Chinese Watercolor

A few weeks ago, Chip took the afternoon off so we could go art shopping. In 2006 we "discovered" some sort of Artists' Cooperative when on a guided tour of one of the well-known historical parts of Beijing. In December 2006, we went back to LiuLiCheng and commissioned a traditional watercolor for Christmas. This month, we returned again. We asked that the landscape artist paint us 4 panels, one for each season, with 2 boys in each one. Today I went back to pick them up. They are so beautiful I started to cry when he showed them to me, which completely freaked everyone out.

The co-op is a pretty neat place. You can see the artists at work--meaning they sit around for a while, chatting and drinking tea, and then rapidly paint something for a few minutes before taking another break. There is only one artist for each genre--one cherry blossom guy, one landscape guy, one horse guy, one chrysanthemum guy, one figure painter, one calligrapher, etc. It is a great place to visit, and a wonderful place to buy an authentic souvenir of China.

Here is the Laoshi unrolling the winter painting on the floor for me to see: Another artist painting cherry blossoms:

Painting traditional horses:

Bamboo artist at work:

And even Will got to partake! For some reason, they handed him a brush. I guess they forgot that when we went to order the paintings he gouged someone in the eye with a brush. She said it didn't hurt, but she wasn't a very good liar and had a terrible poker face. Poked face.