I'm an artist!

And I prefer it to be pronounced, "ar-TEEST," FYI. 

I started taking a Chinese silk painting class this week. (工笔画) And now I'm pretty much amazing. Just look at my partially-finished painting:

My painting set-up at the dining room table

Just kidding! I'm pretty shaky and terrible, but it's really fun! It's a little bit more paint-by-number than actual art creation, but I'm learning a lot by doing it. In the top picture, you can see the original in a book. I guess it's a collection of paintings by a famous contemporary Chinese artist. My actual painting is on silk, which is transparent. So underneath, there is simply a photocopy of the original painting, and I'm just tracing it and then coloring it. I asked my teacher about it, and she said that this is the way to learn the painting techniques. When she does it, she doesn't use a photocopy of another artist's work, but a pencil sketch of her own creation. Then the technique is the same.
The first step was to trace all the lines on the flower petals and leaves. You use a Chinese paintbrush, and there's a specific technique to it. I'm pretty terrible, and I found the hardest part to be keeping the pressure steady. It's easy to make your lines fat in one place and skinny further down, and then nonexistent. And then when you get more ink on your brush, it makes it glob a bunch of color down when you weren't expecting it. So I have a lot to work on in that regard. My teacher did half the lines for me while I was chasing the girls around.
Then after the lines were done, I just filled in the colors. Now I'm working on the shading, using a darker red in the flower and a bluer green in the leaves. My teacher mixed the colors for me-- so really, it's about as simple as you can get. I love that it's a copy of a masterpiece, though, so when I'm done it will still be a beautiful painting-- just not if you look up close.

A close-up of my masterpiece

A lot of my friends have been taking this painting class for a long time. I was busy with the baby for most of last year, and then I just didn't really think of starting it. I have enough to keep me busy without starting a new hobby. But now that I've started, I'm really glad I did!