A personal writing that explains and reflects on the personal painting, "Way of the Tiger," that I finished at the end of 2017. It helps the readers to understand the painting and the Chinese/ Asian culture behind it. It is an eye-opening reading ex...
Way of the Tiger is an oil painting that is 6 feet long and 3 feet wide. The rough idea came to me in September of 2017. I started painting it around the end of October and finished it December 13th. It was a coincidence that I decided to create this painting because I was inspired by a message from a fortune cookie. It said"Awaken your divine nature within" and I was thinking about the painting when I read it.
It is quite unprecedented for me to create a painting of this style, size, and meaning. It represents a milestone, so I am writing about the process of its creation and analyzing its symbols, for a deeper understanding of my painting.
Way of the Tiger
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I was inspired by the song Epic (《演义》) of the Chinese metal band calledTang Dynasty (唐朝乐队).
Epic is my favorite of all Tang Dynasty's songs. The song is almost 10 minutes long, and its intro is about 3 minutes long. The extremely long intro does not slow down the beat, neither does it feel unnecessary. It is amazingly epic. Although it is a metal song, which originally came from the western culture, its lyrics included many ancient Chinese elements, such as ancient Chinese poems. The first part of the lyrics is taken from the opening words of the famous historical novel Three Kingdom (《三国演义》). It describes the greatest heroes of all time as mortals that will eventually be gone by comparing them to flowing water, all whilst time continues to pass. Whatever happened will become history that is discussed by people eventually. The last line is from the ancient poem Guo Ling Ding Yang (《过零丁洋》), and it means "None can escape death, may my loyalty shines on the annals forever." The song combined the western and Chinese culture; it is magnificent, showing the profoundness and uniqueness of the traditional Chinese literature and heroism.
Epic
With this inspiration, I decided to give the painting a heroic theme.
Way of the Tiger refers to many Chinese cultural features and symbols.
The background is a tri-color waterfall of yellow, blue, and green; the water is falling from the sky and splashing all over after hitting the rock. The color scheme is a reference to a Chinese landscape painting from the Song Dynasty, Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains(《千里江山图》). Its mountains and rivers are lively and luxurious, and the details such as the cottages, trees, fishing boats, among others are also meticulously well-done. While comparing to most of the others Chinese landscape paintings, rather than being peaceful and harmonious, it is filled with youthful aspiration, and it is even wildly arrogant. I admire it very much, so I used a similar color scheme to express an imposing momentum.
