I said in my last post that I'd make more sketches and put them here. So here's me, attempting to do so. This place is going to be mostly sketches, so be warned.

I went to stay with Tessa in December. During that time she was looking for books on Chinese watercolour painting for her mother. I... somehow got obsessed with it. I bought a book a few days ago on painting specific motifs. Here are my results.




Tess came over and we had a go at it. My brushes, her inks. I've done calligraphy most of my life so it wasn't the greatest challenge for me to use the brush. That said, it's harder than it looks! You need to coordinate being able to control pressure, speed and angle at the one time. It took some time to get used to it again. Oh, the smell of the ink reminded me of Chinese school.

I did follow the tutorials for some of these but for others I took my own artistic license. The book is called The Chinese Brush Painting Bible: Over 200 Motifs with Step-By-Step Illustrated Instructions by Jane Dwight and I highly recommend it for any artist, even if you're not specifically trying to learn watercolour, it's a very relaxing and beautiful art form. I put on some String Quartet Tribute to... (Muse and Nirvana in this case) and just painted away. It feels more like writing than painting because of the single, precise strokes you need.

I did a few pages just trying to get the strokes right. I won't bore you with that.


1. First lesson is of course to do the Four Gentlemen (bamboo, orchid, chrysanthemum, plum blossom) to learn the basic strokes. I really like doing bamboo. Down the bottom are orchids, sort of.


2. Chrysanthemums. It looks more balanced if you look at each half separately. At this point I stopped using my watercolour pad for fear I'd waste it, and moved onto scrap paper. It soaks and dries a little differently, as you can probably see.


3. More chrysanthe..ma. You can see the two different styles they use - the type of flower up top is free-form, the one below is more realistic. Both are recognisable in Chinese art as the chrysanthemum. Oh, and some mushrooms of course. I got frustrated and tried something different. There's that one perfect one in the middle that I like.


4. And finally, the plum blossom. I like doing these too.


5. To practice, I kind of went nuts with the blossoms... It didn't take that long. As I said, it feels exactly like writing.


6. I got tired of plants and went straight onto the birds. I love the Chinese representation of the crane so I did one. I was just practicing different elements and this came out. That spot of colour is from my new Derwent Inktense box. They are like watercolours but the colours are just so vibrant - the same difference between eastern watercolours and Chinese watercolours. (Look, I just used 'same difference' in a proper sentence). Chinese watercolours use different pigments and appear much more vivid in one coat.


7. Onto animal motifs. I really dig the cormorant there. Also the bubble-eye and the catfish.


8. Some of these I like, some I don't. My favourite is the spider, followed by the mantis.


9. Not very happy with this page, but I include it anyway. (it's a sketch dump, right?). Besides, I love that grasshopper there.


10. Happier with this one - especially the squirrel and horse.


11. Onto landscape items. I've decided (and I didn't think this before) that rocks are my favourite thing to paint.


12. While learning how to paint trees, a picture came out.


13. I moved onto 'freestyle' painting, which looks like this. I combined elements to make it more interesting. Sunflower, loquat and lily.


14. More freestyle. Tulip, azalea, rose and poppy.



15. Fishh and weeds. At this point I was just trying to get rid of the remaining ink and was no longer concentrating.

Hope that wasn't too boring. Side note: I just found my coloured chinese inks. So expect pretty things in colour soon.