Chinese Brush Painting (8 page)

Use the tip of the brush and paint each of the strokes swinging your arm.

Practice each basic stroke five times. Use quick moves. Make short strokes with energy.

Holding the brush vertical, push the tip slightly upward and then immediately downward, making an even-width stroke. Lift the brush and trail it off to make a point.

As in the nail stroke, push up, then down and slightly to the left. Lift the tip to make a point.

With a vertical brush, move the tip down and to the right, pressing more to broaden the stroke. Roll the brush slightly away from you to make the heel. Lift it quickly to make a point.

Load the brush well and stroke the hairs to align them. With the brush vertical and the tip slightly to the left, lay the brush down, turn the tip up to the left, and lift it to make a blunt point.

Position the tip of the brush to the right, lay the tip down slightly, and press to the width desired. Lift the brush without making a point.

With your hand in position #2, lay the tip down, push the side of the brush to the lower left corner, and lift the brush quickly to make a point.

Stroke to the left, turn to the right, and then come back to the left. The action is similar to doing a horizontal figure eight.

Start out the same as the nail stroke. At the end, flip the tip to the left and upward.

The strokes to make a character usually start at the top, move down to the left, then to the right, and finish at the bottom.

A well-known character that contains most of the basic strokes is the character for
eternity
, which means “forever and ever.” Can you find the basic strokes in
eternity
? The character is shown on page 22. Look at the character and then look at the strokes above. Find the answer on page 24.

The chart above shows the strokes for the character “eternity.” Westerners write horizontally, starting words at the top left of the page and moving from left to right and downward. In China, the characters start at the top right of the page, move downward to the bottom of the page, and then start at the top again in the next column on the left. This is because, before paper was invented, people wrote on vertical strips of bamboo bound together into mats or books.