It’s Monday again, and Chinese painting class… we practised the leaves of Bamboo today and finished all the practice pieces we started last week.
I’m really pleased with the shape of my brush strokes here and the overall appearance of this one (the best of 6), although there should actually be three groupings of leaves to follow the traditional principles of Chinese composition – the Host, the Guest, and the Servant. It’s explained very nicely here… but, as I mentioned to Maurice our teacher, that’s something you need to consider when you’re painting the stems, by this week it was too late to move them!
There should also be three distinct tones of grey amongst the leaves, but my mid tone is still a bit too dark. It’s really hard to tell what shade you’ve mixed when you paint, as the mid tones look quite black until they dry.
Apparently we’re going to be moving onto colour next week, which is great. Last term we were about four weeks in before we were let loose with colour – we must be improving!