A Painter and a Shepherd

In the Tang Dynasty there lived a famous painter named Dai Song(戴嵩). Once Whenever his paintings were displayed, there must be many people came to appreciate them.  His painting were often acclaimed by vistors and some people even paid high prices for them. his paintings. It is said that, once, one of Dai Song's friends invited him to draw paint a picture.  "What do I paint?"  Dai sank in thought for a moment and then decided to draw paint a picture of "bullfighting. (斗牛图)" He first painted with thick ink, for a while and then stroked lightly for a moment. It didn't take long time to finish the painting. Seeing the picture, all of the vistors spoke highly of his work. "The painting looks really vivid, the painting looks really vivid. It is really a masterpiece!" commented a business man.  "The bulls are painted look alive, the bulls are painted as if they were alive. Only those who are extremely excellent in painting can could paint draw such a picture!" a teacher praised.  "He drew painted the picture wrong, he drew painted it the picture wrong!"  A shepherd squeezed through the crowd and shouted.  What he said was like a mine bomb which made all of the people stand dumbfounded.  Just then, Dai asked the shepherd to come up to him and said mildly, "Little child, I am willing to accept your comment, and can but could you tell me where the mistake is?"  The shepherd pointed at the painting and said, "You painted the bull's tails wrong. When two bulls fight, they focus all of their strength on their horns and their tails are between their hindlegs. The tails you painted are raised and their tails are used to drive away flies when raised." Hearing these words, Dai felt ashamed. He said to the shepherd with great respect, "Thank you for your comments."

There is a difference between <em>painting </em>and <em>drawing.  </em>In general, you <em>paint a picture </em>or you <em>paint a painting, </em>but you <em>draw a drawing.  </em>In China, they used brushes, so really they mostly painted.  But you might refer to it as a drawing if it is only one color, whereas if it is more than one color it is definitely a painting.  I am not familiar with Dai Song, so I don't know which word I would use to refer to the bullfighting picture.  But, you should be consistent, and use the same term throughout your essay.

Dai Song sounds like he was a truly great man, because he had that rarest of great attributes, humility.  I was in Puerto Rico once, and we stayed at a small hotel owned by a local artist.  Her sculptures were absolutely beautiful, but she had one which was supposed to be two-year-old native children, from before when Columbus came and almost all the natives were killed.  The natives, I think they were called Taino, bound the heads of the children from birth so that the skulls would become very high and flat.  The artist had used some local children and her relatives as models, and simply tied boards on their heads.  I told her that I thought the sculpture was beautiful, very life-like, but I also pointed out that if the children's heads had been bound since birth, the skulls would have been obviously deformed by their age.  She had just sculted the skulls of the modern children the way they really were, when she should have squashed the skulls like tight binding with boards for two years would have done.  I am a pediatrician, so I am somewhat of an expert in skull deforimities.  But this artist never admitted she could have been wrong, never thanked me.

They used to bind the feet of Chinese girls.  That created a much worse deformity.

Alisa, I can see a big improvement in your writing already.