Chinese Calligraphy Practice on Magic Paper!

Remember when I was in Beijing, I had a quickie calligraphy lesson in a school? Well, I have a Facebook friend, a fellow sketcher living in Hong Kong called Alvin Wong, and he sent me a present to help me practise (Alvin was the person who helped me to hook up with Urban Sketchers Beijing).

I bought some calligraphy brushes home with me and some Chinese ink and asked Alvin to recommend a paper that would be suitable, as the stuff I used in the school was almost as fine as tissue paper. That was why Alvin sent me some Magic Cloth. You go through an awful lot of ink and paper if you practise the regular way, so Alvin says that Chinese people use Magic Cloth instead. It's not really cloth, but it's not paper either, it's sort of vaguely plasticky. But the most interesting thing is that when you paint on it, using just regular water, it looks exactly like ink!

I saw a YouTube film and couldn't work out what I was seeing. It looks just like painting with ink, but the brush has no ink on it. Now I have Alvin's present, I can see that the sheet is backed with black and the water turns the top layer transparent. Clever stuff. As it gradually dries off, the sheet turns white again, so you can use it over and over.

Alvin gave me another present too - he wrote my name for me as Chinese characters, so I have something to practise. Of course, I am putting my trust in him: it could say anything!

I have two sheets of the Magic Cloth: one has just a grid for guidance, the other has actual characters printed on it, for you to follow.

I have been having fun. I am pretty rubbish though. I am ok at getting the right kind of marks, roughly speaking, because the wrist actions are similar to the way I draw in paint, but it's really tricky getting just the right amount of water on your brush. If you have even slightly too much, it bleeds and gets really ugly. This emulates the way in which the very fine calligraphy paper reacts to ink.

It is very relaxing to do though. Definitely a good stress-buster. Thank you so much Alvin, for such a lovely thought and a really fun gift!

Sketching, Sketching, Sketching...

Here are a few more of the sketches I did while in Beijing. Yes, I know, you're fed up with hearing about China now, but I just wanted to show you these last few sketches before shutting up about it.

On my last day, I got up really early and visited another park. It ran alongside a river, so you got a good uninterrupted view across the water to the skyscrapers of central Beijing. It was quite misty, as it was another 'pollution day'.

There is a lot of life in Chinese parks at 7.30am. I found a man practising his calligraphy. there was a low wall which ran throughout the park. He painted on it in water. The beautiful signs snaked all along the wall, beside the many pathways, slowly drying.

I love watching people going about their business. On another day, Julia and I were hanging about, killing half an hour before being picked up to move hotels. There was a trendy-looking beauty salon along from the hotel, so we went to nosy. I ended up whipping out my Inktense pencils and drawing their hairdresser. It was another of those lovely occasions where we got to' talk' to everyone, then we had to rush off.

This drawing was done on our last day, after my early morning park visit and before going for the Hotpot meal:

While we were in England, Julia discovered that there was an English bookshop in Beijing called Bookworm and that they did storytime sessions on Sunday mornings. So she made contact and offered to read. I wimped out - I decided I wanted to spend my last day doing fun things, not working, but I ended up going along anyway, to support Julia. So, since I wasn't working, I sat in the audience and sketched her in action. It was amazing: a huge success. Julia's popularity totally took the bookseller by surprise. They couldn't cram another person into the space and they sold out of our books really quickly.

The sketch above was a lunchtime stop on our tourist day, visiting the Temple of Heaven. There didn't seem to be anywhere to eat within the park, so we nipped out and found this restaurant. It was extremely basic, but very 'real', full of ordinary Chinese people, which I love. Once we had scoffed our meal, I drew this family opposite, and the basin behind Julia's chair, where people washed their hands.

Finally, this is the library in Keystone Academy, where I had a bit of a wait between illustration workshops, so decided to draw, so that I could show it to the children later that day and prove that I really do draw every day.

More Food Experiences

We were taken out for two other particularly memorable meals while we were in Beijing...

Below are Cookie and Lily, the delightful young women who went every day into each of the schools with us, to set up the bookstall and sell all the books. They discovered that we had not managed to eat Chinese hotpot yet.

