Perhaps surviving in the wilderness with broken ski gear prompted a focus on the elemental essentials of composition.

The ink paintings of Sesshu and Sesson might offer additional inspiration.

Fascinating site, glad to have discovered it.

You’re right, the lighter shadows are also much lighter emotionally, I also find them reassuring–good word!

June,

I’ve always had an interest in the calligraphic, and that’s even the name of an ongoing, amorphous project that has very little in it so far.

As I thumb through some of my own Japanese references, I note that shadows seldom appear in Japanese art. Your stick figures are like calligraphy, and the echoes of the shadows feel like the repetition of the the rhythm. Playing it a second time?

You’re right about the darkening toward the edges, it’s a natural optical effect not usually noticeable, except where thdere are large expanses of even tone. Some deliberately enhance the effect (classic vignetting); I simply don’t correct for it normally, but possibly I should here. It does, as you say, tend to keep the eye within the frame. Also, these are monochrome, though the original color would look almost the same.

Though some features are shaded somewhat in typical ink brush paintings, distinct shadows would be extremely unusual. A very interesting point worth expansion when I have more time later…

Often, if not daily.

Perhaps it’s just my screen, but your shadowed photos gradually darken toward the edges. I have to go back and reacquaint myself with things Japanese, but it seems that the empty spaces in Japanese work don’t just wander off, but are bounded by edges that usually correspond to the natural boundaries of the surface in question. In a somewhat related manner, and in the absence of a functional boundary, the gradual darkening acts as a kind of visual uphill slope that rolls the eyeball back to the subjects in question.

Shadows form the foreground in Your images. It makes me want to reverse the given relationships so that the branch or twig feels more the product of the shadow.

And in response to Melanie, Are these images monochrome? I took some snowy shots this last winter that could easily be mistaken for monochrome, so subdued are the colors.