Do the Wabi-Sabi
(blog exerpt December 8, 2012)

Wabi-sabi, the quality of things that suggests a natural process, vulnerable to effects of time, weathering, human treatment, yet still possessing poetry, poise and strength of character.  (Many of us folks of a certain age hope that this might refer to us).  It is the quality of things that are indifferent to conventional good taste, maybe even the product of some (lucky) accident.

Wabi-sabi does not profess to be important or the center of attention.  It is understated and yet has a quiet authority.  It may be coarse or unrefined, but in an earthy way, rich in raw texture and tactile sensation.  It is vague, blurry, subtle with earthy tones or smoky hues, infinite glorious grays and browns and blacks and sometimes silver rusts and green browns.

Simplicity is at its core, a sober modesty pared down to the essence, without removing the inherent poetry.

(To learn more about Wabi-sabi, coming to us of course from Japanese culture, you might want to read Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets + Philosophers by Leonard Koren)

. . .and try the Art Play challenge lesson in this edition, playing with black inks on white paper.

As I starting reading this little book, which we've had on our shelves for a while now, I kept thinking Yes!  Yes! this is exactly what we do in the Muse Groups.  We allow natural processes to evolve without forcing them.  We spin poetry out of accidental occurences.  We throw caution to the wind and thumb our noses at artistic convention.  We champion the serendipity of art making.  We adore soft edges blooming on wet surfaces and do nothing to draw attention to ourselves, but rather take these sublime art accidents as contemplations to dive deeper into new and thoroughly wabi-sabi destinations!

Winter is a good time to contemplate the bare bones of nature and to experiment with black and white.  It's time to surrender to atmospheric changes, to burrow and compost.  

The art version of this is that we relax and abandon ourselves to art play, allowing natural accidents to occur on paper.  Natural accidents of ink on paper make for an appealing authentic beauty, that of quiet contemplative images that draw you inward.  It's the effect of wabi-sabi.

Try these ideas, and here's a challenge!  Do one of these a day for seven consecutive days over the holidays.  After that, just try and stop!

Using black ink on white watercolor paper, see how many different effects you can get with it, using your inner and outer sense of movement and touch to put the ink on the paper.  If you're a visual person, you may see where to go on the paper.  If you're mainly kinesthetic, you will feel it.  This is not an exercise in THINKING.  So try not to!

Make finger prints and palm prints with the ink.  Splatter ink and gesso on the paper and blend them with fingers, a brush, roller, or scraper.

Make a puddle of ink on the paper and pull ink out from it with a bamboo pen or palette knife to make a drawing, doodle, line patterns, etc.  

Do a monoprint by applying ink shapes and gesso to one paper and laying another face down on it to imprint.  Now look at the blob(s) and make it into something recognizable with your brush or pen and ink.

Dilute some of the ink to have different values of black and gray in your painting.  Paint them on in layers with lightest value first, drying between layers to get atmospheric depth.

Lay a piece of tissue paper on your watercolor paper and paint the ink thickly over it.  When you lift it up you will have an interesting texture underneath where the ink has seeped through.

When the ink is dry, add a note of color somewhere for enhancement.

You need no more than 10-15 minutes to do one of these studies in wabi sabi, if your inks, paper, brushes and water are all set up.  Let this be your daily break from  holiday busy-ness.  Notice how the forms of nature outside reveal themselves in your abstract inner-focused paintings.