воскресенье, 29 января 2012 г.

Wu Xing main elements: Wood

The Wood element is yang. Wood in movement manifests through directness and swiftness. Outwardly it resembles a fast and powerful blow. The wood movement in its essence conveys the sensation of growing, sprouting, bursting. A successful growth needs rhythm. That’s why a clear and brisk rhythm is an integral feature of this type of movement. When using wood movement, the painter hammers in the nails, so to speak.
The form of a brushstroke created by the wood movement can vary, although most often it is a line that starts and ends with a dot, much like the basic lines of Chinese calligraphy − a horizontal line, a vertical line, and various obliques and curves. Traditionally, this type of brushstroke is used to paint bamboo. But it is just as good for painting various trees and mammals. Sometimes the wood movement can even render the energy of a mountain or a rock.

(all brushstroke patterns come from www.chinart.ru)
Wood denotes a way of directing the viewer’s eye through a painting using a sequence of interacting images. In such a painting, the gaze travels from one image to another in the same way that a brush moves from dot to dot when you paint a bamboo tree. Such movement always leads to a specific subject. So we are free to say that a tree in a painting generates its subject. This subject has to excite the viewer and to grab his attention. If one wants to make the painting quite dynamic or to set it up as an adventure, then the wood composition is a perfect choice. In some people such paintings instigate excitement or even aggression.
In this type of composition yang acts as a starting point in a sequence of images that direct the viewer’s eye, whereas yin completes this sequence of interconnected images. For example, in a painting “Magpies and Hare” by a famous Chinese artist Cui Bai of Song dynasty (see a link below) the hare is yang, and the last in a row of magpies in the right upper corner is yin.
The wood element is fully expressed in monochrome paintings or in monochrome works with one extra color. The abundance of colors can distract one’s attention from the main subject of the painting.
These are paintings with a dominant wood element – To see paintings by Cui Bai of Song dynasty, go to Wikipedia:
Painting 1

Other examples of wood element(click to enlarge, the preview shows only a part of the whole picture):

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