corvi

Today was the last Chinese brush painting class of the year, and the brush painting instructor taught a traditional snow painting technique. It's magic!

First you paint all the rocks:

Then you take a supersaturated alum/water solution, which is completely transparent, and you transparently paint all the snowy bits: mountains, trees, snow piled atop rocks. It's maddening because you can't see what you're doing. Did I just make a bunch of tree branches hanging in space unconnected to the trunk? (spoiler: yes)

Then you turn the rice paper over, and paint the entire back of it with indigo. Where the alum has soaked into the paper, it partially prevents the indigo from soaking through from the back. But even where the alum wasn't painted, the indigo has a luminous quality and some depth, very different feeling soaking it through from the back than just placing it on top of the paper in front.

And then you turn the paper back over and the magic trick has occurred, right on schedule.

There's a lot that needs to be cleaned up, shaded, or connected still, but ... snow!! :D It's a very good magic trick.

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juli

It's such a beautiful thing in person. Truly amazing.

shadaras

Oh wow, that's a super cool technique! It also sounds like learning how to paint the white parts consistently and confidently would be pretty hard -- but what you've posted looks really good!