‘Twas that time of the year! But no–not Christmas. Bits of red shining here and there, firecrackers sparkling, people gathering. Yes, you know it–Chinese New Year was here! To add some festive vibes, I painted some lanterns for the decoration at school. This was actually a brand new experience for me seen as I have never painted on this type of medium before. Before taking action, I did some prior research. Intuitively, I thought acrylic would be the best material to use. However, I discovered that poster color works as well and is easier to control. I read over this blog to find out some tips on painting a lantern. It came in handy in terms of offering tips such as not adding too much water and sketching lightly before painting (although I did not end up sketching). However, seen as this was actually a blog written by a teacher with an original audience of elementary school students, the examples provided in this post were not used as references. My major takeaway from the blog was how to best control the paint so that the color will remain saturated.

For painting ideas, I simply googled “painting lanterns” in Chinese (彩繪燈籠). I ended up decided to paint Chinese peonies for one, a modified ink wash painting on another, and peach blossom for the last one. Regarding the technique of painting Chinese peonies, I referred to this blog to learn ways to paint them from different angles. Although the credibility of the website was difficult to be inferred, I believe that there are a variety of techniques that could be applied in art and there isn’t necessarily an orthodox school of teaching for art techniques, so long as the technique can be applied. Therefore, with the help from the blog post, I learned some tips for painting the flower–including the angle of each stroke, the contrast in color, and the last touches to the flower. With these tips, I was able to apply them with some modifications to the lantern-painting.

Taking action was another story that took me longer than expected. I did not sketch on the lanterns as the first blog post suggested to do, but instead, I decided to eyeball the positions of each element to make the lanterns look more natural and lively. I decided to use poster color for all of them, with a bit of acrylic color for some final touches. I applied some washing techniques as shown on the yellow and pink lanterns as I decided to add some layers to the mountains and the branches of the blossom. Enjoy my lanterns here! 🙂