Moosh's painting blog

Copied from my painting blog:

I can get a bit hung up on context, authenticity, research when it comes to painting miniatures. I often look at everything in the world , looking for the details, the textures, how one thing interacts with another, how lighting works, saturation and so on. I've also always had a thing for colour.

Painting up Matsu Takashi for the Bushido painting competition was at first a decision based on what mini could win a competition. Before you've even under coated a mini, there's no point trying to win a competition with a mini that people won't immediately fall in love with. Matsu has character, a connection with anyone who's played street fighter, and a good excuse to do some freehand and light sourcing. Good start as far as I'm concerned.

Background.
Matsu is briefly mentioned at the very end of the story, Awakening. The story features her sister who is killed by the snake clan, and charges the dragon with protecting Matsu. This made me think of what goes thru Matsu's mind. Sadness, revenge, loss, anger.
On one hand Matsu is a part of the Prefecture of Ryu, and expected to uphold their strong sense of discipline. On the other hand her sister was murdered by a hated, rival  clan. She'd be torn between two worlds. What is driving her now?
The base itself has the symbol for revenge carved into the stone - this is the path I'm painting her as following.

History and context.
I thought watching a few films based in Chinese mythology might be a good place to start for getting some colour ideas. Mulan and Kung Fu Panda were lying around in the kids DVD collection.

Watching these, the colours associated with messages seemed pretty obvious:Blue are officials, clerical.
Purple tended to be somewhat sinister / evil characters.
Red is the colour of the army, ferocity, blood
Gold is the colour of royalty, the emperor
Orange is a peaceful colour, related to the Buddhist monks.
Greens, browns and other earthy colours seemed to relate to common people, peasants etc

I then researched colours in Chinese culture and found that red is actually the colour of luck, festivals, weddings. Not war and aggression. Of course the Chinese Communist party has appropriated red as its colour to signify power, bloodshed etc, but traditionally, red has a very different, positive meaning in China.
Equally unusual is White. Whilst in one sense it does represent purity and innocence, much like the west, white is also the national colour of mourning. Not black.
I suspect that Mulan and Kung Fu Panda were adapted for a western market; the likes of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the beautifully colourful Hero are probably more accurate and better example of colour.

Beyond that, the colours are also often associated with the 5 elements (not 4 like we typically have in the west) - "Traditional Chinese physics taught that the five elements are water, fire, wood, metal and earth, in that order. They correspond to black, red, blue-green, white and yellow." (link)

Colour theory.

To create a unified and in some ways one sided and focused colour scheme I used 3 adjacent colours on the colour wheel - green with yellow and blue that are either side of it. I wanted to avoid the blue that seemed too official, to cold in favour of something a little more earthy. While primary colours work well for the factions in a setting representing the dominant culture (think Google's use of simple primary colours), I wanted Matsu to be a bit separate from this. The advantage of green also was that in contrasted naturally with its opposite, red that would work well for the light sourcing.

Showing these 4 colours on a colour wheel and you have one half that is the blue-green-yellow semi-circle and from that is being projected the bright red magical light source - it almost has that look of a fireball being pushed out of open palms like in Street Fighter. It also serves to demonstrate the opposed nature of Matsu. Martial arts have strong roots in this sense of balance, yin and yang and that they must co-exist with each other. They are opposed, yet also complimentary. They represent the flow of energy (or chi, or in the case of Bushido, Ki) as cycling around these 2 states.

Coming back to what I actually painted, I can help but feel a little disappointed by the end result. Whilst red does contrast strongly with green and therefore make for a visually eye catching focus of the miniature, it does look a bit much like blood. Whilst I did push the red to more of a pink tint, not orange, it's still a bit confusing in terms of a readable miniature. Red is also here supposedly reflecting anger and revenge, but as I found out, in Chinese tradition this is not accurate.

Perhaps in my determination to make a mini that was different to the official Bushido colour, I missed something obvious.

If I were to paint her again, I'd stick to a blue clothing scheme but weave in a lot more white. This would represent her official, prefecture side along with the sense of mourning and sadness for her sister, whilst still retaining a cold feel. It would also provide space for freehand painting. The contrasting colour of blue would of course be orange, which would still make for an eye catching light source between her hands, but would also better represent balance, energy flow and discipline.

If only in theory, this would likely have been a more coherent and balanced miniature.
But like I said, I do have a tendency to over think this stuff!