Time after time, I have been wondering what I should be doing in this blog. First off, I have shortened the description of this blog to include only “oil paintings” and “Chinese culture“.

Ideas so broad and free from any restriction. More often than not, this blog has been about oil paintings and Chinese culture. The former idea is a challenge for me, since I’m not a painting artist.

How ordinary people appreciate painting art from their unlearned minds?

Oil paintings is my interest I hope to learn more from other great painting artists. I love fine arts, visual art and oil paintings. I will not be able to showcase my art work by blogging. Practically, not so able to gain a good chance of hands-on with oil on canvas.

Despite that limitation, I cannot rule out the possibility of learning digital paintings. It could be a new trend. I might want to try that to explore my creativity too. 

Presently, I’m learning to appreciate all sort of art form for its aesthetics and conceptual purpose. I’m doing my own study and research. Studying about art history from Renaissance art to Impressionism movement. As well as, modern art, like Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism.

Vincent van Gogh was the great Dutch post-impressionist painter. There are more to learn from his paintings. Claude Monet has great painting technique of alla prima, also refer as wet-on-wet painting.

Good example of Claude Monet famous artwork will be the series of water lilies paintings. Believe it or not, approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist in his life span.

Naming a few famous artist of all time, Leonardo da Vinci, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Gustav Klimt, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe and Paul Jackson Pollock. There are more to catch up!

Chopsticks has been widely used in Asia, and inherent in Chinese culture for more than 5000 years of long history. It an utensil so unique from western cutlery. An extensive amount of chopsticks skill is required in picking fish-balls, black olives, chicken drumlets, noodles, finger food and even porridge in a bowl.

I began to googled and thought of writing chopsticks related to Chinese food culture. To my surprise, most websites have already covered on this topic.

Interesting topics ranging from chopsticks history to different types of chopsticks from China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan. And from table etiquette in Chinese restaurant to videos showing how-to-use-chopsticks.

So, why not blog about what the types of food not possible to use by chopsticks?

Below are the 10 different types of foods commonly found in modern Eastern Asia, including Western food.

1. Soup of the day. From the Western’s recipient of tastiest pumpkin-mushroom soup, to the expensive Chinese delicacy of bird nest and shark fin’s soup. Always better to use a tablespoon, instead
2. Watermelon. Alright! You are so thirsty and craving for some fresh fruit in a hot-summer to quench your thirst. Using chopsticks will definitely get you more impatience to finish up a juicy slice. After all, its tastier with every refreshing bites.
3. Pizza. Beside slicing the pie with a roller-slice into quarters, what other table utensil can be used without using hand? It strange if pizza were to pick up by chopsticks.
4. A Big Mac or a Double Cheese Burger. Since when fast-food restaurant offer chopsticks for burgers? It would be tedious and painstaking to enjoy a meal like this.
5. Jelly, a soft sweet food made from fruit juice and gelatin. Unlike Chinese Tofu, jelly is more slippery and soft-bodied, which most youngster love to indulge in.
6. Grilled loin steak on a hot pan. Doesn’t matter if its half done, well done or boneless. It is still a big chuck of tender delicious piece of beef steak.
7. Half-boil eggs. No, I’m not referring to hard-boiled eggs. This kind of food is a traditional breakfast in Asia. Usually, served with toasted bread. Commonly seen in old coffee shops in central Laos and Malaysia. It looks soft and slimy. A few drops of soya sauce and a pinch of pepper will enhance the taste.
8. Ice-cream. It may take slightly more skill to pick up by chopsticks. However, it would not last long, if you are enjoying it under a hot weather. It melts!
9. Congee. As comparison with porridge, congee is much more watery and fairly viscous. Rice is boiled in many times its weight of water for a long time until the rice breaks down. In Chinese food culture, congee is eaten primarily as a breakfast food or late supper.
10. Mashed potato. Its a pasty food to Western food culture. I would recommend using a spoon is much appropriate than chopsticks.

Has any one use chopsticks for spaghetti? It does looks like the Chinese noodles though.

Colorful Sets Of Chinese Chopsticks From Hong Kong

Picture Source: jinn

Learn to write Chinese characters for numeric 1-10 is not as difficult as many has thought. Doesn’t require you to have any prerequisite knowledge, not even calligraphy paintings. No brush and black water ink color. All you need to use is just a marker pen or any basic writing stationary you use daily in office, home, or school. There are easy to learn and any Chinese will recognize what you want to message them by writing with a pen on a white piece of paper.

There are some basic rules; always get the basic stroke and directions correct. Generally, directions of basic strokes to make Chinese words are:-

• Left to right, top to bottom, sometime end with a vertical hook.
• Dash-dot in the directions from top to rightward or leftward.
• Descending strokes from top to diagonally left with a straight ending. And
• Trailing strokes from top to diagonally right with a slight curve ending.

