Ink and wash painting

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Ink and wash painting

Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	墨水畫
Simplified Chinese	墨水画
Pinyin	MòShuǐhuà
Japanese name
Kanji	水墨画 or 墨絵
Hepburn Romaji	Suibokuga or Sumie
Korean name
Hangul	수묵화
Hanja	水墨畵
Revised Romanization	Sumukhwa
McCune-Reischauer	Sumukhwa
Vietnamese name
Quốc ngữ	Tranh thuỷ mặc

Ink and wash painting is an East Asian type of brush painting. It is also known as wash painting, by its Chinese name mo-shui or by its Japanese names, suibokuga (水墨画) or sumi-e (墨画). Only black ink — the same as used in East Asian calligraphy — is used, in various concentrations.

Wash painting developed in China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and became an established style during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). It was introduced to Japan in the mid-14th century by Zen Buddhist monks and grew in popularity until its peak during the Muromachi period (1338-1573).

1 Tools
2 Topics
3 Noted artists
- 3.1 China
- 3.2 Japan
4 External links

[edit] Tools

In wash paintings, as in calligraphy, artists usually grind their own ink using an ink stick (in Japanese: sumi) and a grinding stone (suzuri in Japanese) but prepared inks are also available. Most ink sticks are made of densely packed charcoal ash from bamboo or pine soot combined with glue extracted from nikawa, Japanese for fish bones. An artist puts a few drops of water on an ink stone and grinds the ink stick in a circular motion until a smooth, black ink of the desired concentration is made. Prepared inks are also available, but are of much less quality. Sumi themselves, are sometimes ornately decorated with landscapes or flowers in bas-relief and some are highlighted with gold.

Wash painting brushes are similar to the brushes used for calligraphy and are traditionally made from bamboo with goat, ox, horse, sheep, rabbit, marten, badger, deer, boar or 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 mo-shui a technically demanding art-form requiring great skill, concentration, and years of training.

See Calligraphy for more information on the tools used in both calligraphy and wash painting.

[edit] Topics

Ink and wash paintings traditionally concern themselves with the depiction of the Four Noble Ones (also called the Four Friends, and the Four Gentleman) (四君子 pinyin: si junzi) which are comprised of four species of plants — the plum blossom (梅 mei), orchid (蘭 lan), chrysanthemum (菊 ju) and bamboo (竹 zhu). These plants represent the four seasons - summer, spring, autumn and winter, respectively - and, as their appellation suggests, the four virtues of the Confucian junzi (君子), or ideal man.