Bamboo in the Moonlight - Directions



Students will create a landscape, similar to the one shown below by using just a few basic strokes of the brush.  The teacher will demonstrate each stroke and allow the students to practice on newsprint before beginning their final painting.

Bamboo in the Moonlight

Trunks

Brushes are held in the slant position for this stroke.  Only a small amount of ink is needed, as you want the brush to be slightly dry in order to make the trunks look "woody".  Move the brush a few inches, then leave a small gap and resume the stroke.  This gives the bamboo a "sectioned" look.  Use the tip of the brush to add the "nodes" between each section.  The trunks look like this:

.The strokes are made all in one direction.

You can get different sized trunks by varying the amount of the brush tip that is pressed to the paper.

Leaves:

Each leaf is completed in one stroke.  The motion is press and lift - press down at the beginning and lift up at the end to make the pointed shape at the tip.  Have students practice slanting the leaves in different directions - rarely in nature are leaves pointed straight out like a star!  When they have mastered the leaf stroke, have them make some leaf groups like the ones shown below.  Stagger the leaves slightly, and leave the side leave smaller than the main leaf in the group.
 


When students are comfortable with making the leaves and trunks, give them the rice paper to make their bamboo landscape on.  They should not fill in the whole page, but should leave plenty of white space and just try to make a pleasing composition with several trunks and groups of leaves.

After the papers have dried, they will go back and do a very light wash, leaving the "moon" white.  An inverted tupperware bowl is a good guideline for the moon - they can move it around until they find the right space, then do their wash all around it.