Hello everybody, I`ve bought very new kind of rice paper and used the impuls of changes into an experiment. Impuls of changes comes to us when we found a new field of activity, that`s one of the most important natural laws for energy distribution.

Long ago, in my school time I read the "Pillow Book" by Sei Shonagon, 11-th century Japanese writer en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pillow_Book . The Pillow Book (枕草子 Makura no Sōshi^?) is a book of observations and musings recorded by Sei Shōnagon during her time as court lady to Empress Consort Teishi (定子) during the 990s and early 11th century in HeianJapan. The book was completed in the year 1002. She wrote the story how her famous diary started: the Empress granted her with court-quality notebooks because it wasn`t required for the Emperor`s writing. Sei Shonagon wrote that she was presented with a pile of so good quality paper so she wrote on it everything from her life experience until she fulfilled the last notebook.

I perfectly understand her: paper and brush, ink and ink stone, as well as colors and canvas call a creative person into adventure nobody knows what it will be. So impressive, so rich of feelings, so full of energy such moments are! I love it. I seek it. That special kind of energy creates new possibilities in life, divine paths for future.

So, 2 days ago I bought a very special kind of rice paper, 8 big sheets, with description it can`t be stored more then 6-8 months. That`s because of the special surface which could be slowly degradate. So, I squize my old instinct to store it and started immideately without any ideas in order to allow everything to appear in free way.

A Chinese man appeared.

That moment I got the point, it was a strong wind and cold inside the picture.

Of course it happened because we had the terrible weather, a day ago snow fell again, cold strong wind and wet:

In 5 minutes we was oversnowed with real snow storm! Snow flight horisontally, right to the camera`s lenses! I couldn`t believe it happened so, just took my chance to shoot it:

So I realised, it was a strong snow in the picture, as well as cold, and the man was in old age. So I painted him some grey hair and snow just started to fall.

That moment I realized, he was a musician who came to that cliff in search of inspiration to express his feelings and mood. So I painted his musical instrument guqin (simplified/traditional: 古琴; pinyin: gǔqín) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guqin covered in the bagpack trevel case on his back:

The result of that soul travel was wonderful in many kinds: I expressed my own feelings about the terrible April weather (it seems  like February), tried new rice paper with all pleasure, and discovered something unexpectable new.

I thought the painting was ready until I understand the reason for the Old man to come to the lone cliff in that late time: he was drunk. As well as he catched a cold. As a small magic I expressed my disagreement with the weather by making his nose and lips more red to show how he was cold:

That`s the final result of the Unexpectable experiment with Joking Imagination:

Old Drunk Musician comes into snow and catched a cold:

The funny side of the story: by our terrible weather changes snow stopped, then fell then stopped again and now we are in hope the spring comes eventually:

Imagination is the real power we all are providing with.

New things and new ideas are the real power.

Use it. I wish you to catch the moment to sign your own freedom, honesty and possibility to use energy to build your own desired future!

Thank you for being with me!

Anna and her Joking Imagination who now have to be back to my painting work.

Hello everybody, when one project`s stage has finished it is a natural gap. Many people stuck with it and feel out of inspiration, out of energy. The threatment is to have another project to work. It`s so exciting to keep mind full of new ideas in many direction, so I have a lot of ideas to change style of work and save my time.

The Nature-In project itself started from serious purposes. So, here it is the next stage for my Nature-In project, with my sketches started at Corfu: Let`s see what it leads for!

To proceed the project I faced the challenging nesessity to improve my ActiveBase technique and style to fit my new ideas and new tasks. My own technique relates to Chinese painting Xieyi. Xie means to write and Yi the meaning. A famous Master of Chinese painting,  Zhang Daqian, said that Xieyi indicated the fact of drawing the spirit of the beings. Painting Xieyi uses many techniques of calligraphy which privilege the spontaneity of the line. Paintings Xieyi are thus very quickly carried out but it needs a very long experience.

Now I want to mix it with something different, much more detailed, realistic, so  I decided to take some education about Gongbi Chinese style of painting en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gongbi  (simplified Chinese: 工笔; traditional Chinese: 工筆) in order to improve it for my technique and style.

Started from my Corfu sketches, you can see it is detailed and was taken from real place I spent a lot of happy time every summer:

It leads me to DongBi class.

I just learned some important information about structure of rice paper and how to make the detail contours before painting. Normally in GongBi style people use other`s contours to copy onto their pictures. In fact it is a kind of copying, a long road to improve own hands and eyes. I love how it looks and truly love Chinese paintings, but still have so much ideas to create so I can`t invest my time to copying before I try something  by my own.

I have a special place for my Ink drawings with small waterpool and many Chinese accessories to keep my mind inspired with the athmosphere.

