Clouds

The Power of Clouds (kumo - 雲)

Clouds, those nice fluffy and streaky things that sometimes make the sky so picturesque, can hide an awesome amount of power.

"Feared by paragliders and hand (sic) gliders, the base of cumulus clouds can be a dangerous place when thermal updrafts contribute to a phenomenon known as 'cloud suck'.

In Februrary 2007, paraglider Eva Wiśnierska-Cieślewicz was sucked up into a cumulonimbus cloud rapidly climbing at a speed of 45 mph to an altitude of 9,946 m (32,600 feet) - close to the altitude of an airliner. 

Due to hypoxia she lost consciousness and miraculously came around after around an hour to successfully land her paraglider. With temperatures around -50 °C at that altitude, when she miraculously reached the ground she was covered in ice with bruising all over her body from the impact of hailstones in the cloud."

from https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/types-of-weather/clouds/facts-about-clouds

Lightning travels horizontally within clouds more frequently and for longer distances than it does from clouds to the ground. Many years ago, my husband flew home from a Midwestern city at the end of a business trip just ahead of a weather front moving in from the north. The night sky was clear where the plane was flying, but the weather front to the right of the plane was a huge wall of clouds just a few miles away. Flashes of light from lightning within the front could be seen illuminating the wall of clouds almost constantly for the more than half an hour that the plane flew past the front.

Clouds come in all sorts of sizes and shapes, and with the play of light, can come in a variety of colors, too. I leave it to you to search the web for cloud images that may inspire your paintings.

Japanese Clouds

Clouds in Japanese art are often decorative elements like the ones in these two woodblock prints by Hokusai (1760-1849) from his 36 Views of Mt. Fuji series and Hiroshige (1797-1858) respectively.

Clouds in Japanese art are also used to create an illusion of distance in landscapes by dividing foreground from middle-ground from background as in this painting by Sesshū (1420-1506) a master of Japan's Muromachi period (1336-1573).

Notice the tenkei houses in the lower right corner. Though a minor part of the painting, they help to emphasize the impressive scale of the landscape.

Clouds as separators between fore, middle, and background are also present in the next two paintings by Tosa Mitshnobu (1434-1525). They are a pair of six-fold byōbu (room divider screens) that together comprise a single painting.

Ideally, these two screens would be placed side by side with the top screen on the right of the bottom screen. Paintings such as these and narrative hand scrolls are read from right to left.  The overall subject here is the four seasons with different kinds of  plants representing each season. Right to left, the seasons are winter, spring (top/right byōbu), summer, and fall (bottom/left byōbu). The corresponding plants are plum blossom (winter), lily (spring), bamboo (summer), and maple (fall). There are many other plants that are representative of the various seasons.

Nature and in particular the seasons are very important in Japanese culture. Many Japanese homes have a special display space (tokonoma) where hanging scrolls are displayed. The scrolls often depict a subject associated with the current season. When the next season rolls around, the hanging scrolls are replaced with something appropriate to the new season.

Vocabulary

Kumo-gata (Cloud-shaped design): A cloud-shaped design which is used in narrative hand scrolls, hanging scrolls, wall and screen paintings, to indicate a change of scenes or a different time zone and place within a painting.

Genji-gumo (Genji cloud design): Similar to kumo-gata, except the cloud design is rendered in gold. It gets its name from paintings depicting scenes from Genji-monogatari (Tale of Genji), perhaps the world's first novel written in the Heian period (794-1185) by Lady Murisaki (978-1046), in which the technique was heavily used.

Suyari-gasumi (Trailing haze): Trailing haze with rounded ends used in paintings depicting historical, religious, or literary tales. Suyari-gasumi were often placed as borders to indicate changes in scenes or for perspective as well as for suggesting the passage of time, etc.