A week ago, our Chinese painting class met, as it does, once a month. This month’s subject is officially the peony, but we moved into something else….that story shall follow. Let us stay on track, though!
The Peony
The peony is an incredible flower, long held in esteem in many cultures for its beauty. In general, it prefers a cooler winter than we have in California, but one of my classmates mentions having success locally. Beautiful photos of the flower make you want to grow some!
The Teacher
Mr. Ha – whom we frequently call “Teacher” – or Harris – arrives from some distance by 9:30 a.m., to our classroom in Oak Park.
The Class
We drift in. Paulina has supplies if we need some. Classmates pick the subjects to paint (such as the peony for this month), or ask Teacher to do a painting or calligraphy demonstration.
As I mentioned in the earlier post in this series, it is traditional in Chinese and Japanese schools to copy a painting to learn how it was done. This means looking at the painting closely, and analyzing it. For myself, this is really difficult – I don’t consider analysis part of painting. But, with analysis, comes practice, and from practice comes skill, and finally mastery of the subject. The work develops the mind, the hand, the kinesthetic memory, and from this can flow a spontaneous painting which is simple in content, yet masterful in execution. It is worth the effort.
The Books
Publishers are always producing new “how to” books about watercolor techniques, or impasto, or drawing, or whatever. Asian publishers are not any different, though for some strange reason, they tend to publish a lot of books about Chinese or Japanese painting. These books cover traditional subjects, such as the peony, and often have an entire book devoted to one subject. Step-by-step, a final painting is demonstrated. How to load the brush, and which colors to use in this process are shown. Brush stroke direction is indicated, or sequence.
The painting originally chosen for this session was quite complex, with peonies in many different colors; you can see the painting to the right, or for a larger one, here.
Teacher chose a simpler one for class demonstration, which I think was far more effective than the original because it is less overwhelming. What needs to be remembered is that we are watching Teacher as he paints. This means we need to observe his brushwork – how he maneuvers the brush on the paper, what colors he chooses, and how he loads his brush. As students, we can practice from Teacher’s demonstration, and then move on to copying a more complex painting when alone in the studio.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 