As I thumb through the "How To" books of painting bamboo, there are vast examples of how to paint and group the leafs in an ethereal array. Sadly, very few of them reveal the underlying brush stroke.
I could only hark back to my days of learning bamboo.....center tip, center tip, fast, sharp strokes.
Fine! I get all that, but how do I add variety to the shape of the leafs?? My relentless practice just adds more clones to my collection, neither rhythmic, nor eclectic. My teacher just kept saying, watch me, do as I do.
So what does pronation ( and supination) has to do with painting bamboo leafs?
Everything !
When we hold our brush vertical with the plumb line, anything added pressure will force the belly of the brush to sit evenly on both sides of the center line. Thus a rather symmetrical leaf shall appear.
If we hold the brush with the shaft pointing towards our body, then more of the brush belly would be making contact below the center line. Thus a leaf with a skewed right flank will take shape. Conversely if hold the brush with the shaft away from our body, the result is a leaf with a skewed left flank.
This discovery prompted me to think in terms of pronation or supination. Evidence of those is very apparent in how we wear out the heels of our shoes. A pronated ankle causes the inside edge of the shoe heel to wear out (most evident for people afflicted with Knock Knees), and a supinated ankle wears on the outside edge of the heel. Supposedly one could tell an introvert from an extrovert just by looking at the heels of their shoes. Anyways, when the palm is twisted towards our body, that is the supinate position, and pronate is when the palm is twisted away from our torso. Therefore for a right handed person, a supinate grasp of the brush will result in a bamboo leaf with the fat side to the right of the vein, and a pronated angle of the brush will have a heftier left side.
The significance of pronation and supination that if we want bamboo leafs to look lively and natural, we should paint them as clusters rather than individual leafs. Let me be more succinct, we are going to paint 4 leafs in a cluster. As we embark on the first leaf (positioned to the extreme left of the cluster), our brush is in a natural supinated position. As we move over to the next leaves ( to the right ) the angle of the brush is incrementally decreasing towards vertical plumb ( true center tip ) and progressing towards pronation as we drift to the right side of the cluster. My assertion is that we should try to paint the leaves as a combination of multiple related, continuous strokes, separated only by lifts of the brush, but no hiccups in flow.
The last picture posted above is an example of painting the leafs in groups of 3 or 4 and allowing pronation to occur naturally, thus the body of our brush strokes exhibit different profiles of the leaves. As the ink soot leaves the brush the strokes become lighter and dryer. Exploit this trait to lay down the fainter brush strokes, which help to create depth.
The following is lifted from a "How To" book on painting bamboo leafs and is just a small sample of the hundreds of possibilities of arranging and writing bamboo leafs. The problem with this rote learning, as I come to realize, is that we are so bound by these prescribed imagery that what we do at best is regurgitation of a lifeless pose. What these illustrations do not tell us is the assembly of dance movements that lead to these poses. If only we can paint the leafs not as individual blades, but as a community, and allow our wrists to go through the various and natural angles of pronation and supination, to imitate the natural growth sequence of the clusters, then our efforts shall be a rewarded with dynamic strokes.
The embedded video shall illustrate my attempt at painting the bamboo leafs pictured above, and some of the points that I have opined. Granted the leafs do not look that good (just a frustrated painter, but my theory is still sound ) nonetheless the final product is not without emotional salvage.
Pronate, Supinate, do not Regurgitate !
