Brushing Up

From page one of An Introduction to Chinese Brush Painting onwards, Pauline Cherret presents her information in a direct, concise manner that's very well edited. However, the book is dedicated to actually teaching the art of Chinese Brush Painting, rather than informing about it.

As such, the introduction jumps right into your essential equipment. Any bits of history are tossed out along the way, sticking where they will and being almost entirely page dressing.

Nonetheless, Cherret's instructions are easy to understand, though I'm not sure how effective learning something like painting from a book would be. After all, it's easy enough to write out a description for a certain brush stroke, but trying to emulate said stroke without a final assessment or without help along the way seems ill-advised. Practising on your own might also be difficult, since the paper necessary for Brush Painting doesn't come cheap. So this could be a rather pricey hobby.

Aside from the book's teaching text, some tidbits of trivia are found in the numerous photo and painting captions.

Hopefully, as the book's techniques get more complex more such information's given. The paragraph explaining what flowers mean is a dense and curious one. I only hope there are more like it within.