Monday, February 18, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
What do I want people to see and know?
Trying to create a new website for my Chinese brush painting, it occured to me that a blog might be easier. It might even be more effective. Looking at several of the web-hosting sites, they all seemed too complicated and hard to understand for an old guy like me. Even starting up a blog is like walking into a dark forest looking for a way through. You just hope there will be someone or something to help you along the way.
Chinese brush painting is a passion that developed from my interest in language. Some 10 years ago my employer was a Belgian oil company and they graciously offered French lessons at work during lunch. I'd never been much interested in languages - hated Latin in high school - and so I was surprised that learning French was so stimulating and fun. Though my fluency in French never got beyond the novice level, it did get me interested in learning more about languages. Reading everal books on linguistics really opened my eyes about language and how it works. Did you know that linguistics is strictly oral? The sounds are recorded by specialized linguistic characters and spelling is ignored!
In one of those books, it was mentioned that Chinese calligraphy is different than western writing because a complete thought or idea or phrase can be expressed by a single character. It was also stated that Chinese calligraphy is dying out because of computers and will only be of antiquarian or artistic interest in a few years. This was a revelation to me. I'd lived all these years and had no understanding of Chinese calligraphy.
Then, in a stroke of incredible luck, it was in the newspaper that Rice University was offering an art course in Chinese calligraphy! That was how I met Weihong, a wonderful teacher, artist and friend. She taught the mostly non-asian class the fundamentals of drawing Chinese characters by mastering the basic strokes. She pointed out that you don't even need to know what they mean to draw meaningful characters. We learned the meaning of a few characters and then I realized that you didn't have to vocalize the character at all to understand the meaning. I was hooked.
It was such a great learning experience. When Weihong offered another class in Chinese brush painting I took it to learn more. Though I'd always liked to draw and paint, I'd never done Chinese style and I loved it. Above is one of my paintings on rice paper, with a Chinese ink, pigments and brush. I'll post some more as soon as I figure out how.
Trying to create a new website for my Chinese brush painting, it occured to me that a blog might be easier. It might even be more effective. Looking at several of the web-hosting sites, they all seemed too complicated and hard to understand for an old guy like me. Even starting up a blog is like walking into a dark forest looking for a way through. You just hope there will be someone or something to help you along the way.
Chinese brush painting is a passion that developed from my interest in language. Some 10 years ago my employer was a Belgian oil company and they graciously offered French lessons at work during lunch. I'd never been much interested in languages - hated Latin in high school - and so I was surprised that learning French was so stimulating and fun. Though my fluency in French never got beyond the novice level, it did get me interested in learning more about languages. Reading everal books on linguistics really opened my eyes about language and how it works. Did you know that linguistics is strictly oral? The sounds are recorded by specialized linguistic characters and spelling is ignored!
In one of those books, it was mentioned that Chinese calligraphy is different than western writing because a complete thought or idea or phrase can be expressed by a single character. It was also stated that Chinese calligraphy is dying out because of computers and will only be of antiquarian or artistic interest in a few years. This was a revelation to me. I'd lived all these years and had no understanding of Chinese calligraphy.
Then, in a stroke of incredible luck, it was in the newspaper that Rice University was offering an art course in Chinese calligraphy! That was how I met Weihong, a wonderful teacher, artist and friend. She taught the mostly non-asian class the fundamentals of drawing Chinese characters by mastering the basic strokes. She pointed out that you don't even need to know what they mean to draw meaningful characters. We learned the meaning of a few characters and then I realized that you didn't have to vocalize the character at all to understand the meaning. I was hooked.
It was such a great learning experience. When Weihong offered another class in Chinese brush painting I took it to learn more. Though I'd always liked to draw and paint, I'd never done Chinese style and I loved it. Above is one of my paintings on rice paper, with a Chinese ink, pigments and brush. I'll post some more as soon as I figure out how.
What do I want people to see and know?
Trying to create a new website for my Chinese brush painting, it occured to me that a blog might be easier. It might even be more effective. Looking at several of the web-hosting sites, they all seemed too complicated and hard to understand for an old guy like me. Even starting up a blog is like walking into a dark forest looking for a way through. You just hope there will be someone or something to help you along the way.
Chinese brush painting is a passion that developed from my interest in language. Some 10 years ago my employer was a Belgian oil company and they graciously offered French lessons at work during lunch. I'd never been much interested in languages - hated Latin in high school - and so I was surprised that learning French was so stimulating and fun. Though my fluency in French never got beyond the novice level, it did get me interested in learning more about languages. Reading everal books on linguistics really opened my eyes about language and how it works. Did you know that linguistics is strictly oral? The sounds are recorded by specialized linguistic characters and spelling is ignored!
In one of those books, it was mentioned that Chinese calligraphy is different than western writing because a complete thought or idea or phrase can be expressed by a single character. It was also stated that Chinese calligraphy is dying out because of computers and will only be of antiquarian or artistic interest in a few years. This was a revelation to me. I'd lived all these years and had no understanding of Chinese calligraphy.
Then, in a stroke of incredible luck, it was in the newspaper that Rice University was offering an art course in Chinese calligraphy! That was how I met Weihong, a wonderful teacher, artist and friend. She taught the mostly non-asian class the fundamentals of drawing Chinese characters by mastering the basic strokes. She pointed out that you don't even need to know what they mean to draw meaningful characters. We learned the meaning of a few characters and then I realized that you didn't have to vocalize the character at all to understand the meaning. I was hooked.
It was such a great learning experience. When Weihong offered another class in Chinese brush painting I took it to learn more. Though I'd always liked to draw and paint, I'd never done Chinese style and I loved it. Below are a few of my paintings on rice paper, with a Chinese ink, pigments and brush.
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