This afternoon I’ve continued with Chinese Painting practice and added colour washes to the outlines we had. However, I think I’ve slightly over done the indigo wash… it all looks a bit blue. In my defence, it’s often difficult to know how light your wash will dry on this extremely thin paper, and my trees and rocks are also larger than they ought to be, therefore they have greater areas of colour.
The final step in this exercise is to add darker outlines to the details that need more emphasis, such as the tree trunks and shadows. It’s interesting that, as you add extra layers the lines you painted right at the begin to lose their definition and sink into the background.
We’re all quite keen to finish this exercise as next week is our last class for this term. If we’re properly prepared (i.e. all homework up to date) then we can spend this last lesson learning how to paint a goldfish, something I’m personally quite excited about. I think I mentioned sometime earlier that the classes are quite formal and we paint things according to their season? If we miss this chance it will be another year before the goldfish comes around again!