Month: July 2010

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Chinese Penjing and Landscape Paintings

Post author By Sandy
Post date July 22, 2010
1 Comment on Chinese Penjing and Landscape Paintings

It is said that Chinese penjing is a landscape painting in three dimensions. Unlike Japanese bonsai, Chinese penjing portrays and recreate a scene we find in nature.

Similar to Chinese poetry and landscape painting which rely on a very limited amount of content to portray a vast scene in the mind of listener/viewer, Chinese penjing uses only a limited number of elements to portray and relive the whole nature scene in the mind of the viewers. Chinese penjing artists adopt many of the principles encountered in traditional landscape painting. They observe the ways trees are rendered in these paintings, and then strive for similar effects in their work.

Landscape paintings of Zhang Da-qian (張大千) (1899～1983) – one of the best-known and most prodigious Chinese artists of the twentieth century

One of the most pleasing aspects of Chinese penjing is its impressionistic appearance. Penjing, or landscape bonsai, in particular, strongly resemble the brushstroke paintings of the literati and zen schools. The freedom and informality of these compositions have a freshness which is probably unique in the art of penjing. Although penjing artist follow some basic principles and guidelines, no strict rules apply.

The influence of Chinese painting is perhaps most clearly seen in the cascade and literati style of Chinese penjing, which have the most unusual and refreshing quality. The sharp angular shape of the trunk and the sweeping curves of the branches resemble the brushstrokes peculiar to Chinese paintings.

Since Chinese penjing, landscape painting, and poetry are intimately linked, it is important for a penjing artist to study poetry and painting, especially landscape painting in order to create high quality penjing.

Landscape paintings of Tang Yin(唐寅)aka Tang Bohu (唐伯虎)(1470-1523)- a Chinese scholar, painter, calligrapher, and poet of the Ming Dynasty period

Landscape bonsai / penjing of Zhao Qing Quan (赵庆泉) – one of the best known penjing artists to Western audiences, pioneer of water-and-land penjing (Check out this post – Making My Water-and-Land Penjing (Part 1) to learn how to make a water-and-land penjing)

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Making My Water-and-Land Penjing (Part 2)

Post author By Sandy
Post date July 19, 2010
1 Comment on Making My Water-and-Land Penjing (Part 2)

Indeed, the land of a water-and-land penjing is very much similar to a forest bonsai (here is a post about My First Forest Bonsai). It is the extra shorefront and water area that make a water-and-land penjing has a more complex composition. The overall structural unity of a water-and-land penjing is critical. Design elements such as trees, rocks, moss, water, figurines all need to be in harmony with each other and contribute to the design in a natural and meaningful fashion. Hence, we have to be very careful when selecting our materials. Besides the tree species and the number of trees to be used, we also have to think about the height and trunk angles of the trees, the type of rocks to be used, the size, shape, color, surface details of the rocks, the relative size and the compatibility of the figurines with the penjing, etc, etc… In the end, each and every element in the water-and-land penjing should relate to each other so that the entire bonsai appears as one all-embracing, strongly bonded entity.

Continue from Making My Water-and-Land Penjing (Part 1), let me show you how to make the land of my water-and-land penjing in this post.

First of all, make sure the land part of the water-and-land penjing has a drainage hole. (Sorry, I should have mentioned this earlier in Making My Water-and-Land Penjing (Part 1) for we would need this to be ready before creating our rocky shorefront 😛 ) Properly cover the drainage hole with a drainage mesh so to prevent soil from falling through the hole.

We usually use odd number of trees in water-and-land penjing as well as forest bonsai. When we pick the trees for our bonsai, make sure we pick trees with a variety of heights. In the nature, there are trees of different heights. There are some tall, old trees, while there are some short, young ones. Plus, our penjing will look so boring if all the trees have the same height. In addition, make sure we pick 1-2 trees that are especially tall. They will be the “main trees” in our water-and-land penjing.

Trim off the root ball of our trees, or else our trees wouldn’t be able to fit into the shallow container of our water-and-land penjing. Here, I trimmed off as much as 60-70% of the root balls.

Next, we need to design the tree placement to get the most natural looking arrangement. In general, we put the main tree(s) in the center area so to let it grab most of the attention.

Once we have confirmed on the placement of our trees, we add soil. A chopstick will be very helpful here. Poke around with your chopstick and make sure there is no gap in between trees that is not filled with soil. And since we have cut off much of the roots, we need to trim off some foliage of the trees as well, so to make it easier for our trees to adapt and grow in their new home.

This is my water-and-land penjing. Because the sun has been very strong in Hong Kong lately, I have already had my penjing in a shady area for 3 weeks, and probably will keep it in the shade for another week before bringing it out to the full sun. Later, I will also trim and train the branches so to arrange the density of the foliage and make the penjing look better 🙂

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Making My Water-and-Land Penjing (Part 1)

Post author By Sandy
Post date July 14, 2010
6 Comments on Making My Water-and-Land Penjing (Part 1)

Last month, I took a 3-session bonsai class and made my very first water-and-land penjing (penjing is bonsai in Chinese) in the bonsai workshop. Before taking this class, the idea of making my own water-and-land penjing was quite intimidating. I just never thought that I could build a penjing with such complex composition, involving design elements such as trees, rocks, mosses, water and figurines, all in harmony with each other and contribute to the whole penjing in a meaningful fashion.

For those who are not familiar with water-and-land penjing (水旱盆景, shuihan penjing), you can check out this post – The Main Categories of Chinese Bonsai (Penjing) – to learn more about the three main categories of Penjing.

And here, let me show you how to make a water-and-land penjing.

First, we build a shore front with stones to separate the land and the water in our penjing. In class, we used the small stones that we bought in Yingde (if you wonder what kind of place is Yingde, check out this post – Rocks for Landscape Penjing (Bonsai)). Try to show the best side of the rocks by having the most attractive parts of the rocks facing front. In addition, a curvy shoreline with different elevations looks more natural and interesting than one that is straight and flat 😉

Then, we add the glue – cement! Don’t move away the whole set of rocks, but do this one piece at a time. Or else you will forget the composition and can’t put the rocks back to how you have first designed them to be.

Put a layer of cement that is thick enough to block all the holes and cracks between the rocks. This is a very important step because we have to ensure that no water or soil can leak out through the cracks between the rocks.

After we have glued all rocks with cement, we let the cement dry out for a while first, maybe 15-20 minutes. Then we use a small paintbrush and water to clean up the excess cement on the rocks.

The less noticeable the cement is the better. We basically want to blend the cement with the rocks so that one cannot really tell where the cement is added when she/he is looking at the water-and-land penjing later.

And here I have the shoreline of my water-and-land penjing done. In the next post, I will show you how I made the “land” part of my water-and-land penjing.