Friday, April 20, 2012

Bamboo- Li Jun

Li Jun's demo painting of bamboo from the Thursday workshop.
There's something about bamboo that excites the senses and satisfies the soul of an artist.
We found this symbol on an ancient scroll in the wonderful museum in Suzhou, built in 2006 by the famous Chinese/American architect I.M.Pei. The symbol represents bamboo, and the inscription nearby gives bamboo connotations of integrity, modesty and nobility - representing the 'man of honour'.

I found this symbol particlarly moving for me as for many years now I have used the matra of 'honest, simple and noble' for my wabisabi art work. I feel the need to include this image in my signiature chock for my Asian inspired works, so I'll have to get on to creating yet another logo chock design.

So.................back to Li Jun.................... 

We all melted when watching how 'easily' he drew his images of bamboo. It truly was a dance of the brush across the paper.

Here is the 'step by step' - well worth trying this in your own studio. The pressure on the brush was the key to getting the thick and thin segments of the long stems and the nodes.













...signed, a bird added for a bit of focus, and quickly sold to a very happy Petrus.

4 comments:

  1. It is truly exquisite brushwork... and what a brush! Thanks for the detailed phots.

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  2. Noela - he is a Master there is no doubt!1 We were honored to have you bring him out - and to share his inspiration!! This is gorgeous!!

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  3. I also love bamboo.. have much in my gardens along with timber bamboo and so the sumi ink bamboo here is very lovely.

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  4. N-a talent to achieve the outcome with such economy of strokes. B

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