Showing posts with label breathing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breathing. Show all posts

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Beginning Chinese Brush Painting: Inksticks 1

Grinding the Ink: Kinds of inksticks and how to choose the good ones.


Video Demonstrations by Haiying Yang

Beginning Chinese Brush Painting: Inksticks2

Video Demonstrations by Haiying Yang.
Grinding the Ink: How to protect your new ink stick.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Beginning Chinese Brush Painting: Orchid

Basic Traditional Strokes: The Orchid

Video Demonstration By Haiying Yang



The Orchid is one of "The Four Gentlemen" of Chinese Brush Painting and Sumi-e, the strokes that serve as the basic building blocks of your painting and calligraphy. They say that that artists who have been painting for years sometimes use these strokes to warm up, just like musicians practice their scales.

Unlike the modern orchids with showy flowers, the traditional Asian orchid is simple yet elegant, with one small, perfect, fragrant flower at the end of each stalk with graceful leaves swaying in the wind.

The Orchid is the symbol of spring, which is when it blooms. And it is said that because this orchid blooms in hard-to-reach places such as mountains, forests and cliffs, this represents the modest gentleman of purity and refinement.

I suppose, it is a lot like spring: easy, breezy and undemanding.

More of dear Haiying's Orchid demonstrations in these previous posts.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Preparing To Paint

My favourite part of Chinese Brush Painting! Oh no, I'm editorializing! Oh wait, it's a blog, I'm allowed. LOL.

Video demonstrations are by Haiying Yang.

Grinding the ink on the inkstone.


Sitting down and holding the brush.