Day 58: Chinese Landscape (more trees!)

Imagine my surprise when I found out today that roses are finished and we’re now moving on to landscape in our Chinese class. Of course, it’s great that we’re learning something new, but we’d hardly started the roses… and I’m not so excited about landscapes either.

To set the scene, Chinese landscapes often have a large number of steps to achieve the final result. Starting with ink outlines they generally then have a grey shading layer followed by various coloured shading layers applied onto wet paper and then further lines of darker detail to emphasise the major features.

Here is the beginning of said landscape, a grouping of four different species of tree which will be planted on some rocks in a bay scene. I’ve made life hard for myself already, as all four are too big and don’t leave much room for the sea (on the left) or the rocks (right and below). I just can’t work out why my trees always come out too large 🙂

I’ve already started a second try which seems more in proportion and will work on both to see how the next stage, sketching the rocks, pans out.