and cranes for children

[corvi]

Last Sunday's painting class was the last one for a while. The instructor suggested everyone practice plum blossoms, and that even those of us studying Mountain Style take a break from our stone and mist. I hadn't painted flowers before, and really enjoyed it.



This is her demo painting.

Plum blossoms are one of the "three friends of winter", with bamboo and pine. They represent hope or endurance - a flower that blooms while snow is still on the ground, a brightness in a dark place. There's a proverb that the smell of plum blossoms is enhanced by deep cold.

(This seems biologically implausible to me; we had a plum tree lose all its blossoms in a hard frost a few years ago.)

(My personal favourite idiom about plum blossoms is "to take a plum tree for a wife and cranes for children" - said of poets and scholars too wrapped up in their work to pursue romance. I think it's supposed to be a putdown, but it sounds kind of awesome.)

I painted a lot of plum petals. In black, because I didn't have red ink, which doesn't feature much in Mountain Style. We joked about cats walking over our pages: dots in groups of five.


Notes on painting plum blossoms:

• Use a mixed-hair brush with stiff waterproof external hairs (deer hair) for good control of petal shape, and soft internal hairs (rabbit) to soak up ink and make a smooth gradient
• Brush should be lightly twisted in the ink dish to get a flattened shape sort of like a soft calligraphy nib.
• Each petal is a single stroke, either toward or away from the center. They're pointier than cherry blossoms (traditionally. Biologically, there's variation). Nectarine blossoms are traditionally even pointier.
• Plums have five petals usually, but there is a thorny species that has four (!)
• Plum branches should be scaly and twisty, like dragons. They should cross like this: 女 not like this: 十
• The Mustard Seed Garden Manual has a list of 36 Wrong Ways To Paint Plum Blossoms, written in rhyme for easy memorization, including drawing plum trees under a full moon. I will not be memorizing them.

I didn't get to calyxes or sepals or branches, but after two hours of effort, I did produce a single plum blossom both the instructor and I agreed was okay!




I'm very happy about it.

(I'll miss class a lot. It was oddly fitting to spend our last meeting together on a symbol of endurance and hope and brightness in dark times.)

Comments

[ivy]

Can I commission a plum blossom painting? Black is okay! Four petal thorny is even better.

[corvi]

If you'd enjoy a plum blossom painting from someone who learned how to paint them literally a week ago, it'd be an honour to attempt one. :)

Do you actively prefer all-black to black and red? If not, I'll use some red pigment from juli's pigment stash.

[ivy]

I would be delighted with any plum blossoms, however you think they should be painted; I love all the symbolism, I had one hanging on my wall in a scroll for years, and it would be a great addition to my current alcove. Thank you!

[leduck]

I love your flowers! And I also love the symbolism of the plum blossoms.

[corvi]

Happy enough with my one worthwhile flower to make an icon.

[kellan_the_tabby]

Having married a human once, I think a plum tree would have been a much better idea.

[corvi]

It has an appealing fairy-tale energy. I'd love to read a story where a poet was happily married to some sort of tree spirit.