Today was the first day of the new term of Chinese Painting Class, and I’m very excited to be joining the Advanced group for the first time. From now on we’ll be working from a selection of books which are great tutorials – they have explanation in both English and Chinese, though the English can be quite interesting to try and interpret :-). Our teacher will still demonstrate each piece, but the books have tips and exercises to help us too.
Our first piece is going to be a Sultan Tit, but before we dive in Maurice asked us to take note of the first Chapter of the Chinese Songbirds book which gives an overview of the physiology of birds, how best to plan compositions and methods of painting birds. This sheet of practice exercises I painted today demonstrates a dozen different techniques for creating feathers using various amounts of water on the brush, different brush angles and grips, and variations in speed, etc.