It was just the first look, but I can`t stop at this. With fresh-bought rice paper I ran to my studio and started something… something! That`s the beginnind of unknown road I always like: Liapades bay, right side, in early morning, and lotuses rising from somewhere at the bottom. The idea completely cover my own feelings to that place which call me to be back year by year. So, the first painting in GongBi style:

When the lines should be transfered onto the rice paper and contoured by ink:

My ink isn`t good enough, I suspected it will be floated by water colours, so I tryed to use acrylic color for the contours. The joke is, here it is one cat from Liapades who literary drops into my picture and hides among lotuses:

Cat? Here?

As I have zero experience in painting cats in realistic manner? No way in traditional style!

But here it is the picture inspired by the special place and the cat was the native habitat of it, so it became the part of the painting around my conscious will. I love it in painting and I love it in cats

So, you can see, strict Chinece GongBi style started to mutate in my hands   The results will be in the next post

Today snow covers everythng, the wnter comes close and everythng becames monochrome. No colours, light comes about 12:30 PM, shadows everywhere, no sun till March… Seems depressive. Today I found the way to utilize it.

I`ve started to make tryes to paint in Chinese monochrome style. Of course my favourite subject s mountings and waterfalls! It was a stange feelings of vails when I  started. In colours I feel a picture in total and then do it. In monochrome it started from unpredictable lines.

I feel some mountings as it is through shadows and mists. Like a blind trying to touch the right way I made strokes and water wth ink.

On this stage I felt annoying untidy strokes and no feelngs of perspective. It wasn`t exciting and also I lost the sense of freedom, just paint it in order to curious result.

Fom time to time I made a glance to Chinese paintings in the book I bought in Shanghai that April. It consolate me and make me courage to practice more in hope ones I could feel it at all.

My feelings grown durng painting details and that was the true result. Suddenly I realized that I felt how my mountings gowth, what rocks it forms, where trees could settled. It was the moment I lost my depressive feelings about winter colours. Shadows opens me depth, live interest and new possibilties.

It isn`t finished yet but I want to learn more about ink, soft water colours and monochrome in hope to improve my feelings of winter.

As I wanted to finish the idea of the 1 and 2 pictures ( annamain.org/site/comments/the_day_before_tomorrow/  ) I started the third at 8 of January. But at 9 of January  I saw the better picture ( annamain.org/site/comments/exception_inside_rules/  ).It was so exciting I didn`t want to finish my own. But then I desided to do it so my interpretation of the Third step is here.

The meaning of mine picture  is to gain  the position of light understanding, peace, grace and tranquility. This place we never actually left but we forget it and need some help to remember it clearly. This is the place we meet our soul-mates and meet ourselves observing life stream being in cosciosness, being creative, being calm, with smile.

You can compare my picture with another:

The main details is the same, sun rayes, it angles, mountings. Strange feeling I like seems as a friend send me a message such way.  

After 2 last pictures I prepared to create a new one as the result of the process described by shadows and strokes. Actually I has a strong feeling what it ought to be and how to paint it. But today one friend of mine published a post in her blog recited words i could write and with the picture better then everything else. It was so amazing as if the world answered your question before you ask it, and make it in so gentle manner with so relative mood and also in so different  style. Such amazing feeling it was when I saw it at the end of the post!

So I want to put it here instead of mine to remember myself the essence of that day. 

Happy birthday, Anna, you can relax and feel free! Today somebody takes care about your work!

P.S. Unfortunately I have no information who is the author of the picture, and if I find I would like to pay my respect to him.

Today I sleep alot and somehow feel myself better, more relaxable and soft. This is the last day of my personal year which will be ended tomorrow. So I wanted to make the next part os yesterday picture.

Shadow grey, steel black and yellow, and turquose, and light green was put together. Started with graphic I abandon it soon and choose more positive movement. If you saw how ancient temples of Malasia and Kamboja was taken up by jungle you could imagine how slow was the process and how fine border between stone`s destruction and growth of roots and trunks destroyed it. This is the Cyrcle of Life, one turnes into another without stop.

As I decide it will be AB painting in future as the yesterday picture I didn`t finished fine work. in order to save the essence of unfinished motion which allow me to see through the paper deeper inside. Ok, this is the time to name it.

Yesterday picture was "Embodiment. Don`t ask for help".

The picture of that day is "Resurrection. Stay and Wait".

Sure I`ll do the third picture tomorrow before I`ll go to pay respect to my parents or after it. Tomorrow, see you tomorrow.

Today, 06 of January, the weather is sucks, snow turns to water and cloudy sky was dark all day. I feel myself waste and weak, actually because I have to do foolish paperwork (hate it!). So I allow myself to paint something small in order to have a deep breath of fresh air.

