HOME > Trees & Bamboo Painting

Chinese Trees & Bamboo Painting

Trees
Trees can soften a scene and mark the seasons with color, shape, and amount of growth. They can also indicate weather and conditions. In order to facilitate this, different shape and styles are used for the foliage of many tree types, such as pine, maple, willow, round-leafed, fine-leafed, single-leafed, and multilobed leafed trees etc. Used either in outline or as solid strokes, these patterns can suggest delicate or robust growth. Likewise, the trunks and branches also help to show the character of the trees. The amount of detail, such as marking on the trunk of a pine tree, for instance, will depend on the size of that tree in the landscape. Pay attention to the attitude of the various trees: some are stiff and upright, others are soft and drooping. There strokes also have particular names: “crab’s claw.” ”feather ,” “pepper dots,” “rice dots.” and “bowed-head dots” are just a few.

Bamboo

The bamboo grows as high as a tree and belongs to the same family as grass. Its stems – hard, straight and hollow – are always pointing upwards. Its leaves are green at all seasons and beautiful under all conditions – struggling beneath the winter snow or swaying with the storm, under the moon or in the sun.

Although bamboo is distributed throughout the sub tropical and mild temperate zones, the heaviest concentration and largest number of species is to be found in South-East Asia. There are about 1,000 species of bamboo, some growing to heights of between 100 and 120 feet and having stems up to 12 inches in diameter.

Bamboo has always played a key role in Chinese culture and art and has helped generally to shape the country’s life style. Poets and painters are inspired by bamboo’s beauty and strength, Sh Shih said, ‘I would rather eat no meat than live without bamboo. The lack of meat will make me thin, but the lack of bamboo will make me vulgar.’ During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, a group of seven men of letters were known as the Seven Wise Men of the Bamboo Grove, so wisdom came to be associated with bamboo. As the bamboo grows upright, weathering all conditions, so it came to represent the perfect gentleman who always remains loyal. Wen Cheng-ming wrote:
A pure person is like a tall bamboo;
A thin bamboo is like a noble man.

If any one subject area could be said to epitomize Chinese Painting and in particular shades of black, then it would certainly be bamboo. The structure of bamboo is allied in many ways to the strokes required in Chinese writing. When painting there can be no hesitation as brush meets paper, since the power that propels the brush to action comes entirely from within. Tranquility combined with confident brush control is needed to achieve a successful bamboo painting.

Because of the popularity of the subject matter, a great deal has been written about bamboo painting. The following is a compact version of the principles involved in this specific area of Chinese brush painting, where composition, brush control and ink stones are all essential elements of a successful bamboo painting.

 

Principles of Bamboo Painting – Composition

Bamboo is made up of four parts: the stem, the knot or joint, the branches and the leaves.

The Stems

  1. Space should be left between the sections of the stem for the knots.
  2. The sections between knots near the ends of the stems should be short, those forming the middle should be long, while at the base of the stem they are again short.
  3. Avoid painting bamboo stems that appear withered, swollen, or too dark in tone.
  4. The stems should not all be of the same height.
  5. The edges of the stem should be distinct.
  6. The knots should firmly join the sections above and below them, their forms being like half a circle.
  7. At about the fifth knot above the soil, the branches and foliage begin to grow.
  8. If only one or two stems of bamboo are being painted, the ink stones can all be the same.
  9. If there are three or more stems, then those in the foreground should be painted in dark tones those in the back in light tones.
  10. Avoid: a) swollen or distorted stems; b) uneven ink tones; c) a dryness that looks like decay; d) coarseness of texture; e) a density of ink that may look like rot and f) equal spacing between knots.

Knots

  1. The upper part of the knot should cover the lower, the lower part should support the upper.
  2. Knots should not be too large or too small.
  3. Knots should not be of equal size.
  4. They should not be too curved.
  5. The space between them should not be too large.

