At Andell Family Sundays during the month of September, we will be creating artworks inspired by artist Zheng Chongbin and his exhibition Golden State, on view through January 4, 2026. At these workshops, we will interpret our surroundings through mark-making, while considering elements of art like line, shape, space, value, and texture. We will also explore materials inspired by Zheng’s work, such as ink, yellow and orange watercolors, and oil pastel or crayon. These workshops take place at LACMA on Sundays throughout September, but in this blog post, you’ll find instructions for giving our project a try at home!
You will first need to gather a few supplies. For our project at the Andell Family Sundays table, we use watercolor paper, black ink, yellow and orange liquid watercolors, a white oil pastel or wax crayon of some sort, water for diluting the ink and watercolors, and a variety of brushes and mark-making tools. You can make substitutions as needed. Explore your house to see what interesting things you can find to draw or paint with. I enjoyed using leaves and small twigs from the guava tree in my front yard.
Once you have your supplies, find a work surface where you can spread out your supplies. It’s nice to put something down like cardboard, newspaper, or a plastic bag, something to protect your table from ink and paints. It might get a little messy!
For our project, we decided to fold our 4.5 × 11-inch watercolor paper into a small accordion book, starting with a fold in the middle, then two folds on the outer halves. You can fold yours before or after creating the art, or perhaps not at all if you’d like to leave it as is.
Now that you’ve got your supplies, work surface, and paper ready to go, you can begin exploring your materials. I found it nice to dilute some of the ink with water first, then simply play around with ink and brush, which can be very meditative. Using oil pastel or wax crayon is inspired by Zheng’s use of white acrylic paint. Because wax will resist the water and ink or the watercolor paints, it can be fun to mix them and see what creations you can come up with. Perhaps you want to do some of your wax mark-making before covering your entire surface with ink and/or paint.
We also created a list of prompts to help guide you in exploration of materials and mark-making. The prompts are meant to encourage you to engage with your surroundings and create art inspired by them, so your artwork becomes a documentation of the present moment and your environment:
- Take a look around and notice something about the landscape or nature. Do you see any interesting lines? What shapes or textures do you notice? Make marks inspired by what you see.
- How can we use these materials to depict light?
- Take a look at the palm of your hand. Try to recreate the lines and wrinkles you see.
- Think about a landscape you’ve visited—the beach, the mountains, a hiking trail, or your favorite park. Draw something inspired by your memory.
- We can use marks, lines, and color to express emotion. Create a mark representative of your mood.
- Try loosely crumpling your paper in your hands, then reopening it, flattening it back out. With your brush, gently trace the creases in your paper with ink to see what patterns appear. Do the lines look like anything?
- What are other ways we can interpret our surroundings and experiences with ink exploration?
You’ll quickly find that there’s no wrong way to engage with the materials. Simply take your time, make different marks, and enjoy the process. Sometimes with limited materials comes major discoveries. It also allows us time to appreciate and admire these materials, which have been used by artists for so long.
What did you discover, learn, or think about while creating your project?
Zheng Chongbin: Golden State is on view in the Resnick Pavilion through January 4, 2026. The upcoming Andell Family Sundays: Golden State workshops take place on September 21 and September 28.