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The Roots

of Chinese

Painting

Centuries ago in China, the first writers, whoever they were, made lines in the sand with their fingers. Then they added another line and another, until the designs reminded them of objects they had seen. The wind blew, and the images disappeared. Later, they found sticks and made marks in the hard dirt. Again, the lines suggested objects.

Meaningful Scratches

Such drawings were the beginning of written language in China. They are called pictographs. Five marks put together in a certain order looked like the sun, so the group of lines was read as “sun.” Other lines put together looked like mountain peaks and were read as “mountain.”

Researchers have discovered pictographs scratched onto turtle shells and the flat shoulder bones of animals. These are sometimes called “oracle bones” because they were used for telling the future. The practice dates back to around 1500 B.C., during the Shang dynasty. About 5,000 different pictographs have been discovered. They represent animals, plants, natural elements, manmade objects, and human beings.

Later, people wrote pictographs in ink with brushes on silk or paper. Over time, the pictographs changed from images of objects to symbolic figures called characters. New characters are always being added, so that today the Chinese language has over 50,000 characters. Many of these are not used very often. In China today, people learn how to speak and write about 2,800 characters for everyday use. A highly educated person learns at least 4,000 to 5,000 characters. So kids in China need to spend a lot of time learning to read and write characters.

Calligraphy

Writing a character with a brush is called calligraphy. This word means “beautiful writing.” Calligraphy has been very important throughout Chinese history. Learning to write characters correctly, with each brushstroke in the proper order, was considered the sign of an educated person. People who wanted to work in government or business were required to learn calligraphy. A person had to pass a test that awarded the title of “calligrapher.”

In addition to representing a word, brushstrokes could also show the writer’s mood and personality. So calligraphy became more than simply writing to communicate. It was considered the highest form of art. People thought writing characters with a brush was much more impressive than painting pictures. Artists who painted but were not good at calligraphy were not considered good artists.

Calligraphers can use different types of scripts to make the characters, just as in Western writing people can use fun or formal alphabets for different purposes. For clear communication, calligraphers use the K’ai-shu script, and you will learn some K’ai-shu characters in this book. The different brushstrokes used to make the characters have names, such as the dragged dot, the bone stroke, and the vertical hook.

Artistic painters learn the K’ai-shu strokes of calligraphy because the same strokes are also used to paint traditional subjects. For example, the dragged dot is used to make the spikes of a pine cone, and variations of the bone stroke and the vertical hook stroke are used in painting bamboo.

This book teaches you the basic strokes of K’ai-shu calligraphy so that you can use the strokes in your paintings and write characters to describe your paintings. Learning the strokes also teaches you how to hold your hand and control the brush and paint.

Can you make these marks with a brush?

Principles of Chinese Characters

A character is a picture or “figure” made of brushstrokes. The Chinese language has no letters or alphabet but uses characters instead. Each character represents a word.

Two or more basic parts of characters can be squeezed together to form more complicated words.

One part in a complicated word is called a radical, meaning “root.” The radical is used to look up the word in a dictionary.

Sometimes two characters written one above the other have a special meaning:

The Soft Martial Art

Maybe you or your friends have studied a martial art like karate, aikido, or t’ai chi. You might be surprised, but painting with a brush is like doing a martial art. Why? Because in brush painting, too, you have to focus, especially when painting long strokes:

First, you think about what step you’re at in your painting;

Then, you focus your thoughts on how you are about to move;

You carefully take a breath and hold it;

You make the move;

Toward the end of the stroke, you let out your breath.

As you can see, brush painting is more than just swinging a brush across a piece of paper! It’s about using the energy of life—called ch’i (“chee”)—in a special way. You can learn to recognize and focus your ch’i energy when you paint. Of course, it takes a lot of practice to do it right. You need to make the brushstrokes over and over again to remember the patterns. Learning to use the brush is a type of discipline that teaches patience, control, and respect for the art.