Cookie and Lily said we had to try Hotpot before going home, so they took us out for a feast on our last afternoon. Turns out this has very little in common with the Lancashire Hotpot! We each had a little burner, over which was placed a decorative doughnut-shaped basin filled with boiling water. Then the table was laden with fresh food: various finely sliced meats, exotic mushrooms, beautiful green vegetables, more dumplings, this time in pretty colours...

Our job was to pop anything we fancied into our water bowl for a couple of minutes, then fish it out with chopsticks and dunk it into a bowl of delicious satay sauce before gobbling it down. It was a good thing it was our last meal, as we had both got remarkably proficient with the old chopsticks by this stage. Even Julia, who had gone with the fork option during the first week, was scooping and dipping like a pro!

We ate slowly but continuously for 2 hours, until we were completely stuffed (and the restaurant chucked us out). When we went to pay our way, Cookie and Lily insisted on treating us. When we protested, Cookie said 'Don't be Chinese!' Apparently the Chinese way is to fight to pay the bill, to show off how rich and influential you are.

Flora too insisted that we were guests in her country and were not allowed to pay. She took us out for Peking Duck to the very swish DaDong restaurant. It was another feast, where dishes kept arriving. The highlight was the Peking Duck though, which was carved at our table. I did a frantic sketch. Luckily it took him a good 5 minutes:

Thanks again to Flora and to everyone who was so kind and looked after us so well.

Food and Foot Massages!

As I mentioned, Julia and I were looked after very well during our trip by the various schools. It was the librarians at each school, rather than the teachers or heads, who had organised the trip with us, and so it was them who shepherded us around during school hours. It was also the librarians who made sure we were fed in the evenings. Some nights we were left to our own devices: a rather haphazard and random business, but surprisingly successful on the whole. Mostly though, we were either invited into people's homes for dinner, or taken out for a meal.

Two memorable evenings revolved around dumplings. One, towards the end of our stay with Sally from Beijing City International School, was the dumpling restaurant of chef Kenneth Hom.

We went out with her family and with the owner of Obido, the bookseller for the trip. The food was really lovely. What made the evening even more memorable was the way the team of dumpling makers were visible from outside the restaurant, through a plate glass wall. Sally's daughter Annabel was keen on drawing, so I thought it would inspire her if I drew the dumpling makers before we went in to eat.

People started to stop and look as usual. Then someone must have mentioned it inside, because the manager came out of the restaurant. He took a photo of me posed with the drawing in front of the restaurant then gave us a free dessert after our meal!

On another occasion, Becs from Beijing International Bilingual School invited Julia and I to her parent's home for dinner. Their Chinese home help was a dumpling making expert and enjoyed showing visitors how to do it. Again, all the family were there and we sat around a big dining table with lots of flour and pre-rolled dough. It looked easy, in the way these things do when they are not in your hands! We had mini rolling-pins, which we used to turn blobs of dough the size of chestnuts into flat disks, rolling and twisting, rolling and twisting. Mine were never exactly round. Julia was more adept. Then, after a pinch of filling in the centre, there was a nifty technique for pinching it together which, if you were lucky, looked not unlike a miniature Cornish pasty.

Everybody sat together making them until we had enough for a batch, then they were whisked away for steaming and brought back for us to gobble down. Delicious!

The other thing which made that evening unforgettable happened after dinner. Karen, Becs's mum, found out that neither of us had experienced a Chinese foot massage. 'Right!' she said and came back a couple of minutes later, having booked us in for one, that very evening! It got even more strange and interesting: Karen owned her own tuctuc, so at 8 o'clock, Julia and I climbed into the back and Karen whisked us away.

It was fabulous. the three of us sat together chatting in a small room on comfy chairs, while 3 young women gave us first a shoulder massage, while our feet soaked, then a foot massage that felt like it lasted nearly an hour. And all Karen's treat. What a lovely, generous lady! 

Exploring a Hutong with my Sketchbook

The second Saturday I was in China, I met up again with Urban Sketchers Beijing. Melissa joined us and Julia came along too, to meet people and explore a Hutong with us. The Hutong are the old, traditional areas of the city which have not yet been torn down to build huge, glass skyscrapers, wide, multi-laned roads or flashy shopping centres. There are not many left.

We warmed to the Hutong immediately. The people there were clearly living in very difficult, cramped and basic conditions, in places quite shocking to our eyes, but there was a tangible feeling of community. Everyone was extremely friendly and welcoming, especially once we settled down to sketch.