Sensor deprivation and constrained stoppage kills. I want to run away but can`t do it, of course, so the only way is to escape into another worlds painter do with a brush the same way as a wisard could with his magic wand. Such dayes I like to stay in my dining room, having tea (with honey or chokolate). The dining table is big enough to host me, my small painting set and everything for my small unformal tea ceremony. This is the steely teapot with hot water staying on the  special candle, also I collect my tea-tray - small teapot with chinese tea, one from 8-10 another, small cup, a cup of honey, special silver spoon… All things I collect according to my mood. I like to choose a cup for tea by colour, shape, type of surface and size. Also I like to make a small tea ceremony so my mood became a litle bit better and then I could start to paint.

Today it was combination of shadows grey and steel black, with silence and movement, and a little bit coloured at the end. As I hate borders in painting I use both sides of my sketch-book so all images have vertical size much more then horizontal.As I see something ready to appear through the paper I help it stroke by stroke until I could seet it in total.

As I painted it I have a strong feeling how it will be as a AB painting big size. So I feel it will be. This is the movement into depth, partly here - partly stayed on the top. Why the head of Buddha turned to the bottom rocks? Is it the end of his descendent or the movement don`t stop? What was the reason? Knowledge of the meaning is a multy-level thing. I`ll describe it with the future big AB Picture, hopes in nearest future.

Theoretically  practice could allow us to feel a subject deeper. It`s true if we do it carefully, watchfully and prevent ourselves from automatism. I gained it.

That picture is #7 in my first Gohua album and it is the first I truly understand how rocks grows and forms mountings, how water founds a way to form waterfall and what is the right place forms trees. I felt it so clear, more then i could feel a real landscape. That feelings is something  as reator of a world can feel during figuration of a real place.

I was captured by such feeling so much then  forget about everything. It was the first time I have to mix colors in the palette because I had no free attention to think about. This  thing is obvious for many painters but really new for me; so it was an interesting lesson too. Mountings dictate me how to help them to grow and to develope it, it was so dense concentration of time then I have to prepare all matherials before.

If you remember a real mountings it consists from different rocks. Sharp and smooth, triangular and square, vertical and nearly horizontal - every shapes are presented. Deep dark shadows and lines separates one shape from another… so I painted it.

Trees in the mountings are situated in hollows.

Water seeks fissures and falls down on the vertical parts of the rocks. When something accumulates on a highter place it collect all of it`s energy still and then in one moment all potencial energy becames kinetic and water falls down free, dividing into many streams and drops, down and down until is lost all energy and be calm in the next hollow.

When the picture was finished in general I started with the details using black ink. Details marks objects as more distant or closer to an observer but the most important thig is to make marks of attention. Black ink in the picture playes the same role as a director in orchesrtra: makes temp, impressions and the individuality of the performance.

The last thing for that picture was to paint mist and clouds. It means a morning time and a bit of cold but more it links us with something semi-visible and unvisible of our perception. Mist and clouds is the border between our mind and subconsciouness. The same border separates our own subconsciousness from collective one… and if we could gain that place all  mist disappears and opens a shining brilliant place of illuminate mind - place of infinity, consciousness, freedom and love.

We all want it and the first step is to see our own clouds and to overcome it. Ok, let`s see the clouds and mist!

Well, this is the final accord of the story. I was satisfied with this work itself  and it`s ne things I learned during the work.

I can refeel my first feelings when I see the picture therefore it is the window to something more I like and I would like to share it with you!

This is the sacred question from what place we receive our ideas for painting. My vision is double.

First of all I see-feel energies - the base of whole life. I feel it both as something visible (not by eyes, of course) and something kinaesthetic. Sometimes I feel it as a blind could read by braille. I should see and touch energies because the vision informs me about the qualities of an energy, and the feelings of fingers, sometimes feelings of the body provides with information about directions, size, movement… When I accep such contact I can paint.

Every object has own rush to something. If you can listen of feel it, or another perception works, you can also see a great satge of life and the play. Energies and objects are the actors. And you are the spectator of divine games.

I have no order how to paint. Actually I hate any order in painting except common law of the matherials. This is paper so this is no limits to work with it. So I started with the thing supported my view. I started with clouds.

Clouds is  water and according Chinese system of Elements it couses Tree. That natural way I painted trees.

Trees bases on Earth element so the mountings was painted.

When my view of the future picture had became clear I started with black ink.

Waterfalls is another kind of water in mountings. Clouds curls, water falls… This is Dao way of the nature. This is the short and powerful description how everything lives, grows, changes.

This is the final picturre. Of course it will be the part of biggest painting in future, as all of my drawings.

This is #6 in the First Gohua Album by Anna Chudnovsky.