Despite focusing on my Chinese painting class today I’m pleased that I still managed to put some colour onto this small watercolour. For a change the scan has not picked up the colours as strongly as the original, but it does highlight the fact that the sea area is quite flat towards the bottom of the page and needs more depth (pardon the pun).
My Chinese painting class this afternoon was both challenging and excellent, as usual… Our very first paintings when I started a year ago were of bamboo, and true to form it was the subject of the first class of term again today – this is the third time it’s appeared.
No, we weren’t being sent back to basics, there are several levels of skill in which bamboo can be painted, from a flat light ink for beginners to fully three dimensional and colour. I suspect we still have some way to go although we have started to learn a shaded version. Here is a sample of our practice, and we’ll be adding leaves and other details to this in our next class.
The thing I find most amazing about this style of painting is that the shading is all done in a single brush stroke simply by loading the paint correctly. Naturally it takes a lot of practice to get it working properly, and I have about 5 sheets of shaded dashed lines to support these two brief sticks of bamboo!