Painting: autumn motifs

[corvi]

The instructor had us paint crabs and shrimp. Crabs are a traditional autumn motif, but there's not much in the way of traditional symbolism or rules. They're considered freeform and improvisational.

Here's the instructor's crab:


How to crab:

• body first, roughly trapezoidal, use a large soft brush sideways, you want some colour variation and roughness. Afterwards you can lightly outline around the body if you want
• Eyes next. Dark, a little T-shaped
• then do the claws. claws should star away form the body and then draw the connecting segments as needed, so there's a sense of motion, like the claws are leading. rough, stiff wolf hair brush.
• finally the legs. Legs do start at the body and work outwards, unlike claws. Legs are in sets of two. A long kind of oval section, a slightly shorter teardrop or leaf shaped section, a little claw. Back legs should tilt toward the crab's body. Front legs should overlap. Dot to join legs to body is okay if needed.

Here's the shrimp, which I had some trouble with, because it is not any sort of shrimp I know? It has pincers? And lives in fresh water? Is it a crawfish? I think it looks kind of weird, but that's probably just because I'm not familiar with this sort.


How to shrimp:

• Head first, using a fairly wet brush.
• Use the same brush right away to do body segments. There are seven. if the shrimp bends, it bends at the third segment, which can be triangular.
• put dark ink on the brush, and do a dark line from head to tail, connecting all the segments. It will blur into the lighter wet ink.
• The shrimp has two very long pincers on thin three-section legs that go forward.
• Antennae go straight back if the shrimp is swimming into the water, out more if the shrimp is chilling. There are two pairs, the longer pair typically goes further away from the body too.
• Six legs, two eyes, four antennae, and two mangibles come off the head segment
• Each body segment gets a swimmeret. (that's not what she called them, but I don't remember what she called them)

This is a flowing, freestyle exercise. You're supposed to just do whatever feels right with the position of the shrimp body segments or crab legs, and if you miss one, no problem, your crab was in a fight or something. That is not how it felt to me, at all. I did a lot of counting legs and body segments, and trying to plan where to fit all the fiddly bits.

Maybe this is because my primary art requires a lot of planning and zero improv, or maybe it's just my personality, or maybe it's a cultural difference - crabs don't really seem very... flowing to me. But clearly, say, Qi Baishi does think crabs can flow: the crabs in this painting of his are graceful as snakes:



Here's one of my deeply unfortunate shrimp, the best of a sad lot:


And here's a rigid, stubby-legged crab. The instructor thought this was very amusing. She said it was a "military crab".

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Perhaps still wanting to get everyone to work on painting loosely without overthinking, after the debacle of Vice Admiral Pinchy up there, she switched the class to painting bok choy, a traditional harvest subject.

How to bok choy:

• draw 4-6 curved lines to outline the stem
• to do the leaves, get your brush really wet, with dark ink at the tip. Place the dark tip against the edge of the stem, with the watery portion of the brush pressed against the paper, and then move the inky tip around in pretty much any way you like and let the ink drift through the water like a cloud

It was kind of amazing, and felt a bit like painting a nebula, or stormclouds. Painting bok choy is incredibly fun and I am sad I cannot make a career of it.

---

At the end of class, one of the other students requested the instructor demonstrate a bird, which she did quickly, without much explanation. It was this cute fluffy sparrow:


I was Very Excited About Birds, so I took a crack at some magpies at home. I think the one on top has a pretty good body - I like the way the wing feather brushstrokes curve around the torso. I think the one on the bottom has a better head. I used the ground azurite again for the blue-on-black, and I think it worked well.

Comments

[yam]

Oh wow, the crushed mineral goo is so great at magpies.

I like that crabs have no rules. You can try to apply rules to crabs but CRAB PINCH ALL RULES. CRAB CRUSH SYMBOLISM WITH CLAW. CRAB RELUCTANTLY ACCEPT LOOSE AFFILIATION WITH AUTUMN.

[grayswandir]

I'm a bit in awe of all of this, because the only way I can do art is, like, the complete opposite of "flowing," "freestyle," or "not overthinking." I suspect that if I tried this exercise, my crabs would be way more military than your crab.

Also, those magpies are amazing! I love both of them.

[shadaras]

Birds! :D I know that's not the center of this post, but the birds are very pretty!

The bok choy does look like fun to paint, especially in contrast to the careful counting that (I agree) feels needed with the crabs and shrimp!

[draculard]

Wow, those magpies are LEGIT!

[twoeleven]

He is a very crabby model of a modern senior admiral!

[wordweaverlynn]

These are great!

[dorchadas]

That is an extremely cute fluffy bird!

Do you know why crabs are an autumn subject? Is it mating or spawning or harvest season in the autumn, or something?