Discussion

Orchids

Prized for their beauty, orchids are loved around the world. There are about 28,000 known species catalogued into 702 genera. New species are being found every year. This orchid, a Phalaenopsis, is a common variety often found in supermarkets.

There are a wide variety of orchid shapes. This blossom is of the ghost orchid, an endangered species found in Florida. There are only a little over 600 of them left in the wild.

Orchids are important to artists in East Asia, including Japan, because they are one of the shikunshi (four gentlemen) subjects that are among the earliest taught to beginning artists. They are orchid (spring), bamboo (summer), chrysanthemum (fall), and plum blossom (winter). Among them are all of the basic strokes that beginning sumi-e artists need to learn.

In Japan, the spring orchid or Cymbidium (shunran) is a favorite painting subject.

For this week's painting subject, I chose the Chinese grass orchid. It is one of the smaller orchid species. One of my students gave me one last year, and I fell in love with it.

Usually, I like to research my painting subjects and share information and photos about them with you. Becoming closely familiar with painting subjects is a good way for artists to sharpen their observation skills, no matter the style of paintings that are ultimately the result. Unfortunately, when it came time for me to research the Chinese grass orchid, I was not able to find any information about it on the web. I do have some close-up photos, however. Here they are. Look them over to see what you can learn.

For my demonstration painting, I choose to combine the Chinese grass orchid blossom with more traditional orchid leaves. I also added a sparrow for tenkei.

Sparrow

This one is a male.