Ink painting does not tamper with the beginners, it gulp them down. Brush comes in touch with paper and rather than something beautiful, there is a blob. No the smooth mountain as you imagined. It was a mere wet shapelessness crippling in front of your eyes. Watching the belly being kicked is what makes ink painting courses always full. It is like trying to cut your own hair in learning it alone. Brave decision. Rarely a good outcome. Clicking here!

A good course begins at the bottom rung- at the bottom where the students really are, not as the teachers would like them to be. Brush control is cut into pieces that can be really digested. The intensity of pressure to use at the tip. The rate of motion of drag on the surface. When it is better to allow ink to flow and when it is better to withhold such freedom. These lessons require years left to instinct. They are explicitly made in a course, and they take weeks.

Even more surprising to people is this: ink painting inhabits not only hand but also entire body. Posture guides the line. When the chest is tightened, there is a shortening of the stroke. The correlation between brushwork and breath is not romantic nonsense, but old experience with artists knowing that it has been so long. Any subject which omits this causes the students to have their fingers to be blamed as the source of the problems somewhere in the area of shoulders.

To know materials is half the battle and a good course gives you that half without forcing you to take it the hard way. Inks possess personalities. Demands are made on papers. A student opened a pack of good rice paper quite oblivious of the fact that it was absorbing ink three times faster than practice sheets – and wiped out the whole pack by lunch. A course is also aware of the pitfalls and guides the students around them without making noise.

The course of the lessons is based on a logic to believe in. Bamboo in front of complete landscapes. One petal in the presence of a panoramic composition. There is a reason why that scaffolding is there. There is nothing bold about trying out complicated topics before learning to control the stroke, and it is a costly way to lose.

When it comes, it is the breakthrough that catches people unawares. When foundations are established, the brush will no longer resist, it will begin to work. Ink finds its place. What seemed a threatening blank page will now read like breathing space. Students will say that it is like unlocking something quietly.

None of the online tutorials can do what a live course does provide the ability to have someone actually watching what you are doing. Hearing that your bamboo joints are too smooth and need some shaking is one thing but having to replay the same video until you experience the same effect is another.

The people surrounding you are important in other unforeseen ways also. Communal frustration is less heavy. The development of other people makes your development more tangible. The group energy is what challenges the students even higher than before.