I didn’t go for my Wacom or traditional pencil drawing this time. Instead, mouse and keyboard were my brushes. I created our Chinese ink painting with their help on the computer screen.

However, painting with this Illustrator, one of the most popular designing software developed and marketed by Adobe Inc., is a little bit challenging for giving full control of the mouse and keyboard is not that easy. You need extra patience for creating outlines, shapes, curves of the image to look natural as the one that drew by painting brush.

Pen Tool and Anchor Point Tool was the best way to offer the better lines of the shape I wanted to be. If the line was not that curve enough, smooth tool spiced it up. To make sure the image profile meet my requirement, the anchor points and paths could be up to hundreds. Check out the two snapshots above, it might make you uncomfortable if you are a trypophobia since there’re lots of green and black anchor points covering all over the shapes.

I tried various brushes with the pencil tool to search for the style that fit a sense of ink painting perfectly, which’s seemed like painting with the real Chinese Brush. With the help of the color, size of the brushes, and weight of the strokes, I overlaid and adjusted for several times to copy the texture of the real Chinese art paper (Xuan Paper).

The composition of my ink painting were two types. Fish jumped out of the lake was the horizontal one. Fish touched the falling leave that lied on the center of the lake was the vertical one. Nature is the very first and the last place for me to dive in. The lake represented a kind of stillness while fish as if a small tickle in my heart. And the bamboos implied a way of perseverance while the falling leaves suggested the forgotten beauty in the world. Dream big and go for it. Especially in this cruel sociality that enterprises consider employees work for 6 days at 9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. and only have 1 day-off is the best solution for dedication. To slow down a bit, to find what you are long for, to search for the beauty of art, to enjoy the happiness of life, to feel that difference. Because the art that around you might disappear before you know it as if the terrible blaze devour the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. So cherish it, and make each day counts.

Click here to read more: When the Mouse Meets the Keyboard, They Find Art Together