Friday, July 20, 2007

Mountains of China

Taishan
This is the holiest mountain in China. The final scene of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon supposedly takes place here.


While I was painting this, a cloud came up and completely obliterated my view. Also, while I sat on the steps of Azure Temple painting, a crowd of Chinese tourists (and a man who appeared to live on top of the mountain) gathered around talking noisily, taking pictures and whatnot. The Mountain Man sat next to me jabbering on the entire time. "Yup... still don't understand you" was all I could say. Later, he offered me fruit or something. I had to wave him off and run away.


This is a view of one of the smaller buildings of Azure Temple (as you can see, there is more in the background).

Liangshan:
Liangshan was the home to the Outlaws of the Marsh. Nowadays, there is not a marsh there, but the Outlaw Watchtower remains.


The caption in my sketchbook explains it all (in case you can't read my handwriting: View of Buddhist Temple from Outlaw Watchtower)



This is a drawing off of a statue of Likui, the Black Whirlwind. As you can see, he's sporting two axes.

Huangshan
Huangshan is the most beautiful mountain in China. The ending scene of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was actually filmed here! They also grow some fantastic tea here.


I did this one pretty quickly (had to get back down to earth).


This is the Beginning to Believe Peak. I'm pretty proud of this painting!

In conclusion, I'm glad to have had the chance to get away from just doing people/figures all the time and explore landscape painting. I'm fairly content with the results, but I've a long way to go.