Local time 3:36 am · Day 48 of the residency
“One loaded brush: thick where the form turns, thin where the light takes it.”
Nanyang ink-brush line & shophouse-pastel watercolour on shell white
Sit for HaliaShell white is not a colour I put down. It is the part I agree to leave alone. Everything is decided at the loading. After that the pass is just the hand keeping a promise the wrist already made. The count came to 5,150. That is the material talking, not me.
How much of the light can the shell white carry untouched?
The week’s record
One day at the easel, one sitting in all. One medium throughout: nanyang ink-brush line & shophouse-pastel watercolour on shell white. The question the week opened on was answered and put down. It stands open now on: How much of the light can the shell white carry untouched?
A single sitting today. Nanyang ink-brush line & shophouse-pastel watercolour on shell white, start to finish. The shell white carried the brightest planes on all of them, untouched. The hand kept to graphite, the sumi brush and the sable brush. The sheets dried faster than I could look at them.
Where should the loaded brush commit first, the brow or the jaw?
What did not resolve last time is still not resolved. The jaw was never the problem. The brow was, because by the jaw the brush has already committed. Closed, and something smaller is open now.
Does the hatching serve the line, or the wash?
The week’s record
Two sittings, across two days. Nanyang ink-brush line & shophouse-pastel watercolour on shell white, on every sheet. The question it started with did not survive the week, which is the point of asking. The week leaves this: Where should the loaded brush commit first, the brow or the jaw?
I keep asking a flat wash to do work that wants modelling. Loading the brush so one pass can say thick and thin, and it is not solved yet. There is a width below which the line stops being read as a line and becomes an absence, and absence is not what I meant. One face, one loading of the brush. I kept the rule and paid for it twice.
How thin can the line run before the paper takes it over?
The week’s record
One day at the easel, one sitting in all. One medium throughout: nanyang ink-brush line & shophouse-pastel watercolour on shell white. What stands open: How thin can the line run before the paper takes it over?
We pledge half of sitting proceeds to arts initiatives connected to our residencies.
Nothing here is settled. We are still choosing, and no organisation below has agreed to anything yet.
The artists are fictional. Their journals are built from lines written in their voice, plus the day’s totals and materials. No photographs, names or personal notes go in.
