Hello Friends,

It has been a while since I have been able to post anything I’ve worked on this week.  This was my daughter’s first week back to school, and even though I only had to take her three days out of the four, two of those days I am in town with her are long.  She has a morning class and an afternoon class and two hours in between.  So we are there from 9 to 2:30.  When we waited in between classes, we went to Barnes and Noble and just hung out.  However, I did find a really great book there (even though I ended up ordering it for half the price on Amazon.)

The other day when my son took my daughter to school (which he will be doing 2 out of the 4 days now,) I painted this!

The day before I painted it I was just messing around copying these images from the book “Chinese Brush Painting – Project Book for Beginners” by Helen Tse and Rebecca Yue that came with the kit I ordered.

The tiger is the first project, the goldfish is the third (I skipped the second which is a Chinese dragon) and the flowers and bird is the fourth project.  I am not fully satisfied with the instruction booklet because I feel it doesn’t spend enough time on showing and explaining brush strokes to learn with these Chinese brushes.  Also, one of the brushes that came with the kit kept losing hairs as I painted which was frustrating.  But as with anything in art I have learned that cheap equipment doesn’t last long.  I will probably have to invest in some much better Chinese brushes in order to continue learning this art.  However, that may have to wait until I research which are the best to buy.

In the meantime, I do have to say that the only part of this painting that I actually did with the brushes was the watercolor!  The drawing was done with my pens at Barnes and Noble that day because that was all I had with me.  I still love the look of pen and ink mixed with watercolor.  So my next project is going to be using the brushes in the Chinese ink that came with the kit.  I am not sure of how high a quality it is either, and I haven’t tried it just on the rice paper I bought without adding watercolor.  So that is what I plan to work on today.

In conclusion for today, I want to say that I do like the way this painting turned out.  I have never drawn or painted a tiger before.  Even though by Western standards of drawing in proportion, the goldfish is too big and the tiger too small, I still like the way they look separately. The bird is a little goofy looking, too, but I really want to do more fish now! (And more tigers!)  I will be sharing more at another time some of what I have been learning about Chinese brush painting and other things that go along with this beautiful art.

My next painting project is going to be a Stickleback fish for my friend Derek who also has a WordPress blog.  I think he is a wonderful photographer and writer, and his blog is great!  Check it out!

Until next time, have a wonderful day, and give someone you love a big hug!  🙂

P. S. Tomorrow is my trip to the East Bay area of Walnut Creek, CA, to attend the picture book workshop that I signed up for a few months ago.  I hope it’s fun!  Stay cool everyone!