In April, the Sunday group tackled bamboo on dragon cloud paper. Following the Chinese tradition of painting bamboo in ink and vermillion ink, we used various varieties of ink and vermilion paint mixed with a little light ink (because no vermillion ink was available!).

We also looked at applying washes to dragon cloud paper. The one here was a dry wash, i.e. the paper wasn’t sprayed first, with paint applied from the front. It achieved a very pleasing even result which is enhanced by the texture of the paper.

Bamboo

Paper surface

‘Painting the Modern Garden Monet to Matisse’, Royal Academy Exhibition began and ended with Monet’s Waterlilies and encompassed an inspirational collection of art from all over the world.
We chose waterlilies as the subject to explore how Chinese art can reflect some of the techniques used by the impressionists and in doing so found we were able to paint in a more free style, these are some of the results: