Dragonflies Fluttering Around The Bulrushes

Chinese brush painting bulrushes & dragonflies. Brown ink & gouache.

Hi there, how are you?

On the first day of every month there is a twitter challenge called pinch punch post. I haven’t participated for a few months, Christmas was too hectic and last month I forgot (no excuse really!) This month I remembered, whoot! The theme was dragonfly.

I had thought of painting a dragonfly with lovely colourful wings and was searching the interwebs for inspiration when I stumbled across some Chinese brush painted dragonflies dancing around some bulrushes.

Since I haven’t painted bulrushes with Chinese brush painting and didn’t have any instructions I wondered If some of the brush strokes and exercises I’d already learned would transfer to these, then I could paint little dragonflies fluttering around them, it also gives me a chance to practice my Chinese brush painting.

I’ve taken a few photos of bulrushes in the past so I shuffled through them to find something useful.

These were the first little tries, painted with a brush pen to get an idea of the shapes.

Chinese brush painting bulrushes & dragonflies, Pentel brush pen

Chinese brush painting bulrushes & dragonflies. Painted in black (watered down to grey) ink, working how to make the shapes as I go.

Another practice this time using grass for the dragonflies to land on, I really liked the shape of this one.

Next I moved onto coloured ink and gouache. I’ve used brown ink for the bulrushes and gouache for the dragonflies. Chinese watercolours are quite opaque and nearer to what we would call gouache than traditional western watercolours, I used what I had, they came out OK but I think I prefer the inky ones more.

bulrushes & dragonflies, painted with brown water-soluble ink and gouache.

Chinese brush painting green grass & dragonflies. I used my new green ink for the grasses.

They were all fun to paint and it’s good to practice my Chinese painting skills, I haven’t really used them much since inktober.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today. Till next time, have fun x