Last month, I have traveled to FuJian, China to learn traditional Chinese painting. Similar with watercolor, Chinese painting also uses water as a media. However, the control of water is even more crucial than watercolor since the paper (宣纸xuan zhi) absorbs water and paint the second a brush stroke is made.
First, I tried to paint mountain.
Composition is the key. Especially in traditional Chinese painting, perspective doesn't matter very much, what's crucial is the mood and atmosphere of the painting. As I mentioned, you cannot paint on top of the area that has been already painted because of the paper, so you have to be very precise about brush stroke.
Also, I have tried bamboo and lotus, which was even harder since error tolerance is even lower.
This experience challenged my composition skill to a large extent. Also, because the main media is still black ink, it also challenged my view on contrast. To me, I am also learning watercolor, my precision of brush stroke as well as the control of atmosphere is not even close to perfect. This experience also helped me with my watercolor skill.
Comments