Ink wash painting

Ink wash painting, also known as literati painting is an East Asian type of brush painting of Chinese origin that uses black ink—the same as used in East Asian calligraphy, in various concentrations. For centuries, this most prestigious form of Chinese art was practiced by highly educated scholar gentlemen or literati.

Names used in the cultures concerned include: in Chinese shuǐ mò huà (水墨畫), in Japanese sumi-e (墨絵) or suibokuga (水墨画), in Korean sumukhwa (수묵화), and in Vietnamese tranh thủy mặc (幀水墨).

History

Main article: Chinese painting

Textual evidence suggests that Shan shui style painting existed during China's Liu Song dynasty of the fifth century. Ink wash painting developed further during the Tang dynasty (618–907). The 8th-century poet/painter Wang Wei is generally credited as the painter who applied color to existing ink wash paintings.^[1] The art was further developed into a more polished style during the Song Dynasty (960–1279). It was introduced to Korea shortly after China's discovery of the ink.

Philosophy

Mountain landscapes are by far the most common scenes depicted in ink wash landscape paintings. Pictured: Landscape by Sesshū

Asian aesthetic writing is generally consistent in stating the goal of ink and wash painting is not simply to reproduce the appearance of the subject, but to capture its spirit. To paint a horse, the ink wash painting artist must understand its temperament better than its muscles and bones. To paint a flower, there is no need to perfectly match its petals and colors, but it is essential to convey its liveliness and fragrance. East Asian ink wash painting may be regarded as a form of expressionistic art that captures the unseen.

In landscape painting the scenes depicted are typically imaginary, or very loose adaptations of actual views. Mountain landscapes are by far the most common, often evoking particular areas traditionally famous for their beauty, from which the artist may have been very distant. Water is very often included.

East Asian ink wash painting has long inspired modern artists in the West. In his classic book Composition, American artist and educator Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922) wrote this about ink wash painting: "The painter ... put upon the paper the fewest possible lines and tones; just enough to cause form, texture and effect to be felt. Every brush-touch must be full-charged with meaning, and useless detail eliminated. Put together all the good points in such a method, and you have the qualities of the highest art".^[2] Dow's fascination with ink wash painting not only shaped his own approach to art but also helped free many American modernists of the era, including his student Georgia O'Keeffe, from what he called a "story-telling" approach. Dow strived for harmonic compositions through three elements: line, shading, and color. He advocated practicing with East Asian brushes and ink to develop aesthetic acuity with line and shading.

During Ming Dynasty, Chinese painters Dong Qichang (J: Tō Kishō, 1555-1636), Mo Shilong (1537?–1587), and Chen Jiru (1558–1639) identified two different schools: the "Northern School of Painting" (Beizonghua or Beihua J: Hokushūga), and the "Southern School of Painting" (Nanzonghua or Nanhua J: Nanshuga), also called "Literati Painting" (Wenrenhua J: Bunjinga).^[3]

Technique

Ink wash painting uses tonality and shading achieved by varying the ink density, both by differential grinding of the ink stick in water and by varying the ink load and pressure within a single brushstroke. Ink wash painting artists spend years practicing basic brush strokes to refine their brush movement and ink flow. In the hand of a master, a single stroke can produce astonishing variations in tonality, from deep black to silvery gray. Thus, in its original context, shading means more than just dark-light arrangement: It is the basis for the beautiful nuance in tonality found in East Asian ink wash painting and brush-and-ink calligraphy.

Materials and tools

Brush rest in the shape of a praying mantis

Ink wash painting is usually done on xuan paper (Chinese) or washi (Japanese paper) both of which are highly absorbent and unsized. Silk is also used in some forms of ink painting. Many types of xuan paper and washi do not lend themselves readily to a smooth wash the way watercolor paper does. Each brush stroke is visible, so any "wash" in the sense of Western style painting requires partially sized paper. Paper manufacturers today understand artists' demands for more versatile papers and work to produce kinds that are more flexible. If one uses traditional paper, the idea of an "ink wash" refers to a wet-on-wet technique, applying black ink to paper where a lighter ink has already been applied, or by quickly manipulating watery diluted ink once it has been applied to the paper by using a very large brush.

In ink wash paintings, as in calligraphy, artists usually grind inkstick over an inkstone to obtain black ink, but prepared liquid inks (墨汁 in Japanese, bokuju) are also available. Most inksticks are made of soot from pine or oil combined with animal glue. An artist puts a few drops of water on an inkstone and grinds the inkstick in a circular motion until a smooth, black ink of the desired concentration is made. Prepared liquid inks differ in viscosity, solubility, concentration, etc., but are in general more suitable for practicing Chinese calligraphy than executing paintings.^[4] Inksticks themselves are sometimes ornately decorated with landscapes or flowers in bas-relief and some are highlighted with gold.

Ink wash painting brushes are similar to the brushes used for calligraphy and are traditionally made from bamboo with goat, cattle, horse, sheep, rabbit, marten, badger, deer, boar and wolf hair. The brush hairs are tapered to a fine point, a feature vital to the style of wash paintings.

Different brushes have different qualities. A small wolf-hair brush that is tapered to a fine point can deliver an even thin line of ink (much like a pen). A large wool brush (one variation called the big cloud) can hold a large volume of water and ink. When the big cloud brush rains down upon the paper, it delivers a graded swath of ink encompassing myriad shades of gray to black.

Once a stroke is painted, it cannot be changed or erased. This makes ink and wash painting a technically demanding art-form requiring great skill, concentration, and years of training.

Noted artists

Autumn Landscape (Shūkei-sansui). Sesshū Tōyō (1420-1506), Japanese

China

Korea

Japan

In popular culture

The video game Ōkami, published by Capcom for the PS2 and Wii systems, is done almost entirely in a style resembling ink wash painting. In the episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, "The Cave of Two Lovers," the backstory behind Omashu was illustrated in ink wash painting. An episode of Nickelodeon's Wonder Pets titled "Save the Crane"^[5] has the characters fly into an ink wash painting to rescue a baby crane. In the episode of South Park titled "Tsst", Cartman's mother learns to make sumi-e paintings while Cartman has run away from home.

References

↑ Wang, Yushu Wang. Wu zhou chuan bo chu ban she. Translated by 王玉书. [2005] (2005). Selected poems and pictures of the Tang dynasty 五洲传播出版社 ISBN 7-5085-0798-3
↑ Dow, Arthur Wesley (1899). Composition.
↑ Marco, Meccarelli. 2015. "Chinese Painters in Nagasaki: Style and Artistic Contaminatio during the Tokugawa Period (1603–1868)" Ming Qing Studies 2015, Pages 175–236.
↑ Okamoto, Naomi The Art of Sumi-e: Beautiful ink painting using Japanese Brushwork, Search Press, Kent UK, 2015, p. 16
↑ Watch Wonder Pets Online - Full Episodes of Season 3 to 1 | Yidio

External links

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