We wish you a happy new year, with this 2014 edition of our greeting card !
It was inspired from a cruise we had on the Li river, as you can see on this movie.
The Story
A nice trip
This summer, we went to China, to several places. One of the most beautiful was our cruise on the Li River. There was a lot of wind and mountains with its unique contours, which embody China.
We have taken tons of pictures, we have shot hours of films, and I promised to myself to remember this scene for our Greeting Card 2014.
Inspiration
Chineese painting
Gongbi way of painting
I then consulted several sites on Chinese painting.
Among them, I noticed that of chine-culture.com detailing several styles, particularly the Gongbi way.
I quote :
Gong takes the meaning of "refined", "careful", "delicate". Bi generally refers to the tools to write, but it also has the meaning of "write". By this we already guess the painting style corresponding to this term.
To be absolutely true, one should also mention:
Therefore, the Gong Bi technique searches finesse, precision details. It requires a good technique and a lot of patience.
The painting
Let's go to action
Background colours
To create a special atmosphere, I have selected a combination of colours, yellow-orange and blue-gray, to surround the characters. These tones are included in the evocation of water and on closer views. I remembered my disappointment on the 2012 card, where details are lacking simplicity and consistency, which ruins almost all interest in the painting.
The horizon is outlined by the mountains, characteristics of the Chinese landscape.
I made several drawings of the characters with a pencil then moved to Photoshop to capture the features and postures which suited me.
But as always, the most complex in this type of painting, are the portraits of the characters:
- For Gauthier and Loriane, I had to remove their glasses from the model, glasses being totally anachronistic with the topic.
- Gabrielle's smile tended to round her face, consequenty my first attempts were totally rejected by the applicant.
If I struggled on the faces, bodies did not represent any particular problems. For darker colors, I have used the gouache to get a clean and opaque background most easily.
Thus, the painting only took me 4 hours, and the whole picture a weekend.
Study for Gabrielle's portrait
The movie
The movie on YouTube
I noticed a music on YouTube, from Klaus Schønning, entitled 'Chinese Twilight'. I have borrowed it when I prepared a DVD about our holiday in China.
Based on this music, I picked-up several video clips on the net, I filmed my workshop, and recomposed every extract with AfterEffect.
This software can do almost any video composition, including managing acceleration/deceleration motion zoom.
Apart from these technical considerations, I hope that the result reflects a bit of poetry and this the special feeling we felt during our cruise and which we wanted to share.
What else
But this is not finished!
To be honest, I'm not really satisfied with this painting. I have no remorse about the composition or the choice of colors, but the characters seem too static.
After reading the book M.Mattesi, Force-dessin dynamique, I wanted to give a more toned version. So let's move on!
1st sketch
2nd sketch
3rd sketch
4th sketch
With the model of the original painting, I begin by practicing the set of portraits. having three portraits to achieve, I can not afford to miss a single one.
And besides, I decided to film the whole achievement, which is a challenge because it forced me to paint while remaining ouf of the camera view, this means shifted.
Practice on a portrait
What's next
Second version of 'By the river LI'
Here's the video for which Gauthier helped me, switching on the camera at each step and checking if I did not enter the sight of the camera.
The film lasts for 3 minutes, accelerated in a painting that lasted about 8 hours, including a non-filmed test where I trained to make portraits table.
Movie on YouTube