When I say, think of a Japanese flower, what is your first thought? I’m guessing it was the Sakura (or cherry) blossom. Almost everyone has heard of the Sakura blossom, but have you heard of the ume blossom?
Ume (pronounced OO-mey) is better known as the Japanese plum, or apricot. These flowers appear on trees in mid to late winter, and are some of the first flowers to bloom in the New Year. They come in a variety of pinks, whites, and reds and—unlike the Sakura—have a very distinct, sweet scent (almost like cotton candy).
In mid-winter, when everything else is brown and dead, these little quiet beauties are a delight to behold.
As much as I enjoy the Sakura trees in spring, I almost have a greater appreciation for the ume—since during the winter is when I most desperately desire a sign of spring. And not only does the ume tree deliver, but it tends to last much longer that the tertiary Sakura blossoms. I like to think of the Sakura as a flirtatious younger sister to the older—yet more mature—ume blossom.
But enough with the tree-talk. This is a blog about art! So what do I do when inspiration hits? Make a picture of it, of course. :)So in winter of 2014, I decided to undertake a watercolor picture featuring the beautiful ume blossom. At the time I was also interested in Japanese archery (Kyūdō). I figured that the ume blossom and art of kyudo shared a lot of attributes and a quiet, humble—yet strong—personality.
I started my process normal enough: stretched my watercolor paper onto a board, let it dry, and then sketched the image onto the paper.
Then I arduously masked the entire image so that I could cover the background in a coffee stain.
Typically when I do the inking stage, I use a simply croquil dip pen. But this time I wanted to try something different. I decided to go with a brown micron pen. And then when I started to apply watercolor...DISASTER STRUCK.As soon as the water touched the micron pen, the ink bled faster than I had time to realize my abysmal mistake. In a split instant—after hours of research, sketching, masking and staining—my beautiful little kyudo archer now looked like the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka.
A micron pen may have gone flying clear across the house, jettisoned by a few choice words.Needless to say, I was demolished. I felt my picture was ruined.I tossed the image in a corner of my room, not wanting to even look at it. Having deemed the picture irreconcilable, I restarted the entire thing on a whole new board. But after a few days I grew demoralized from the project and just decided to shelve the whole thing indefinitely.
Several months went by when I happened to have some friends over for brunch. When I was showing them around my art room, one of my neighbors caught sight of blueberry-face and remarked how incredible she thought it was. Skeptical and rather amazed by what she saw in the painting that I did not, I explained to her what had happened, and to my astonishment she remarked that she didn’t see the flaw in it and would have bought it in an instant. The next day I looked at it again, took a deep sigh, and decided to do my best to save little ume archer.It took some forethought, some careful reworking, and a little faith--
--but little Ume Archer was saved. :)
I still now had a whole second archer drawn out and ready to be painted. I didn’t want to waste another good picture, so instead I decided to finish her in the style of the white ume blossom. I chose to douse the background in sencha (green) tea.
It’s really interesting to see the similarities and differences between the two. Perhaps they are sisters?
After this entire experience, I realized something…When you think something may be ruined, maybe it just needs to be redeemed. : )
