I have recently recom­mitted myself to cre­ating a poster for the Year of the Ox, although it will def­i­nitely not be ready for the new year – in a week’s time. I would like to have another piece for my port­folio, it is an inter­esting chal­lenge for my illus­tra­tion skills (or lack thereof) and it is an oppor­tu­nity to study some Chi­nese art­work. I am hoping to incor­po­rate some kind of cul­tur­ally appro­priate style into the work.

Based on my perusal of the National Palace Museum’s web­site (see Jan­uary 10) I came upon a copy of a famous art­work called “Along the River During the Qing­ming Fes­tival”. More infor­ma­tion can be found by checking Wikipedia. It has appar­ently been quite famous over time and copied on sev­eral occa­sions. I par­tic­u­larly like the format of the painting. While I orig­i­nally thought to create a poster (and when I say poster I am thinking of a por­trait format piece), I think a long scroll format may be more appro­priate. I can present time lin­early, having the scene shift with the pas­sage of time over the months and sea­sons of the year. The tricky part will be to incor­po­rate the quan­ti­ta­tive infor­ma­tion about the pas­sage of time (in sun posi­tion, months, and sea­sons) with the qual­i­ta­tive infor­ma­tion in the imagery.

A sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge will be to plan the imagery. According to Wikipedia (which sources The Bei­jing Palace Museum), “there are 814 humans, 28 boats, 60 ani­mals, 30 build­ings, 20 vehi­cles, nine sedan chairs and 170 trees drawn.” Now, I know I want to fea­ture ox in the design, but how much? I don’t want this to turn into a Chick-Fil-A adver­tise­ment. I’ll really need to think about what I want to por­trait. It also seems rea­son­able to do some­thing con­tem­po­rary and rel­e­vant to my envi­ron­ment. What if the whole image is a long city block? How do I incor­po­rate ox then? Seems like it would have to be more of a period piece of some kind – when ox were actu­ally used as work ani­mals. Then again, I could drop the ox theme and go with a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what I want the year to be like. Some­thing that rep­re­sents a “well-wishing” of sorts. The Qing­ming Fes­tival scroll depicts daily life in a city in 12th cen­tury China. It is for this that the art­work is inter­esting to scholars as well as those admiring the art.

One sig­nif­i­cant depar­ture I will make with this format is that of pre­sen­ta­tion. The Met Museum web­site describes the viewing of a hand­scroll painting as an inti­mate expe­ri­ence where the intended audi­ence is a single person who views the scroll slowly, one shoulder-width sec­tion at a time as the scroll is unrolled. The design chal­lenge here comes from the other aspect of the scroll format. Quoting from the Met Museum website:

The format of a hand­scroll allows for the depic­tion of a con­tin­uous nar­ra­tive or journey: the viewing of a hand­scroll is a pro­gres­sion through time and space—both the nar­ra­tive time and space of the image, but also the lit­eral time and dis­tance it takes to expe­ri­ence the entire painting. As the scroll unfurls, so the nar­ra­tive or journey pro­gresses. In this way, looking at a hand­scroll is like reading a book: just as one turns from page to page, not knowing what to expect, one pro­ceeds from sec­tion to sec­tion; in both painting and book, there is a begin­ning and an end.

This seems like a beau­tiful way to rep­re­sent a year.