On Painting Clouds

When I was in Houston, I signed up for an evening Chinese watercolor painting program. The venue was in the instructor's gallery in Chinatown. The instructor was an old Chinese man, probably in the mid 70's, who was also the owner of his gallery and taught in Rice University. Before the class started, he did a painting demonstration for us. It was an amazing black ink landscape painting which he just finished within a few short minutes in front of our eyes. Wow. I was eager to learn to paint like him.

To our astonishment, in our first class, our only assignment for the next 1 hour was to draw straight lines with our brushes. There were 5 of us students. I'm sure we all gave him that look "A 3-year old can do that, why are we paying our hard-earned money to learn it?". The old man explained that Chinese paintings were made of stokes, and strokes started from straight lines. To make an even straight line with a brush, you had to first relax and use Qi principle from start to finish. Making straight lines with a brush on rice paper were really not as easy as it seemed. One hour later, I had a stack paper of straight lines. Ok. I was getting better with the lines. Big deal. Enough of that, what's next?

In our next class, we were each given a nickle to put on top of our hands. Our assignment for the next 1 hour was to draw straight lines and circles with a coin staying on top of our hands. In the beginning, the coin kept dropping with each of my hand movement. Remember we had to hold the brush and in the meanwhile draw lines and circles. The coin forced you to slow down and to focus even you wanted to go faster. But who in the right mind would buy those stack pages of straight lines and circles?

Needless to say I never went back for the 3rd class. There was no refund for rest of my tuitions paid. I didn't think that instructor or his class was a total scam. It was just me. I was not cut out for the slow Chinese learning regiment. I went home and started drawing clouds. I remembered someone once told me that clouds were the easiest things to draw because clouds came with all random shapes and patterns. You couldn't go wrong with painting clouds. It turned out to be so true. I was satisfied at my first try of cloud painting without even having to learn a thing. As long as I stayed away from what the old Chinese man taught me about straight lines and circles, or any symmetric patterns I assume the old Chinese man was about to teach next, my clouds on the paper look just like the clouds in the sky. Boohoo! I felt free like a could, free at last!

I don't know what the morale of this story is but at least I can tell you this. If you don't want to study long and hard to learn how to paint, go paint clouds.

On Colors

I remember to this date the discussions we had during one of the art classes I attended in my high school years. The topics are : What is your favorite color? What you think is the most beautiful color? What you think is the ugliest color? After the heated debate, this became clear to me:

- Every color is equally beautiful. No color is ugly by itself (Think about yourself) .
- While no color is ugly by itself, some colors become ugly when in combination with other color/colors. There is just ugly color combination. "Ugly" in the sense that they don't go well together (Think about your ex/exes you left behind). The reason why they don't go well together is that they are not presented in the nature so our eyes are not accustomed to (Think that you and your ex/exes are not meant to be in the first place).
- If you don't know how to combine colors, go outside to draw inspiration from the nature. White clouds on blue sky, yellow dandelions on green grass, rainbow... Red and green color combination has been tabooed by Chinese. I knew then that was so biased. Red roses on green leaves. Da?

Then I had better understanding on colors when I worked for a Hong-Kong based printing company. In their printing factory, there are two types of color printing machines: one is three-color printer and the other is four-color printer. All the colors on the color wheel are derived from 3 colors: not counting black, magenta-red, yellow and cyan-blue; or 4 primary color themes: magenta-red, cyan-blue, yellow and black. By changing the color percentage, you get a different color theme in a color wheel (Think about changing your attitude or lowering your standard for more options). From there you can find a whole spandex of color family and color harmony (Think about your family and your 100 closest friends). However, there is a group of stubborn colors that no other colors can mix into. They don't easily match with other colors. If you have one of those colors in your design, the printing company will charge you for a separate film cost (Think about those eccentric people you know). Those are specialty colors such as gold, silver, bronze...(Think about those of your rich relatives who have never lent you a dime.)

Often, colors are described as cold and warm as how we relate to the outside weather, as calm or lively as how we relate to our inner mood, or as soothing or loud as how we relate to music. Being color-blind is considered disability. Oops! Aren't we supposed to be color-blind when it comes to people?!

I read a joke in the Reader's Digest many years ago. A man walks into a bar. After sitting down with the drinking menu, "You have Blue Hawaiian and White Russian. What is the difference?" The man asks. "Da, color?" The bartender says.

Color is so essential to art, and to life for that matter. I won't be a bit surprised if one day this is in our dollar bills: In color, we trust.