Eastern Gate (East-West/Silken Road)

[Cerulean]

I happily closed my 100 Poets oracle/tarot project...all the Yoshi-Toshi and tanka/haiku was keeping me back into Edo-expired translations...

But where my heart has been for awhile is later East-West interactions and expecially, what started with discovery of the pearl-encrusted Chizuken biwa with the palm tree and camel on it's back--it travelled the Silk Road and was a tribute to an Emperor of Japan.

The lute in all it's variations has also been a part of my immediate families history...a grandfather that played a four-string lute not commonly found now. While it's lovely to celebrate modern versions, I've an old Edo lute that I'm learning...and this passage feels homelike, and yet my own.

So this lute-mad lady has found a way to figure out a 'cards' that celebrates the passages to and from the Eastern Gates of fancy...at present, I modified public domain drafts from Warwick Goble's radiant images. These will serve as models for my own paintings.

I know the costume and the dance, dress, etc., are not up to traditional folk standards. Anyone who has been dressed or experienced friendly eyes of the old Kyoto-Tokoyo matrons, the pinch of the old school obi hardly enters into these costume fanciful images...

The antiqued versions:

 

[Cerulean]

Color versions (working copies)

I tinted the original illustrations and am working on color variations to find a better color palette for the 'deck'. I'm changing the backgrounds and will add elements in these starter drafts.

Notice the lute is in all the pictures, to start. These might be the suit of cups. Lutes seem to be associated with romance throughout history--although in some tarocco/tarrocchino/tarock decks, there's a lute player as "L'Excuse" or the Fool?

You'll notice one lute is not Eastern...this will be a fun fanciful lute-haunted road...I also have one twangy Santal lute that also comes from another world and plan to explore these other musical roads...

I'm only starting from one road at the Eastern Gate and twanging old silken strings merrily from there...

Still reworking,

Lutily Yours,

Cerulean

 

[Cerulean]

Now the three that might become one...

I took all three concepts between listening and re-watching modern day lovers Glen Hansard and Marketa Iglovia (sp) in their great musical movie known as Once and looking at the concepts inspired by W. Goble.

Here's some elements:

Lute 8

Lute 14 & 15

Lute 10

They were all an integrated scene, but I started working on the separate elements as well.

 

[Cerulean]

The integrated scene

Lute 11

Lute 12

Not certain if it will be one picture, "The Lovers" or three--moon, chariot and someone suggested the Hermit...she is a lute player who is doing what would have been traditionally known as what a male moso or satsuma player would do--sitting cross-legged and strumming from the side. Usually the woman would do it upright or on the ground.

I'm definitely breaking with tradition--she is singing and strumming, thinking of someone she has a picture of...an unheard of thing, so strictly a very romantic fancy!

 

[brujaja]

Whoa!

Cerulean! These are gorgeous. I saw them yesterday, didn't have time to post, and when I come back today the colorizations are amazing. I adore them: your East-West "gate of fancy" idea, the family history, the obvious love of music and scholarship in them...and of course their beauty. I can't wait to see more.

Especially like that lute2. So did I read correctly that these are models to be painted, or are the colorizations the painted works?

 

[Cerulean]

Lute 10 is the sketch, which is where I'm at--an early draft

Lute 2 is a colorized concept tinting. But I do like the drama of the woman walking on the winged ones in the air--and the birds being closer to the viewer in a cascade of wings, beaks and forming their bridge. Supposedly she is mainly spirit, so doesn't weigh much

Lute 10 will be a sketch for a pen and ink painting. That's what I'd say is 'my work' and if I can ever develop this more, hope to catch the same drama!

You can see I have changed the original crows/magpies to herons and there is a moon with two tiny profiles. I'll try to do the same magnificent detail as Goble did with having the bird detail closer to the viewer. I think I'll experiment with fantasy birds as well--I love lyrebirds and sunbirds with their fantastic coloring and my own heron phoenixes.

But please remember this is a fantasy deck--I'm experimenting with having this scene shown in a circle, but likely it won't end up that way!

Cerulean

 

[Debra]

Holy moly. What a wonderful project.

I'm liking 2 & 3...well I'm liking all of them really.

 

[Cerulean]

I finally have the tales and pictures started

The first tale is Hana No Botan and the Fool, HPS, Magician's Table, Emperor and Priest are drawn either freehand or using drawing tools with the mouse. (Samples to come)

The Fool and Priest have two hand drawn variations and computer graphic colorized versions. The original Fool were prints of Hokusai that I've redrawn three times and changed to fit the story. The Priest was originally a blind biwa hoshi, but now he is a younger troubador--he doesn't play a major part in the first tale except his lute playing helps materialize a youthful spirit..

Warwick Goble originally painted a three string lute for Grace James retellings. I used the four string to update for Meiji-to-Showa biwa lute versions. Grace James poetically retold tales known to her and I looked at more translations to bring the lute parts more in legendary lore.

Semimaru from India thru China and Japan and his lute associations stem from the Godansho from 1104 and Konjaku Monogatori, supposedly also completed in the same decade. Also Manyoshu.

These tales introduce a common theme of a place of meeting between male and female, whether lovers, siblings or otherwise. In old themes the meeting places of paired deities are traditional.

Some translations will use koto to describe stringed instruments and koto players might prefer to assign heritage to this instrument. Forgive the preference in my readings and tales to favor the biwa lute.

"The lute is where my heart belongs--the dreams are lovelier than the songs."

And after a thousand years, even though I originally thought to make this an I Ching deck of stories, there is room and space for merging of lovely things.

More to come.

 

[Cerulean]

In Long Meditation

Dedication to you,
Dear Reader.

I asked myself
To wander in imagination

To hear music
And see passages
Of unknown moments.

Darkness laced with golden spikes.
Grains lushly bending.
Asking nothing, only fluidly
Streaking and lacing
Behind my eyes.

If there was song,
Or words, they were felt
Among the grasses
Waving tassels
To and fro.

I believe someone
Sang slowly.
Not a lullaby, almost
A hymn or chant
Within quiet
Of still earth
And echoes
Of water nearby.

5/21/10
MH

 

[Debra]

So nice to see that you are continuing with this project, Cerulean. I like your poem.