A novel 3D interactive painting method for Chinese calligraphy and painting based on force feedback technology is proposed. The relationship between the force exerted on the brush and the resulting brush deformation is analyzed and a spring-mass model is used to build a model of the 3D Chinese brush. The 2D brush footprint between the brush and the plane of the paper or object is calculated according to the deformation of the 3D brush when force is exerted on the 3D brush. Then the 3D brush footprint is obtained by projecting the 2D brush footprint onto the surface of the 3D object in real time, and a complete 3D brushstroke is obtained by superimposing 3D brush footprints along the painting direction. The proposed method has been suc-cessfully applied in a virtual 3D interactive drawing system based on force feedback technology. In this system, users can paint 3D brushstrokes in real time with a Phantom Desktop haptic device, which can effectively serve as a virtual reality interface to the simulated painting environment for users.