《 Lumbini - The Birth of Siddhartha 》

From the beginning, I designed the motion of leading role, then, the guest characters echoing the theme. According to the legend, Sakyamuni Buddha (Prince Siddhartha) was born with two water columns dropped from the sky, a newborn baby is covered by a canopy, held by Queen Maya; I designed a rhythmic action, showing the Buddha’s naive and clever, Buddha mother’s Love with the dignified feeling. I also excluded the East brushwork ink style and used Western realistic classical style, with the addition of personal style skills. Mother and son are sitting on the glass bed, who are carried by the Four Heavenly Kings, “Virudhaka, Dhrtarastra, Vaisravana, Virupaksa”, the Virudhaka is holding a sword, who is modeled by my son as a fitness coach, but it was not a copy, and I just understood the muscle space, completing it with exaggerated muscle shape after referring to anatomy to realize the picture, rather than copying details; upon understanding more, I interpreted a new object. Such complicated procedures require a lot of sketching ability, and experiences of copying classical painting in the 16^th – 17^th century, learning connecting elements therein.

According to the legend, Sakyamuni Buddha was delivered by Queen Maya who dreamed a white elephant, so, I added a white elephant and glass bed to echo them. The Bodhi Tree which goes through the entire work is originated from the ancient tree in Tainan Park, then, I shaped it with rough strokes. The character postures include forward, backward, overlook, lying, sometimes the character is back to the viewers, and sometimes is looking around. In Chinese painting theory, “higher mountain than the meter of a tree, the inch of horse and bean-like human” refers to the focus of proportionality while staring around and lying posture shows the importance of the rhythm of modeling. However, western science had space, texture, sense of mass earlier, so I often took eastern science as the theme in the creation and western science refers to the technologic operation, achieving the top realm of eastern science as the body and western art as the application.