If Picasso were Chinese

After a swim, on the beach at Golfe-Juan, we are talking about Chinese characters. A Chinese friend is drawing Chinese characters in the sand. Picasso has amused himself before by drawing his own ideograms in the sand: bulls, goats, faces of peace. He is fascinated by the interplay of Chinese characters, the strengths and economy of their construction.

"If I were born Chinese" says he, "I would not be a painter but a writer. I'd write my pictures".

The above text is from the book "Picasso on Art" by Dore Ashton. The original French text came from "L'Amour de la peinture: Goya, Picasso et autres peintres" by Claude Roy.

Interrelationship of calligraphy and painting

From a page at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art web site:

To understand the lack of color in many Chinese landscape paintings, one must fully appreciate the interrelationship of calligraphy and painting.

Calligraphy and painting use the same formats and tools (brush, ink, paper, and silk). The basic methods of handling a brush and ink to create the individual strokes of a Chinese character can also be used to create descriptive lines and textures in painting.

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In this hanging scroll, entitled Woods and Valleys of Mount Yu, by the artist Ni Zan (1306–1374), the correspondence between calligraphy and painting becomes apparent.

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Ni Zan, using abstract brushstrokes to suggest three-dimensional forms, exploits the tension between surface pattern and the illusion of recession to animate his composition.

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To see the detail of this painting, follow this link and click on "Open full-size image".

Drawing A-B-C

I came across this wonderful video through Drawn.ca.

I have never thought there can be so much drama in watching a child painting the alphabets.

This video also happens to be an excellent illustration of my ideas on ...

1) Writing being a form of Drawing (illustrated by young Gradus W. Wouters on the left), and ...

2) Drawing being a form of Writing (illustrated by Job Wouters on the right).

Draw a Writing / Write a Drawing

This is my personal "theory and practice" for drawing abstract line art.

1) Writing is a form of drawing.

All of us have "drawn" writings. It happened when we first learnt to lay down the strokes of an unfamiliar handwriting. The scenario can be a child learning to write A-B-C for the first time, or a Westerner learning to write Chinese or Kanji characters.

2) Drawing is a form of writing.

All of us have also "written" drawings. We call them stick figures. The convention is simple. The head is drawn as a circle. Body, arms and legs are simple straight lines.

3) The Theory

Drawing stick figures is no different from writing A-B-C.

To "write" more elaborate drawings, we need more "writing parts" - besides circles and straight lines, and be adventurous in how to put these parts together.

Just as we are capable of learning A-B-C and drawing stick figures, (my theory says) all of us are also capable of creating complex abstract line art - by treating it as a form of writing.

4) In Practice

Based on this theory, I have been experimenting with drawings that I collectively refer to as the The 10,000 Page Colouring Book. Through the experimentation process, I began to establish a set of frequently used "writing parts".