as I was reading it I came upon a landscape painting in black and white, which looks so much like Chinese ink-and-wash landscape painting. So I started to emulate this Western great master's painting. I was amazed by Rembrandt's use of light in sharp contrast to darkness.

A technical term to talk about the contrast between light and darkness in Rembrandt's painting is:
CHIAROSCURO.

I found this horizontal long scroll landscape painting in a book and was fascinated by it. I started to entertain the idea to emulate it. But after several false starts I realized it was something I could not do at this level of my skill. However, on September 1st I took up my brush and tried once again. In about 8 hours or so I finished half of it, and then next day I worked through the rest and put in the calligraphy and autograph. My version looks very rough and raw to say the least. But it proves true the adage: Where there is a will, there is a way. Only after I completed it did I find out who the original painter (龔賢 Xian Gung)is.

According Mr. Mei（梅墨生）, editor/artist, this long scroll of landscape painting best exemplifies a special constructional technique: moving points of perspective. That is, instead of one perspective as most art work does, this one shows multiple perspectives, as if one is viewing the endless landscape by sitting in an airplane flying along.

溪山無盡之三 Mountain-River No. 3

Who is Mr. Gung after all?

梅墨生, editor of 山水畫述要 (A Concise Book on Chinese Landscape Painting) introduces him as an artist of Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). But not quite so if you look at his dates (1599?-1689?). The two question marks signify that people are not so sure about his exact dates of birth and death. Anyway he thought himself a citizen loyal to Ming Dynasty. When Ming dynasty was overthrown, Mr. Gung, who then was 45 years old and lived in Nanjing, was very upset. He tried to turn back the historical tide with no avail. Later he remained in Nanjing as a recluse, doing nothing but painting. He was highly regarded as the leader of a group called "Nanjing Eight Painters".

溪山無盡之二 Mountain-River No. 2

Gung's painting skill was outstanding. His specialty comes from a 皴法 (ways to put shadow in through different techniques) he discovered himself: 積墨法, that is, he would paint the shadows by pitching in several layers of tones to achieve it. In his darkest area, he could leave some white spots to show the special effect of contrast.

I happily noticed that while doing the emulation. I told myself that is something I could not do. Indeed, I was not able to do however hard I tried.

溪山無盡之一 Mountain-River No. 1

I don't know the size of the original long scroll painting, but mine is roughly double the dimension of the picture found in the book. Mine goes: 75in x 4in, pretty narrow but long, which, I thought, will give me some trouble when I try to mount and put it in a picture frame.

早春圖原版 Original Version

The size of this painting: 158.3cm X 108.1cm, done on silk cloth dyed to orange color.

If you examine the painting carefully, you will find a faint seam that goes midway vertically from top to bottom. That is: someone once cut the painting into two halves and later someone put the two halves back into one again. Things like this, according the editor, did happen, and happened often. But, of course, it is gratifying to know that the painting now remains whole and complete in National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan.
During my current visit to Taiwan (Oct. 2011-Feb. 2012), I was surprisingly happy to see a copy of this painting among others on the daily paper in Nov. 2011....

早春之七 （Early Spring No. 7)

My final version after the dyeing job and calligraphy, date and autograph. Of course I still have a lot to do before putting it into a picture frame to be presentable.