Chinese Brush Painting

This is a project I created on my own, based off of Chinese Paint Brush painting. For the first week I taught the class a little about traditional Chinese painting, and then we did two small paintings on watercolor paper with the Chinese brushes. Sadly I didn't get pictures of these.... We did two of the four gentlemen, which are the plum blossom, the orchid, the chrysanthemum and the bamboo. They turned out pretty good, although it was a little difficult for the students to use the Chinese brushes and the watercolors at times. They're good kids, and put up with a lot. If I do this project with my other school I may just use regular paint brushes.
The second week we did a painting based off of a simple painting in the Chinese Brush Painting book I was using. It is of an orchid dipping into the water and two fish. This one we did on rice paper which was even more difficult because it soaks up water like craaaazy and the brushes hold water like craaazy. They all practiced first and did quite well :)  I would say this would be best for upper elementary and up, but my first and second graders are incredible so who knows... haha
Maybe using regular watercolor paper and regular round brushes would make these projects, even if they are less authentic. Chinese painting is so simple and beautiful.

This was the one that my fifth grade brother did. He and my sister (one year younger) are in one of my classes, and if I forget to get pictures of the whole class's projects I just use theirs. My sister's is below.

Oh! we also painted ornaments! Most of the students painted a bird that was in the book, it was so cute :)