Art Class

I dropped Taiji. I actually only had that class once. I dropped it partly because of reasons beyond my control and partly because I'm a flake.

But I have this other class. It's a Chinese Art and Culture class, I assumed from the syllabus it was art appreciation. It turns out that we get to actually make art often in the class as well. The first class was a lesson in Calligraphy. We had an older Chinese woman, Ming Laoshi, a professional artist, demonstrate calligraphy for us. We bought brushes and our homework was to practice calligraphy. We didn't get much of a lesson, but it was fun to try it back at home anyways. We also got a packet that included the history of calligraphy.

This week Ming Laoshi came back for another class. She demonstrated Chinese traditional painting. She showed us bamboo and many kinds of flowers. She demonstrated how to paint a lotus flower, they are the easiest. We were supposed to work in a semi abstract style. You have to mix the paint with water, and then carefully get the paint on the brush, so that when you put it to the paper you get a gradient of color. We needed a few kinds of brushes, for different parts of the plant. It was great. It felt a little like a grade school class, everyone was standing, painting and chatting. Ming Laoshi also found something to compliment in almost all of our works, like a grade school teacher.

In the end Ming Laoshi chose one painting that was the most like hers, and gave that artist the painting she had made as an example. She chose to give it to me! I was very surprised with myself. It was so much fun. I think I should practice more. I would like to continue to practice both the calligraphy and the painting. It would be nice to come back to America with a Chinese hobby.

Below is Ming Laoshi's lotus.
Mine is above.
I took the photos of the paintings up on my wall. The quality of the photos isn't very good.




Here is also Ming Laoshi's calligraphy, it's my Chinese name, Bai Wei



We have class every Tuesday evening. Next week a landscape artist is coming from far away, our professor, whose name I have forgotten, said that the landscape artist was taking a long distance bus, just for this one lesson. So yeah. We are treated so well here, I'm often surprised at the fun and special opportunities we are given. I think a bunch of kids in the class don't like it, they thought it would be more about the history of Chinese art, and not art classes. I am really enjoying it.