Saturday I spent the morning watching our Chinese public high school teacher instruct his art class.  I was fortunate to see one student mastering the art of traditional Chinese painting.  He was working on chrysanthemums.   He had a blotter under his practice paper.  AH-HA that is the answer to working with the ever loaded brush and bleeding.  He painted one set of flowers on practice paper, which happens to be the paper I have.  Then he was given a paper with sparkles in it.  He painted the same composition again on this paper.  John, his teacher told him in Chinese to create more gradated values and I actually understood!  The third time he painted the flowers he used the same paper but turned it over to a plain backing.  This time he added more gradated washes laying the loaded brush on its side and quickly sweeping in a U-turn.  The brush tip was black creating a nice swish of gray to black.  All the students in the class were drawing from copyrited art, perfecting their skill.  In America this is something we do not stress.  I found the students were able to learn values, composition and how to lay down marks more proficiently due to the repetition.