The area we visited was, a very long time ago, a high-class, red light district. The house many of us painted first was once the home of a top call girl of the time, where she would entertain clients, to play music, discuss philosophy etc. Now families lived inside, in barely habitable, squatters conditions. Nevertheless, one man who lived there was still very proud of the grand entrance with it's lovely brass lion door handles and was pleased we were drawing them.

Children came to look and giggled when I drew them into my picture. It was all very sociable and drawing once again created a brief but magical bridge between us.

We moved further up the street, where I found a lady rolling out dough in her shop. It turned out she was making noodles. I got just one of her arms drawn and she finished. When she came out to meet us with her daughter on her arm, I asked if I could sketch her and drew over the top of the stray arm. Her daughter was shy though.

A man was making and selling dumplings for lunch. He was so adept, his fingers moved like lightning, but I did my best to draw each stage of the procedure.

Then Julia and I scoffed one each. They were absolutely delicious. Julia said they were the best dumplings we had the whole trip. Mine was full of spinach, egg and herbs. Julia's was chopped greens and lots of herbs.

Julia wandered around, taking photos (many of the ones here are hers), which was great as I never have time to take pictures when I'm sketching. We met up at this lady's shop. It was so colourful with all her wares out front, and with her sitting on a little stool, eating nuts, it was perfect.

It was very peaceful away from the constant traffic of the modern city. There was even bird song. Then we noticed the bird's cheeping was singing a tune, one we recognised but couldn't quite identify. Rather odd. Then it swapped to another song. We realised the bird was a plastic parrot on the woman's stall! It was such a naff item, Julia had to have it and. after very unsuccessful negotiations, ended up paying daft money for it. Worth it for a funny memory though.

Mid-afternoon, we finished by all sketching together inside the building which had once been the actual brothel.

It is now a hostel, fitted out with bunkbeds and with stray cats wandering through. Despite huge piles of used laundry on the floor here and there, it was very easy to imagine the building's other life, with beautiful ladies peering over the balconies and clients disappearing into the many doors.

Urban Sketchers Beijing

The lovely thing about Urban Sketchers is that they are everywhere. I wasn't sure about China though, given they are so cut off from our social media. But it turns out there is indeed a very healthy Beijing chapter, run by Flora Wang. I managed to hook up with them and we went out sketching together on two different Saturdays while I was in Beijing.

Our first meet-up was at another park. About 20 of us sketched together in the delicate sunshine (it was being diffused by rather a lot of pollution in the air, but that's another story).

The Chinese parks are beautifully laid out and kept spotlessly clean. I sketched two views from more or less the same spot, first in watercolour, then in my Koh-I-Noor 'magic' pencil: 

Then I spotted sketcher, Peggy Wong, in front of me with an extremely cute, baby bunny in the crook of her arm. After I had stroked it's unfeasibly smooth head, I had to try and capture the memory in my book:

Pi Pi turned out to be the pet bunny of this little girl. It was REALLY tiny. She carried it around in this cute rabbit-cage handbag. It seemed perfectly happy in there.

A bit later, on my way to try and find the loo, I chanced upon a small group practising a kind of Tai Chi. They were moving slowly, turning circles on the spot but twisting in dance-like actions.

Then it was time for lunch. We all went to a café together and, after we had eaten, they asked me to talk to them a bit about my work and my sketch kit. Flora translated very patiently for the rest, who mostly didn't speak much English.

Then they took me to a massive art materials shop (where you could buy all our brands from home). After hearing my usually enthusiasm about Inktense pencils, a couple of people bought sets.

After the others had headed off, I went back to the park on my own, where I rounded off the day with a lovely encounter. I spotted a painting lesson going on under the trees, with lots of kids at easels.

It amused me to paint the painting and, of course, I was eventually spotted by the art teacher. She spoke no English, but we did lots of smiling and exchanged websites. Then we took this photo together:

What a lovely sociable day!

Chinese Calligraphy Lesson

While I was in Beijing, I had a fabulous couple of days with the children at the Beijing International Bilingual Academy. While Julia worked with the younger kids, I spent my time with the slightly older ones, running illustration workshops. It was pretty hard work, because every moment when we weren't either working or eating lunch, we were signing books for the children. Not that either of us would ever complain about that - it's GREAT to sign books and see the children so excited to be taking them home.