Branches

  1. There are thick branches and thin branches growing from the main stems.
  2. Thick branches have thin branches growing from the knots and are really a smaller version of the main bamboo stem.
  3. Branches grow alternately from the knots of the stems and cannot grow from any other part of the bamboo plant.
  4. In landscape painting, the bamboo is so thin that the branches look like stalks of grass.

Leaves

  1. In painting leaves the brush should be saturated with ink.
  2. The brush strokes should move easily and without hesitation.
  3. The stroke requires a movement which is in turn light and then heavy.
  4. If there are many leaves they should not be tangled.
  5. If there are only a few leaves, then the branches should fill the blank spaces.
  6. When bamboos are painted in the wind, their stems are stretched taut and the leaves give an impression of disorder.
  7. Bamboos bend in the rain, but remain straight in fair weather.
  8. In fair weather bamboo leaves compose themselves near a strong forked branch, with small leaves at the tip of the branches and groups of larger leaves near the base or body of the plant.

 

Five essentials for good bamboo painting

  1. The silk or paper should be of good quality.
  2. The ink should be fresh.
  3. The brush should be swift and sure.
  4. Before starting the composition should be clear in the mind, with each leaf and each branch fixed in position.
  5. All four sides of the bamboo should be considered when planning the composition.

 

Errors to avoid

  1. Avoid making stems like drumsticks.
  2. Avoid making joints of equal length.
  3. Avoid lining up the bamboos like a fence.
  4. Avoid placing the leaves all to one side
  5. Avoid making the leaves like the fingers of an outstretched hand or the criss-crossing of a net, or like the leaves of a willow.

 

How to paint bamboo – Technique

The Stems

  1. Make a push stroke from the bottom upwards.
  2. The amount of bristle on the paper indicates the stem width, up to a maximum of the total length of the bristle.  
  3. With light brush pressure, place the brush on the paper and pause, push, pause, off.
  4. The brush handle should be vertical.   
  5. Leave a small space between the sections of the bamboo stem.
  6. Double brush loading can be used to put a shadow directly on to the stem, as it is not possible to overpaint. 

 

The knots or joints which divide the stem, should be added in ink which is one shade darker than the stem itself. They should be added before the stem is dry. There are two methods of adding joint strokes: 

  1. A single stroke can be added either between the two stem sections, or on the top one only or
  2. Sometimes two dividers can be inserted, one on the top section of the branch as before, and a similar shape, but upside down on the bottom branch section. 

 

The Branches

There are different thicknesses of branches as there are of stems.

  1. Thin branches grow from the main stems. The strokes, all painted upwards, should still have pauses, but because the branches are young, thin and leaf-bearing, they do not have joints.
  2. Thick branches have thin branches growing from the knots and are really another smaller version of the main bamboo stems.
  3. Branches grow alternately from the knots of the stems.

 

The Leaves

The leaves are always the last part of the bamboo plant to be painted and are the most difficult part of the composition. The groupings of the leaves can so easily appear clumsy, or overcrowded, that it is advisable to practice leaf combinations on their own before attempting to add them to the stems and branches of the final bamboo composition.

  1. Practise the different leaf positions first, beginning with small numbers of leaves. 
  2. Leaves can be painted upwards, or hanging down, depending on the general disposition of the main bamboo composition. Usually small groups tend to have all the leaves painted in the same direction.
  3. If the leaves overlap, then care must be taken not to overload the brush as two layers of ink are filling the same paper space. It is often easier to allow one group of leaves to dry before painting others on top of them.

 

The beauty of bamboo lies in the joy of the brush rhythms and the strong, graceful strokes of the leaves. The very first bamboo painting derived from an artist who saw the outline of the shadow of bamboo reflected on a large paper screen in the emperor’s palace. That is why the paintings always tend to be in strong single tones with each stroke having a clear-cut edge.

Bamboo is very difficult to paint but, by starting with small groups and not being frightened to throw away the failures, success will eventually be achieved; it will be appreciated all the more for the difficulties gone through in the path to its attainment.