Chinese Watercolour Painting
The following paintings are created as a practise of using thick brushes and an attempt to do Chinese watercolour painting by drawing flowers and plants. The date created were not specified but it should be around the time of 1998-2000 which I remember was a class activity during primary school. The last one was created during high school and you can tell my skills has matured a lot.
Chrysanthemum（菊花）
Chrysanthemum is a common theme used in Chinese paintings as it is a symbol of elegance, purity (高雅純潔) and wealth.
They are popular plants during Chinese New Year and is a popular cool drink in Chinese food culture.
This painting is really fun to create as it was fast and simple.
Water Lily（睡蓮）
Water Lily is the symbol flower of Buddhism as the plant grew from the swamp but was not polluted by the dirt.
It represents the power to regenerate and purity. The plant's capability to regenerate itself is being used in Chinese medical and vegetarian dishes.
This painting is not too difficult to handle, as the paint dries pretty fast. I would like to practise drawing more of it again as now when I look back those are really pretty novice looking.
Grapes
Grapes are a common summer food in China. It is one of those seems simple but actually pretty difficult to get it right subjects to paint.
The accuracy to make it look realistic and fleshy, with the ink soaking into each other and have to wait for it to dry a bit before adding the second layer. It was a very time consuming painting and it needs a lot of patience.
Chrysanthemum Flower Pot
Drawn Date: 16th Nov, 2002
I was trying to practice on a different kind of material, it was the non-ink-adhesive-reflective-shinny calendar paper. It was easy to draw as the paper won't wrinkle up like the Chinese paper I used but the ink doesn't dry as quickly as the Chinese paper and need some time to adjust to. It was some fun experience to practise on various materials and see how ink melt on different serfaces. This paper was originally used as cover paper to cover between the table and my other good paintings.