When I was in Houston, I signed up for an evening Chinese watercolor painting program. The venue was in the instructor's gallery in Chinatown. The instructor was an old Chinese man, probably in the mid 70's, who was also the owner of his gallery and taught in Rice University. Before the class started, he did a painting demonstration for us. It was an amazing black ink landscape painting which he just finished within a few short minutes in front of our eyes. Wow. I was eager to learn to paint like him.
To our astonishment, in our first class, our only assignment for the next 1 hour was to draw straight lines with our brushes. There were 5 of us students. I'm sure we all gave him that look "A 3-year old can do that, why are we paying our hard-earned money to learn it?". The old man explained that Chinese paintings were made of stokes, and strokes started from straight lines. To make an even straight line with a brush, you had to first relax and use Qi principle from start to finish. Making straight lines with a brush on rice paper were really not as easy as it seemed. One hour later, I had a stack paper of straight lines. Ok. I was getting better with the lines. Big deal. Enough of that, what's next?
In our next class, we were each given a nickle to put on top of our hands. Our assignment for the next 1 hour was to draw straight lines and circles with a coin staying on top of our hands. In the beginning, the coin kept dropping with each of my hand movement. Remember we had to hold the brush and in the meanwhile draw lines and circles. The coin forced you to slow down and to focus even you wanted to go faster. But who in the right mind would buy those stack pages of straight lines and circles?
Needless to say I never went back for the 3rd class. There was no refund for rest of my tuitions paid. I didn't think that instructor or his class was a total scam. It was just me. I was not cut out for the slow Chinese learning regiment. I went home and started drawing clouds. I remembered someone once told me that clouds were the easiest things to draw because clouds came with all random shapes and patterns. You couldn't go wrong with painting clouds. It turned out to be so true. I was satisfied at my first try of cloud painting without even having to learn a thing. As long as I stayed away from what the old Chinese man taught me about straight lines and circles, or any symmetric patterns I assume the old Chinese man was about to teach next, my clouds on the paper look just like the clouds in the sky. Boohoo! I felt free like a could, free at last!
I don't know what the morale of this story is but at least I can tell you this. If you don't want to study long and hard to learn how to paint, go paint clouds.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
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