Two interesting aspects of painting in the Chinese Brush style is that the brush is not held in what you might think is the “normal” way. During my twelve months in VietNam I had the opportunity to learn to use chopsticks. If you happened to be fortunate enough to be at a place that actually looked, smelled, and operated like a cafe or restaurant, and you wanted to eat, you were given chopsticks. The first thing I taught myself was to hold the brush in a manner similar to holding a chopstick. Chinese brush painters use an upright approach and most often paint on flat surfaces, many times on white felt to prevent the double xuan paper from moving with each stroke. The second most interesting fact about the Chinese paint brushes is that almost all of them, with the exception of specialty brushes, form a sharp point when loaded with either water or ink. Therefore, you can see that holding the brush properly and loading the brush with the correct amounts of ink and water is very critical to laying down good strokes.