Chinese Painting Bamboo in Color by Ning Yeh

The summer is upon us so we like to share the spirit of bamboo today. I'm using the orchid bamboo brush. I'm loading some diluted green and the tip touching a little bit ink. To control the ink, I'm going to tilt the saucer a little bit. So light green tip ink. We work the bamboo leaf with a pair of scissors and little ones crisscrossing and forming a fan shape and expanding both sides. Little one crossing, big one dashing out. This orchid bamboo brush is a very powerful weapon but you see mostly it's done with arm motion and keeping the tip in the middle. In the center we're forming a hose group and so with the leaf settled I'm using the OAS bit brush. This to me is one of the best brush for bamboo trunks. I split the tip open and loading some warm green and some vermilion green and then both sides I'm loading some additional vermilion and dark brown. The very end I'm loading some ink and this way you can see I tilt the saucer so I don't overload and I'm blending the brush by moving it gently up and down and watching to see how the variation of different color taking shape. So I want to blend it enough and then reload the darker color and I will reload this from time to time and usually I'll wait until the leaf dried up a little bit but since we are on a continuous rhythm so I'm just going to go ahead. So I work the trunk moving through, set the pressure and continue. Oh there's some flying white. I love that. So I have a vertical hose trunk and I'm going to accompany it with a lighter gas trunk keeping an eye on the space in between and now I'm using the, I don't even know the name, do you know? Pre-happy dot maybe. Oh pre-happy dot, all right. So I'm going to use this very small brush and adding happy dots on the joint and give a little bounce to stretch through the middle. They are happy, energetic and you can see the way I allow the sections alternate. Say they were not lined up together and now clean the brush. I'm loading some dark brown and I'm working from the lead leaf. Usually that's kind of the first leaf and allow it to attach to the joint. I'll split to allow it to reach to the side group and one of the branches you notice is coming out from the side so I use this to break up the vertical formation. So I have this branch going through horizontally and moving up from the lead leaf coming through connecting to each of the clusters. With that done I'm coming back with the Oakey bamboo brush. This time using a lighter version, maybe a little bit warmer. I will add some of the leaves to add depth and suggest some of the leaves reaching to the back and occasionally bounce up some little ones to add some energy reaching to the top and maybe some forming an umbrella at the top. So I'm drooping down now a little bit lighter twigs showing some support and that's the idea. This is done on our pre-mounted Chuan paper right? Yeah this is a new paper that is fantastic to work with because usually bamboo when you do the regular paper it wobbles and kind of become wrinkled and this paper stay put to allow us to move with rhythm and all the strokes as you can see has no problem.