Finally I did it. This picture was a lot of work, even if it may not look so. There are lots and lots of layers of soft grey washes done here. It may not reach the hundred-mark, but I am sure there are about 60-80 layers.

For those who are interested in, I managed to remind my self of taking some work in progress pictures… so here they are:

Here you can see… almost nothing. But a thing you can notice is how fine chinese rice paper is. It really is nearly about transparent, especially after it´s wet. The dark line in the upper third revers not to the painting, its a stroke on the painting board that is shining through…

First few washes, defining the mountains and the moon in negative space.

And on it goes. The difficulty here is to repaint exactly the same forms, for example of the mountains to not get them fuzzy edges…

By so far, I was quite happy with the overall composition, but realized that something was really missing. Layer-amount at this point: about 30

So I decided to paint in some clouds for getting more live into the painting. I started to softly define them through negative space, always paying attention not to get to sharp edges.

More and more clouds where rising…

And, of course, the golden moon. Hi is done in gold-leaf of fair-trade gold (23 K) from thailand. A really lovely, warm gold-tone… 

You can also see that I darkened the foreground mountains a lot more since I started…

And finally done…

I choose a passage from the Dao-Te-Jing from Lao-Tsu, that I rally like as balance text for the empty space in the right-under corner. 

It is about the water and it´s softness that is superior all hardness.

I also add my artist-name and my seal.

And so it is ready now, to be mounted onto a traditional chinese silk scroll…

Thanks for watching! 

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