Saturday, April 16, 2011

Original Art Sundays (Saturday) #88: oddment: sumi-e and haiku

The day before the next Tranny Towers page is scheduled for posting, I'm getting around to catching up again.
This oddment comes from coursework done in my Master's program on Haiku and suni-e.
While I'm too guarded a writer to ever make a great poet, I do enjoy haiku and related forms, probably because the brevity serves to limit my options for self-editing.
I enjoy the sumi-e technique a great deal. The idea that the brush contains all the values and the artist can release them all with one stroke is a very powerful, calming thing.
These three are not my best nor my worst. They're the ones that presented themselves as I was organizing a stack of old work.



This technique is quite versatile.
I've toyed with the idea of using it in comics, as Jon Muth did in the Sandman story Exiles, in Gaiman's final story arc The Wake.


Here's a You Tube that shows the scary talented Muth's brush technique.



It's all about simultaneous control and release, coupled with understanding of light and dark as facets of each other. You know- Zen.
Tomorrow, a "new" old Tranny Towers page.