Chinese Brush: Make A Shrimp

In the previous post, I had a picture of two shrimp which I used as an example for various types of brush stokes. I realized it had some misleading text jotted down at the top, so I'll just explain how to make the shrimp so no one gets frustrated by trying to follow that silly text.

Here's the shrimp again:


Step 1: the body
Use a soft bristle brush. Load it up for a gradient, but make it mostly lighter gray (that bottom, bbq'ed, shrimp was a mistake :) Make a dab for the first bigger section of the body while holding the brush at 15 degrees or so.

Note that the soft bristle brush will stay bent after the stroke. Keep it bend and make the rest of the body sections using the curve of the brush to cup the curve of the last dab on the paper.

Hold the brush with less and less of an angle as you go so the body sections get smaller.

Step 2: soft brush extras.
--Add a few tail dabs at the end for a tail
--make lots of little feet (I forgot to do this on the top shrimp)
--with black ink, make some wet on wet dabs down the back of the shrimp.

Step 3: hard bristle brush extras
--use pulling strokes to make the area in front of the mouth and the arms. (remember bone shaped strokes)
--use a detail brush and pointing strokes to make the whiskers
--don't forget dabs for the eyes (I forgot this for the top shrimp as well)