Jennie Villanueva

In Chinese art, bamboo is a popular motif since the resilient plant represents a person’s upright character. Due to the linear shape of the bamboo’s stem and leaves, ink painters often incorporate calligraphy techniques when they paint this subject. Using calligraphic brushstrokes, each element is painted in a similar manner when someone writes a stroke in calligraphy. After all, Chinese ink artists use the same brush for painting and calligraphy. For my creative response, I wanted to explore the relationship between both calligraphy and bamboo art within a more modern context. I will be using Procreate, a professional digital painting app that allows users to amplify their work by having a whole category of brushes to create artwork. My work is inspired by Trúc Deegan, a talented Vietnamese artist in Iowa City whose art mainly focuses on Chinese ink painting technique. 

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Trúc Deegan’s art, as she demonstrated in our class, is my main source of inspiration. Her artistic practice of creating pieces of bamboo as her subject matter truly does reflect how much she cares about nature. Her live presentation helped me understand a little bit better about adding pressure with ink in comparison to how to apply that to digital media. When I tried doing brushwork with ink and brush, I noticed it takes a lot of focus and there's less room for mistakes. It was difficult to recreate some of the effects digitally. However, I do have good practice with adjusting to my environment and being able to create the piece in my own way. Within Deegan's painting display, I noticed she works a lot quicker with experience.

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Some things I realized while creating my work: it's a little bit easier in the sense of being able to manipulate my work. With Procreate, I'm able to erase, smudge, add layers, add color if I wanted to, and do a bunch more features. While creating my work, I realized how you can never recreate what's on paper on digital media. I focused on the layering and being able to find brushes similar to a calligraphy brush. This assignment challenged me to gather my thoughts and figure out an appreciation for Chinese calligraphy and recognizing everyone has their own style of work.