Painting a Chinese Dragon

So with no travel plans this summer I gotta find something to keep me busy, so I’m kinda having a “say yes to anything indoors and not too exhausting” summer. When my friend invited me to her Chinese calligraphy/painting (indoors with a/c) class I obviously jumped at the chance.

The other students, 3 foreign ladies, two of whom I met before, had already decided the subject for our class: a rain dragon. Dragon is my chinese horoscope and part of my Chinese name, so I already know I enjoy drawing dragons. I’m just, in all honesty, maybe very skilled at it…

Here’s a dragon I painted several years ago in Shanghai. While it hangs proudly in my current apartment, I’m not deluded enough to think it is high art.

Luckily this time we had a teacher to guide us, a picture to look and unlimited supplies. This was the real deal and we used rice paper, calligraphy ink and the traditional brush pens for every stroke and line.

So the teacher demonstrated first, telling us to start at the eyes and giving us some lessons in traditional painting (when you paint a dragon the eyes should always be looking down, if it looks straight at you then it is too powerful and is bad luck.) And then she told us to get to it!

The first stroke is always the most nerve wracking!
The teacher also showed us how to space out the lines, using the eyes as the measuring points, so we would know where to put the mouth and how long it should be.
Since it was a rain dragon, much of it’s body was behind clouds. But the teacher told us that the clouds would be the last part, so it was a little weird looking for awhile.
Next we filled in the dragon with some color. We put some dry-ish black ink on the parts we wanted to be darker and then we used a brush with just water that help spread the ink ever so slightly. Cool technique.

We met at 4:30 and when I got to the stage above, one of the other women said “It’s 7pm, I think we should stop for the day” and I was like “What?!!” The time went by faster than a rain dragon flying through the sky.

So we said goodbye and promised to meet again the following week to learn the all important cloud technique. I put my half drawn painting on my wechat wall and this is what one of my friends sent in response:

Real smart, wiseguy!

So the next week started with the ever anticipated clouds. Thus part I was especially nervous because it would cover the whole rest of the paper and if I screwed this up, all my hard work from the week before would be wasted. Also, you needed kinda long, flowing brush strokes to get that “cloud feel” and I was afraid I was gonna just wipe ink all over my precious dragon. Then, the last step was to add a little color to the eyes and mouth. Again I was super nervous for this step. It’s like the more I painted, the more nervous I got, certain I would screw up all my hard work and totally ruin the painting right at the end.

The teacher told me to mix 2 different colors together to make the appropriate color for the eyes, but I got too nervous and asked her to do it.
Then I signed it with my Chinese name and my teacher inspected it before putting on her own seal.
The final product!

The whole thing took about 5 hours (of very serious work. While there was four of us doing it together we didn’t take any breaks and were all quite absorbed in the work) and I am pleased with the results. I’m no Shen Zhou (one of the most famous Chinese painters) but I think it’s a step up from my last dragon attempt. After I put the finished product up on my wechat my friend Bong downloaded it and digitally colored it, making it look super cool!

My painting digitally colored by Bong!

So this summer isn’t anything like I was expecting it to be, for me and for the whole world really, but I’m making the best of it, and trying to get out to meet new people and do new things. I’m looking forward to seeing what other cool things I get to do this summer, and I’ll keep taking this painting class. Next subject: Phoenix!

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