Chang-eh

While browsing through the examples of hare/rabbits in chinese painting that were provided during my last class, I found a painting depicting Chang-eh, the goddess of the moon, with a hare on her laps. I thought the painting was amazing, very delicate, with lots of strong colours...
Knowing that I had two days off the following week, and thinking about the meters and meters of thin silk I had at home, I decided I needed a copy of this painting ...
I usually really struggle to paint at home, alone, but when it comes to painting on silk, it is such a pleasure, that it doesn't matter if I am part of a group or not.
So I spent yesterday afternoon (3 and a half hours) doing the contours and almost all the colouring. I spent two hours today finishing the clouds, painting them, adding the moon and a sort of wash that I am not extremely pleased with.... but never mind, nothing I can do now! And here is the result...

The picture is not great as the silk is quite wrinkled, shiny, and trying to take a pic with artificial light at 6.00pm is not great anyway!

A very quickly drawned horse...

2011: the year of the Rabbit

In anticipation of the year of the Rabbit, the theme of last Saturday painting class was... rabbit! I was kind of relieved it wasn't going to be insects as I initially thought.
I have therefore done a range of rabbits, and a hare watching an "outside of the frame" moon...
It's a pity the paper is not smooth and therefore the pics are not great, but I am not sure any of those bunnies is worth being properly mounted! Sorry guys...

Insect...

The November class is going to be all about insect. Insect you said? Like crustaceans, I am not exactly looking forward to that class, but like crustaceans, I guess I might end up really enjoying it. So wait and see... and the day I will be brave enough to work on my own compositions rather than copy existing ones (will that ever happen?), it might become very handy to be able to add this little cricket here, or this little shrimp there... ;-)

So I have been looking in my archives, and I found a few crickets I did in my class in Cambridge...

Seafood galore

Long time no post... No excuse really... the summer, the holidays, one painting class in July, one in September, and a cancellation for the October one.

The theme for the July class was Crustaceans. Even if it is not a subject that I found particularly motivating, I really like the idea of going back to traditional chinese brush painting. ie, mostly black and white, more subjective than detailed... So in the end, I was really happy with the class!

They might almost all look the same, but I thought I would put a few examples of my shrimps and crabs here.
In the first picture, I tried to consider the composition of the picture and the addition of the seal gives it that little 'extra'.
The others are just studies...

Chinese painting and watching soccer don't mix...

Or 'how to destroy in 5 minutes a tiger I was pretty happy with'... Judge by yourself !

So from a nice composition, covering my paper diagonally, giving the tiger a sense of 'motion', I will now end up with that:

















At least, my cat didn't suffer the same fate!












Nor did my lotus... but gutted about the tiger. I will never ever watch soccer again. I never do anyway!


Anyway, those paintings have just been mounted and are still wet... they might look a bit better towards the end of the week... fingers crossed (although nothing will change with the tiger!)

Happy (very belated...) Chinese New Year!

And to celebrate the year of the Tiger, a study and three tigers painted during last class, mid-March!

Happy New Year!

Since I started Chinese painting, I tend to be interested in everything 'chinese' or asian in general. And when it comes to pick up Christmas cards, even if I do not send a lot (!), I always end up with either Chinese or Japanese cards. And this year, I went for View of mount Haruna in the snow from "Famous views of the 60 odd provinces" by Ando or Utagawa Hiroshige.

For once, we had a white Christmas and quite a bit of snow early January this year. If the landscapes are beautiful and the mood on the up side, the downside is that due to weather conditions, the first painting class of the year has been canceled! So I decided to start the year by doing some painting at home, using this beautiful card as a model. I haven't gone very far yet, but it will be interesting to see the evolution of this painting.
So far, here is what I managed to do...
I guess we can see where the 'inspiration' comes from... now, I am simply dreading to start the wash. I usually love doing big washes, but probably because I usually do them as a background, before I start painting any detail... Fingers crossed it will work out ok...