Rethinking Bamboo

[liralen]

I haven't like the last couple of bamboo paintings I've done... so I tried a few different things last night.



I started with the assumption that few leaves are better. So this is what I did when I went happily crazy and did lots and lots of leaves. I munged one of the stalks, ah well, but I was using the already liquid Yi-de ink, which I'm not that used to, yet. As you can tell by some of the darker, fuzzier leaves, I am saturating it a bit too much. Still... I like the layout of this better than the ones I have been doing...



There's a painting by Yuming Zhu of a couple of bamboo from the ground up that made me rethink my scale of my bamboo. I don't think this is... uhm... botanically correct, as the windward side is a bit... sparse, but I liked the concept very much and may do more research to make this better. It does seem more interesting to me, though.

Comments

[2metaldog.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. I like all the green. While I love the heat of a desert, I don't think I'd like the lack of green things visually.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Yeah... it feels... barren. Especially compared to the riot of green that was Seattle, this place is very bare... mountains that are more rock than trees. That was odd to start. Now it's just normal. *laughs*

[2metaldog.livejournal.com]

Flying over Denver when I was going/returning from Ycon, I was puzzled over the utter lack of trees. it seemed so... wrong.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Yeah. We're high plains, nigh on desert, only 12 inches of water a year. So no water for trees, really, other than right around the farmhouses or, of course, in developments, and we steal it all from the Western Slope. It's 300 days of sunshine and the wind blows just as often.

I should write something set in the specificity of the high plains sometime...