Chinese Brush Painting

Chinese brush painting is similar to Chinese calligraphy in the sense that you use the same brush and ink, however, having learned how to do calligraphy didn't make learning brush painting any easier. Brush painting is very similar to watercolor in the sense that you use different amounts of water with your ink. You only get one brush to make all the strokes and you need to use different amounts of pressure with the brush to get thicker or thinner strokes.

Today we learned how to paint bamboo and eventually paint it on to a fan. We only had 2 pieces of paper to practice on before the teacher handed us the fan to create our bamboo painting. Practicing on the paper was hard to get used to, as we were using rice paper and the water & ink bled more. Once we got the hang of how much water to have on the brush it was easier. When we began the final design on the fan, not only was it a different kind of paper, it was all folded up (like a fan folds) so it was hard to work along the folded sections. We had to flatten the fan out as we painted. I wish we had more time to practice before moving on to the fan, however, the fan is two sided, so we could always try again on the other side.

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