A place to explore ideas related to martial arts, health and inner cultivation
I stumbled across this little gem while browsing through painting tutorials on YouTube.
Ode to Summer is a beautiful little animation in which what appears to be a traditional Chinese ink painting comes
to life. A dragonfly flits through lotus flowers, koi swim through graceful reeds below the rippled surface of a clear pond
and a young woman sits amid calligraphically drawn rocks and reads us a brief poem extolling the beauty of summer.
At first you think one or two objects are being rendered in front of an actual ink painting, then the “camera”
rotates and it becomes obvious that everything in the “painting”, including the calligraphy, is composed of 3-D
CGI objects.
Chinese painting is often not fully appreciated by the 'West'. Viewers often believe that the technique is very linear, very simple and has
not much depth, and is therefore very easy to do. The brush technique is learnt through a technique of very few brush strokes.
This could be equated to learning the alphabet before you write a poem or learning the notes on a piano before being able
to play.