I did have one gap in my timetable though, after lunch on day one, I had a free 40 minutes. I probably should have crashed out for a while, but instead I had a free calligraphy lesson. Well: far too good an opportunity to miss.

It was the result of a chance remark to Stoyana, the truly lovely librarian who organised our visit to the school. As we headed upstairs together, on the way to my first workshop, I saw some beautiful Chinese calligraphy on the wall. 'I'd love to have a go at that one day...' I idly remarked. 'Well, you can do it today if you like,' said Stoyana. Within a few hours, I was at a desk, feeling a little like Alice in Wonderland, the only big person in a classroom of little people.

The teacher spoke no English at all and, since my Mandarin is limited to 'hello', 'thank you' and 'do you have beer?', I worked out what to do by following the example of the children around me. Mostly the teacher demonstrated, with the use of a visualiser, drawing one character at a time for the children to copy. I found it extremely relaxing, carefully imitating his hand-strokes, taking each stroke in the right order and feeling the rhythm and weight of the marks. It was very similar to drawing in watercolour, being sensitive to the light and shade of the brush pressure, though it was tricky getting just the right amount of ink on the brush: too much and it easily bled into the tissue-fine paper.

The children all seemed to be impressed with my efforts. Nobody laughed, which was good, not even the teacher. You can see my first efforts, working down the right hand column, where the ink has bled, before I got the hang of how much I needed on the brush, but it gradually gets cleaner as I work towards the left side:

I so enjoyed it that I have bought myself some brushes and Chinese ink, so I can continue to play at home. Thank you Stoyana, for such an unexpected treat!

New Friends and Chinese Parks

Before I left for China, I put a post on Facebook, looking for sketchers based in Beijing. The Chinese people can't access Facebook, but non-Chinese visitors sometimes can. That was how Julia and I came to meet up with Aimee and Melissa in a Beijing café, the day after we flew in. We had a lovely chat about sketching and I painted them to record the moment:

Melissa had brought a copy of my Sketching People book for me to sign: the slightly elusive Far East edition, published by Page One. Page One has a bookshop in Beijing, which was where Melissa found it, so we all went to see if they had more copies. They didn't, though Julia found a mandarin edition of her Lovely Old Lion. Aimee tried to order Sketching People. This seemed to be very difficult for some reason, even though she spoke Mandarin. So she bought Lovely Old Lion instead.

After that, Julia and I ventured into a local park. I LOVE Chinese parks. There are always so many different things going on. One thing you are almost always going to see is men playing cards. Just next to them, a woman was feeding the fish. These were not the diddy, wimpy little English-style goldfish, but enormous coy in red, black, yellow and white. They were jumping over each other, fighting for the food. I got out my watercolours and did my best:

Julia took photos of the people who gathered behind me to watch as I sketched. One old lady edged nearer and nearer until she was almost sitting on my shoulder!

We had a bit of a wander and discovered a group of gardeners. It was hard to work out what on earth they were doing: 5 men crouched down on the grass together. When we got closer, we could see that they were weeding: pulling individual sprouts of bamboo from the grass. I started to sketch, but by then they were ready to move on. I caught the essence though.

We could hear someone singing somewhere, so followed the music until we came upon this lady. She was singing along to recorded Chinese music. We sat down next to a couple of other people to listen to a few songs, as I sketched. All of a sudden, Julia and I both recognised a tune. It was a peculiar, Chinese variation, but it was definitely Auld Lang Syne! To people's general bemusement, we started to sing along in English. Then we linked crossed hands with the other two people there, to show them how we to sing it at New Year.

After all that sketching, we decided we deserved a cup of tea. We were also in search of a sit-down loo. Which was why I didn't stop to sketch the deportment lesson we passed - about 20 ladies all dressed in their best, practising very erect walking, in a circle around a teacher who was occasionally shouting out corrections.

Just outside the park gates was a big restaurant. It was a bit of an in-between time so, apart from the staff and several tanks of large, rather miserable looking fish, waiting to be dinner, it was entirely empty. No matter - they had a comfy toilet. It took a bit of doing, but we managed to order tea and cake: an entirely random choice, since everything was new and different.

The tea came with glasses and looked like whiskey. The cakes were delicious: slightly chewy with soft, coconut centres. It took all my willpower to hold off gobbling the last of them, until I'd made a sketch.