Chinese Brush Painting (3 page)

As you can see, brush painting is more than just swinging a brush across a piece of paper! It’s about using the energy of life—called
ch’i
(“chee”)—in a special way. You can learn to recognize and focus your
ch’i
energy when you paint. Of course, it takes a lot of practice to do it right. You need to make the brushstrokes over and over again to remember the patterns. Learning to use the brush is a type of discipline that teaches patience, control, and respect for the art.

Learning to control the brush in different positions is part of the soft martial art of painting.

One of the hardest parts of brush painting is controlling a soft brush loaded with paint or ink. When you touch the brush to paper, especially rice paper, the liquid tends to ooze out in ways you don’t want. You must learn how much liquid to load onto the brush and how to position your hand to make the desired stroke successfully. Unlike other types of painting, in Chinese brush painting there are few ways to cover your mistakes. Every stroke is important because it cannot be corrected or erased. Repeated practice and patience are required to achieve mastery. Yet, this practice makes you feel good when you do it well, like learning to play a piece on the piano or practicing shots in basketball. The result is an artwork of great simplicity and great power.

Humans are small in landscape paintings.

Inspired by Nature

Calligraphers throughout history have sometimes described their experiences in nature. In earliest times, they would fill large scrolls with calligraphy only. Their stories or poems might describe what they saw or did during a journey to the mountains or along a river.

Later, calligraphers began to add pictures to illustrate their stories. As these landscape paintings became more important and skillful, they were recognized as fine art. Landscape paintings convey the greatness of mountains and nature and show people as a small part of nature, rather than controlling it.

In addition to writing about and painting entire landscapes, calligraphers would also write poems about small natural objects, such as trees or flowers they admired, and illustrate them with paintings. Favorite traditional subjects are often grouped into sets. One set is called the Three Friends of Winter. The “friends” are bamboo, plum blossom, and pine—all plants that bloom or stay green in winter. Another group, orchid, bamboo, plum blossom, and chrysanthemum, is called the Four Gentlemen, because these plants were considered especially elegant. The classic subjects are admired for their appearance and symbolism. Each one is painted in a particular style that was refined and perfected over many years. In this book, you will learn how to paint some of these subjects, like orchid, bamboo, and pine.

Principles of Painting

Over the years, artists developed some general rules for brush painting.

Painting the Inner Spirit

One rule is that the artist should paint the inner spirit of the subject, not just its physical appearance. A painting is not meant to be a realistic photograph but an artistic vision of the subject.

Boned and Boneless

A traditional painting is done in one of two styles,
boned
or
boneless
.

In the
boned
style, you paint outlines of the subject and then sometimes add gray shades. The boned style can look formal, stiff, and decorative.

In the
boneless
style, you paint the subject with black or gray shades, with no outlines. The boneless style often uses bolder strokes, so it can appear more free and energetic.

This book teaches the boneless style because it requires more mastery of the brushstrokes.

A symmetry——Odd Numbers Rule!

Symmetry
in brush painting means that there are even numbers of things in the painting: 2 flowers, 4 stalks of bamboo, or 6 pine trees, for example. In a symmetrical painting, these objects are balanced on both sides of the painting, just as your right and left arms and legs are balanced on either side of your spine.

Asymmetry
means that there are odd numbers of things in the painting: 3 orchid flowers, 5 pine wheels, and so on. More things are on one side of the painting than the other, but the objects balance each other because of their positions or different sizes.

In Chinese brush painting, asymmetry always rules! The painter may use 3, 5, or 7 objects. When painting an orchid, for example, the artist will paint one bud and two flowers, or three flowers, and five or seven leaves. A larger object can balance two or three smaller objects. To see how this works, count the flowers or leaves in the orchid paintings on the opposite page. Is there an odd or even number? Notice that some flowers or leaves are larger than the others. Although the orchid plant grows from a center, its flowers and leaves are not shown growing symmetrically on either side of the center.

Leaving Open Space

Now look at the empty spaces in these paintings. Part of the art of painting is deciding when to fill open space and when to leave it empty. Notice the triangles of open space around the orchid plants on the opposite page. Some painters like to leave a large amount of open space. It keeps the picture simple and creates a peaceful mood. Others prefer a picture with many objects and less open space. In the traditional painting style, the painter always leaves at least one large chunk of open space. Using asymmetry creates different sizes of open spaces in different parts of the painting.

Getting
started

Collecting Your Materials

The picture below shows the basic materials you need for Chinese brush painting.

1.
Table cover
2.
Paint
3.
Paint-mixing dishes
4.
Paint-testing plate
5.
Brush-washing containers
6.
Water spoon
7.
Brushes
8.
Paper
9.
Paper towel
10.
Book holder
11.
Book
12.
Paper weights
13.
Egg to train hand
14.
Flat stone to train arm