Chinese Brush Painting How-To #8 Mountains and Rocks

Mountains and Rocks…..

In Chinese the written characters for landscape are “mountain”+ ”water”

In the tradition of Chinese Brush painting and in keeping with the Tao, purely representational work was not considered acceptable…it was more important to paint the spirituality and grandeur of nature in general….to take all that you knew about nature and place these elements together in harmony, meant you were recreating the qi of the landscape and not merely copying what you saw….

This will be the most difficult chapter to write as I can’t provide examples of the brush strokes….but as I said at the beginning of this journey, these posts were just to get you started on your way..

It is very important to get the flow of energy between the various elements in your composition established very early on….as you are grinding ink, plan your design, and as before get everything ready before you start.

Rocks and mountains are composed of many different types of brush strokes….by now I hope you are well practiced, as this medley of long and short, fat and thin, dry brush, fast and slow strokes, are necessary to the success of your painting….you will be using the tip as well as the base of your brush, twisting and turning it this way and that to achieve the right effect….the sunny side of a rock will have fewer strokes than the shadowed side….

Always keep in mind that the perspective in a traditional Chinese painting is quite different from western style perspective…landscapes are normally divided into the three elements, with the middle ground and background portrayed as higher than the foreground…personally I love this, as I hate worrying about vanishing points, and I can place light where I want to emphasize something…....I do the latter even in my other works…

I would suggest again that you look closely at many samples of Chinese Landscape painting…you will see that there is usually a dominant peak [the host] and smaller mountains or rocks [the guests]....the dominant peaks are usually painted in darker ink, and the lesser fry in paler shades of grey…

Start with simple rock studies in pale grey…one at a time and build from there, until you have a group of rocks joined together….decide where the light is falling and darken the other sides with deeper blacks..remember to anchor your rocks, by carrying the shadow to the ground around them…the further away the rock, the paler it should be..

Finally add some grass or bushes around the edges in dark ink for a more realistic appeal….Janis

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art, chinese, inks, janis, painting, watercolour and writing