from today’s class

I only have three more Chinese Brush Painting classes before we take a break for the holidays. I have decided that I like painting animals. My fish were a little crazy-eyed, but I think that they can improve drastically with a little practice. But I was pretty happy with my first full-colored bird.

On the other hand, I am still not happy with my plants and flowers. Monica makes it look so easy, as she patiently adds petal after petal. This flower is not so bad, considering that I stopped trying to copy Monica’s rose and covered it up to make it just look like a flower. It’s not quite a rose, nor a peony, not even a lotus blossom. But that is okay. Because it does look like a flower.

Class broke up early and I almost raced through it. But I decided to stay and try to finish the piece. And I am glad that I did. Granted it is far from perfect. But it is one of the first times that I felt like I had greater control of my water (ignore the flower blossom). I also felt like I was finally picking up some of Monica’s habits with wiping my brush and dotting my branches. Only after three months. Funny, I felt the same way in Tai Chi today, too. Somehow I believe that they are related.

Since posting my other Chinese Brush Painting pieces last week, I was invited to join The Dancing Brush, a Sumi-e painting group on Yahoo. That was very exciting. Today’s message lead me to this great blog entry about Sumi-e painting. I definitely believe that Tai Chi and Chinese Paint Brushing together have been an important part of my spiritual journey. As Henry pointed out last week, he says that I am skinnier, calmer and a lot funnier with all of my new material. Sounds good to me.