Brush Painting Class #3

 We did a generic bird yesterday.  The bird shape is a combination of an egg shape (body) and a sphere shape (head).  The approach is to first do the chest/belly with a light stroke, and then complete the egg shape using a series feathering strokes.  Then do the head using a dark ink tone with two strokes, one for the top and front of the head, the a small stroke for the lower head, leaving a gap for the beak and eye, by a dash and a dot.  The positions for these determine the orientation of the head.  Use dark ink strokes for the wing feathers.  Then a blunt stroke for the tail.  A few dashes indicate the feet below the belly.  Then a branch to anchor the bird.

We use the bird as an interest elements in a bigger picture.  We chose a waterfall background.

After the ink work, we added color; the color sets off the white.  Otherwise the white of the waterfall will not show.

In the next class, we shall demonstrate another wash on top of this, to produce the mists and atmosphere, and to integrate the composition.

Brush Painting Class #2

 Class 2.  Flowers on tree branches, such as Plum, Cherry, Forsythia etc.

A plum composition is composed of bright red round shapes interspersed in a network of black branches.  The branches are from a series of straight side strokes of various widths, lengths, angles, etc connected to yield the gnarled feel of an aged plum tree.

Here's is the prototype shown in class.

Note distributed in class.

Class 1: Bamboos and Rocks

 Today we practiced bamboos and rocks.  My demo pictures are below:

There is some notes about Bamboos in my other blog:

https://paultong.blogspot.com/2018/10/class-notes-10-5-2018.html

Welcome to the CCA class of April 2025

Welcome to the Chinese Brush Painting class at the Center for Contemporary Art

April- May 2025

Supplies can be bought at Amazon.

See the following document:

Supplies document

To see Paul's art, go to this Blog

Lesson 1: class notes click here