Okay, straight to the point to learn how to write Chinese characters 1 to 10.

Learn to write Chinese Character 1 (One). The simplest of all. Consist of a horizontal strokes from left to right.

Chinese Character 1, One

Learn to write Chinese Character 2 (Two). A short and a longer strokes at the bottom. Both left to right direction.

Chinese Character, Two, 2

Learn to write Chinese Character 3 (Three). Quiet similar to Chinese character 2, but with a short middle strokes horizontally.

Chinese Character, Three, 3

Learn to write Chinese Character 4 (Four). Looks like a small square, and within consist of 2 dash-dots in opposite direction. Total five strokes to make a word.

Chinese Character, Four, 4

Learn to write Chinese Character 5 (Five). Try to maintain the horizontal strokes to be straight, and stroke with vertical direction to slightly lean towards right.

Chinese Character, Five, 5

Learn to write Chinese Character 6 (Six). Keep the dash strokes to be short.

Chinese Character, Six, 6

Learn to write Chinese Character 7 (Seven). There are only 2 strokes to make this word. Below is recognized as the simplified way of writing “seven”. To be precise, the horizontal stroke is written slanted slightly up, and the “L” strokes consist of a small hook at the lower ending.

Chinese Character, Seven, 7

Learn to write Chinese Character 8 (Eight). This is easy and the most auspicious character in Chinese culture. Quite similar to the 2 inner strokes in Chinese character four. This character word is more bold, bigger and widely spread out. Consist of 2 strokes writing in opposite directions; left stroke is shorter that the right.

Chinese Character, Eight, 8

Learn to write Chinese Character 9 (Nine). Only consist of 2 strokes. Second strokes has a right-angle bent and end with a hook in right direction.

Chinese Character, Nine, 9

Learn to write Chinese Character 10 (Ten). This is as good as the mathematical symbol “+” (plus). Definitely not the cross use in religious symbol.

Chinese Character, Ten, 10

Additional learning to describe hundredth, thousandth, and tenth thousand.

Learn to write Chinese Character 100th (Hundredth). This is a bad writings, especially stroke #2 and #3. It is still recognize as a Chinese character “100th”, but in an unrefined manner. It consist of 6 strokes, with 2 faults you should not follow. Strokes #2 should not budge out to the third strokes. And strokes #3 should have a nicer right turn, instead of the crooked corner.

Chinese Character, Hundredth, 100th

Learn to write Chinese Character 1000th (Thousandth). This is easy. Seems like just an additional strokes on top of the Chinese character “ten”. If you look closely, the order of writings this 3 strokes is not the same.

Chinese Character, Thousandth, 1000th

Learn to write Chinese Character 10,000th (Tenth Thousand). This is very unique for the Chinese to name tenth thousand in just a single character. Compare 13 English alphabets with only 3 simple Chinese writing strokes. Do you see the beauty in this word?

Chinese Character, Tenth Thousand, 10000th

As far as I have understand about oil paintings and other choices of color painting media, the duration to completely dry an oil painting is longer than one can expect. Unlike acrylic paint, it dry much faster. The slow drying process for oil color could be an advantage to allow artists to work on it for many sessions. On the other hand, it could be frustrating for the final wait of drying oil painting before you able to frame it up.

You would had been done your artwork with painstaking attention, yet drying is another pressing issues for beginners who uses oil color. Waiting time may take even weeks to dry. So what takes oil painting so long time to dry?

For simple fact that oil do not dry by evaporation. The drying of oils is the result of an oxidative reaction, chemically equivalent to slow, flameless combustion. The thicker the coat of paint, the longer the waiting time will be. Having said that, there are 3 basic methods to shorten drying process. Namely, paint with thin layers, use paints ground in linseed oil, and use drying additives.

1. Painting thin layers allows oxidation to permeate into oil layers easier, than thick or multiple layers on top of one another. Thus, shorter time is achieved and it also an added advantage for painting more layers on dryer oil surface.
2. Linseed oil is made from the seeds of the flax plant. It is available in refined and cold-pressed oil. Beside a better and faster drying oil, it also has adds gloss and transparency to paints. It dries very thoroughly, making it’s ideal for under-painting and initial layers in a painting.
3. Cobalt Driers are extremely powerful oxidizing agent. The adverse effect of using this addictive may affect the color of mixtures. So it is advisable to use it sparely. If used in excess they can ruin a painting. Most experienced painters would agree that not more than 5 drops of cobalt drier should be used per each 2 1/2 fluid Oz of any given medium. Basically Cobalt Driers are diluted in the oil painting medium if you are using one. It is harder to control the amount of drier, if directly into the blobs of paint on the palette. In short, Cobalt Driers are used to improve and speed the drying rate of oil colors.

Whatever the methods to increase the rate of drying oil painting, I would say having good patience is still the key factor in learning any art disciplines.