Learning to control the brush in different positions is part of the soft martial art of painting.

One of the hardest parts of brush painting is controlling a soft brush loaded with paint or ink. When you touch the brush to paper, especially rice paper, the liquid tends to ooze out in ways you don’t want. You must learn how much liquid to load onto the brush and how to position your hand to make the desired stroke successfully. Unlike other types of painting, in Chinese brush painting there are few ways to cover your mistakes. Every stroke is important because it cannot be corrected or erased. Repeated practice and patience are required to achieve mastery. Yet, this practice makes you feel good when you do it well, like learning to play a piece on the piano or practicing shots in basketball. The result is an artwork of great simplicity and great power.

Humans are small in landscape paintings.

Inspired by Nature

Calligraphers throughout history have sometimes described their experiences in nature. In earliest times, they would fill large scrolls with calligraphy only. Their stories or poems might describe what they saw or did during a journey to the mountains or along a river.

Later, calligraphers began to add pictures to illustrate their stories. As these landscape paintings became more important and skillful, they were recognized as fine art. Landscape paintings convey the greatness of mountains and nature and show people as a small part of nature, rather than controlling it.

In addition to writing about and painting entire landscapes, calligraphers would also write poems about small natural objects, such as trees or flowers they admired, and illustrate them with paintings. Favorite traditional subjects are often grouped into sets. One set is called the Three Friends of Winter. The “friends” are bamboo, plum blossom, and pine—all plants that bloom or stay green in winter. Another group, orchid, bamboo, plum blossom, and chrysanthemum, is called the Four Gentlemen, because these plants were considered especially elegant. The classic subjects are admired for their appearance and symbolism. Each one is painted in a particular style that was refined and perfected over many years. In this book, you will learn how to paint some of these subjects, like orchid, bamboo, and pine.

Principles of Painting

Over the years, artists developed some general rules for brush painting.

Painting the Inner Spirit

One rule is that the artist should paint the inner spirit of the subject, not just its physical appearance. A painting is not meant to be a realistic photograph but an artistic vision of the subject.

Boned and Boneless

A traditional painting is done in one of two styles, boned or boneless.

In the boned style, you paint outlines of the subject and then sometimes add gray shades. The boned style can look formal, stiff, and decorative.

In the boneless style, you paint the subject with black or gray shades, with no outlines. The boneless style often uses bolder strokes, so it can appear more free and energetic.

This book teaches the boneless style because it requires more mastery of the brushstrokes.

A symmetry——Odd Numbers Rule!

Symmetry in brush painting means that there are even numbers of things in the painting: 2 flowers, 4 stalks of bamboo, or 6 pine trees, for example. In a symmetrical painting, these objects are balanced on both sides of the painting, just as your right and left arms and legs are balanced on either side of your spine.

Asymmetry means that there are odd numbers of things in the painting: 3 orchid flowers, 5 pine wheels, and so on. More things are on one side of the painting than the other, but the objects balance each other because of their positions or different sizes.

In Chinese brush painting, asymmetry always rules! The painter may use 3, 5, or 7 objects. When painting an orchid, for example, the artist will paint one bud and two flowers, or three flowers, and five or seven leaves. A larger object can balance two or three smaller objects. To see how this works, count the flowers or leaves in the orchid paintings on the opposite page. Is there an odd or even number? Notice that some flowers or leaves are larger than the others. Although the orchid plant grows from a center, its flowers and leaves are not shown growing symmetrically on either side of the center.

Leaving Open Space

Now look at the empty spaces in these paintings. Part of the art of painting is deciding when to fill open space and when to leave it empty. Notice the triangles of open space around the orchid plants on the opposite page. Some painters like to leave a large amount of open space. It keeps the picture simple and creates a peaceful mood. Others prefer a picture with many objects and less open space. In the traditional painting style, the painter always leaves at least one large chunk of open space. Using asymmetry creates different sizes of open spaces in different parts of the painting.