Tag: Chinese brush painting

A Chinese New Year?

Posted on Posted in active artTagged , , , ,

by Bev Dunstan

Well, no, it will not be the Chinese New Year until next month. But we started off 2026 with a workshop of Chinese Brush Painting by Jean Turton. And it was wonderful!

Jean introduced the attendees to the wonderful world of Chinese Brush Painting with her amazing stories of her visits to China to witness the making of the paper, the creation of the chops (stamps), the history of the brushes and visiting the country to paint the phenomenal landscape.

Soft, absorbent surface

She began by ensuring that we all were working on a soft and absorbent surface, explaining that the Chinese paper would surprise us all in how quickly it would take up the water.  Any hard or plastic-finished surface would encourage the water to spread under the paper and that was avoidable with the correct base surface – newspaper was ideal and Jean used a piece of felt,

Jean explained that, although there were many brushes to choose from, we would really only need 3 types (1) a narrow brush for thinner marks (2) the sheep brush, made from sheep or goat hair which was very soft and absorbent (3) the stiffer wolf brush (actually made from weasel hair).  This brush was harder than the sheep brush and kept its point during application.  Jean kindly lent her brushes to the class for the workshop. 

Jean supplied the paper and she was NOT wrong regarding its water absorbent properties!  It was like painting onto cheap toilet paper!  Great care had to be taken to remove the excess water from the loaded brush before making the mark on the paper.

Jean supplied the Chinese ink and explained its origins.  The black was ground from Oil-soot or Pine-soot.  The vibrant red paste used for the chop marks (generally messages of good luck and the like) was cinnabar, an ore made from mercury sulphide, which is toxic and to be handled with great care.

Narcissus and Camellia

Introduction over, she demonstrated the techniques used to create a painting of narcissus and camilla using the narrow and sheep brushes to define outline and infill colour respectively.

Iconic mountain landscape

After lunch, Jean demonstrated the different techniques used to create the iconic Chinese mountain / pine tree landscape.  It used the stiffer wolf brush and included the ‘push’ technique of the brush, causing it to wobble and expand the mark as it crossed the paper surface.

How to paint bamboo

To complete the day, Jean shared her technique for painting bamboo and its leaf patterns.  One leaf (passing boat), two leaves (fishtail), three leaves (goldfish tail), four leaves (swallow) and five leaves (landing goose).  Jean’s enthusiasm for the poetry and symbolism of the marks was infectious and we all thoroughly enjoyed the day.

The results of our labours:

January Blues? Not here!

Posted on Posted in monthly meetingsTagged , , , , ,

We enter the new year with loads of activity for you. This is partly fuelled by having two life drawing sessions in the month, the first this coming Sunday at the Dovetail centre, MR3. Details

The following weekend, Saturday 10th we have a workshop with Jean Turton, Jean is a recognised expert in Chinese Brush Painting , and participants have been given a list of essentials to bring, but Jean will be providing the specialist Chinese brushes, ink and paper, so all we have to do is listen, learn and paint.

Wednesday 14th January is our first Drop-In Session of the new year. A chance for you to get those painting materials out to keep your new year’s resolution going, perhaps? I shall be putting my new pencil sharpener to the test … maybe even turn up at the drop-in…any time before 1pm is your start time. Details

Saturday 17th is our New Year lunch, this time at the Concorde Club in Stoneham Lane. The menu looks exceedingly nice, and the company will of course be magnificent. Contact Lisa for further information: Lisa is at cfageventcal at gmail dot com

We are back at the Dovetail Centre the next day for a second Life Drawing session of the month. If you didn’t get your application back before Christmas, you could check if there are any vacancies, but usually, there’s a waiting list.

Our Sketching Group plans to make hay while the sun shines on Monday 19th, so let’s hope for a mild, sunny day with excellent light. Although as the last few sketching challenges of December were about shadows, light and dark, night scenes and so on, obviously our sketchers can cope with anything, anywhere.

We end the month with a Zoom demo, hopefully the one we had originally planned for December. But at time of writing this is not confirmed. So, Wednesday 28th, Elizabeth Hammond may or may not be doing a demo involving Life of Plants. Watch your email inboxes for final details and connection links.

Different Strokes – Chinese Brush Painting

Posted on Posted in DemonstrationsTagged , , , ,

Our 26th February Zoom Demonstration was given by Kaili Fu, an expert in the art of Chinese Brush Painting.

Kaili showed us pictures of landscape and flower on rice paper, and others on silk. It takes time to use these, because of their delicacy and the drying time involved. For the demo she used thicker rice paper. Like kitchen roll, it absorbs water when wet. Chinese artists make ‘rice’ paper out of whatever grows locally, bamboo, rice, straw, tree bark. All brushes are from natural materials. Some brushes are soft, to wash flowers, and leaves. But for trees, mountains, rock, uses stuff brushes. Traditionally, ink is ground from a block, but to save time, she’s using ink from a bottle.

dragging the wet ink across to create ‘water’

The brush is held upright. Trees are done from top to bottom. It seemed like she was resting on what she’d just painted when she was doing detail, but perhaps the wet had already soaked into the paper.

Adding detail – carefully, and with much consideration for the exact stroke

Kaili had camera failure before we started so was improvising using her phone. All in all I think she did a good job in difficult circumstances. It may not have been the most dynamic or organised of presentations, but I loved the way she used the light, shade, and size of the trees to indicate space and distance. It was difficult to see what she’d done for a boat until she brought it close to the camera, when we discovered that there were birds drying their wings on the cross-poles of the rigging!

As some of us sketchers found when we did the February challenge prompt ‘Patterns’, there was a kind of meditative calm about watching her paint. Very deliberate, sometimes very small marks, carefully placed.

Laying on wash with an amazingly wide ‘brush’ tool

When the picture is finished, it has to dry. To support it, it is then pasted onto another sheet of stronger paper. Originally this would be a flour paste, but mostly they use wallpaper paste these days.

Stages in developing the flower. Each petal is one stroke, pooling the ink at the inner end. Surface detail was added later

The second painting was a flower. The technique was amazing, producing a wonderful 3d effect. And I loved watching the detail of the butterfly.

Paint… Chinese water colour paint. All materials are derived from organic or mineral sources. You need to check out specialist suppliers for these, and the papers and ink blocks, if you want to be authentic.

All photos are screenshots; pictures copyright Kaili Fu.