Chinese painting for beginners: the use of ink, paper and brushes

Hi everybody. My name is Kate Wu. Welcome to my channel. Today I'm going to share with you the Chinese material that I'm going to use for all of my Chinese painting. Let's start with rice paper. In front of me is a piece of rice paper that is a full size and this is only half of it. So normally I'll cut it into equal size of eight to start. The size of the finished paper is about 13 and a half by 13 and a half inches and you need ink and brush it to start. Getting the right kind of paper is critical to the success of your painting. That is to get the right effect. There are three types of rice paper based on its water absorption level. The first one is called raw paper. It is the most absorbent kind of rice paper. As you can imagine, the ink and color runs fast. The second kind is called the wet paper. It is the least absorbent. The one that I use is in between the medium level. The other thing that you should notice is that there is a front and back of the paper. The front side is smoother and the back side is not. So make sure that you always paint on the right side of the paper. To get the best result. For ink, I use this Japanese brand which is easy to buy from stationery shop. I only use two brushes for all of my paintings. The small one is made of wolf hair and the big one is made of goat hair. Wolf hair is stiff and goat hair is relatively soft but that's all you need. So to start, you need to get some ink. Shake the bottle well and then just get enough for your painting. You don't really need a lot because you won't be reusing it. Now I'm going to show you how to hold a Chinese brush. Pick up the brush and support it with four fingers. When you turn it upright, pointing the tip of the brush perpendicular to the paper, this is called the use of upright strokes. When creating long strokes, you have to move your arm. When you tilt your brush like this and paint, this is called slanted strokes. Now I'm going to demonstrate a painting using both techniques. It's a Chinese orchid. The first few strokes of the main leaves will be using the upright position. It takes quite a bit of practices to get it right, particularly the pointy tip. When you feel that you need some new ink, always rinse your brush, get some new ink and then start to paint again. For the orchid, you need gradation. Get just a little bit of ink. Start the flower bud with a slanted stroke. Then turn the brush upright to paint the stem. Two more flower buds, same. Then use slanted strokes for the petals, upright strokes for the small stems, for the rest of the flower. As the water travels from the belly of the brush to the tip, the color of the strokes becomes lighter and lighter. So you'll have to dip new ink from time to time to get the gradation. I'm finishing it with some salmon. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. Please subscribe my channel so that you don't miss out the next videos. I'll be posting every week. See you next time!