Lotus Part 1: Leaves in sumi-e Chinese brush painting technique

See I'm running out of ink. I have water, grey and black. I've got to refill the brush. Notice when I did this side, my brush went this way. I'm right-handed. When I'm doing this side of the leaf, I go from the outside inward. So we need some leaf in the back, showing in the back. That's the cup of the leaf and I will add grey this time. Now at this point if you want to round the edges a little, you can do that. Add a little black to your brush if you're going to add some rounding here. You don't have to do that but sometimes gives a nice shape to the leaf. That's all you need to do and it's a good time to look at the shape of your leaf. Do you want it longer down here? Do you want it a little bit more somewhere else? Now is the time while it's wet. I think it's fine. I'm going to add the center like that and then the stem and the stem start there and put it down. Give it a little curve. Looks nice with a curve. So that's done. I kind of like the idea of maybe just... Yes, that looks good. Okay, there's one leaf. You can leave it at that or you can add another leaf on the other side. Let's add another leaf. Now you're probably looking at that and thinking, well that doesn't look like a leaf. It does if we add the rest of the leaf. That's the width of the leaf so I'm going to put a point here. That's going to be my center and that's like that and then if I put in the vein you'll see this is the leaf. So what we're doing is we are seeing more of the underneath of the leaf and at this point you can round this area if you want to make it a little rounder. If you want to add a little bit down here you can add a little bit but no I think it's fine like that and then the stem and the stems have these little... they're almost like thorns actually and Chinese will say make them round. Make them round. See how it's gone thin here? It's a bit thick there. Just add more of those thorns there and it'll look thicker. Don't want lots of them. There we are. I can't put the veins on yet because it's too wet. We'll do that later but now we can put a flower on.