Chinese Ink drawing: A continuing tradition

Jing Hao

From Chinese ink sticks to those inks used in biros and felt tips, via traditional drawing inks such as oak gall ink to the many and various printers' inks, ink has been central to the way artists have made images on paper for hundreds of years. This post is another attempt to look at ink as a medium and how it can be used when making images.

Chinese ink drawing it could be argued is the oldest continuous drawing tradition that uses liquid ink. The Chinese term for ink and wash painting is 'shuǐ-mò' (水墨, 'water and ink'). Landscape was regarded as the highest form of this art and the tradition is well over a thousand years old. If you look carefully at the brushwork of the early practitioners, for instance in the images made by Jing Hao (c. 855-915) or Li Cheng (c. 919–967), you will find most of the mark making techniques that reoccur throughout this brush drawing tradition, already in use. This reflects on the fact that the basic implements for making ink brush images have stayed pretty much the same over the last thousand years. 

Li Cheng

The ink for Chinese ink painting as well as Japanese ink painting, is traditionally formed into 'ink sticks'. Ink sticks or ink cakes are basically solid ink made from soot and animal glue. When you are ready to use them for liquid ink, they need to be ground against an inkstone with a little water. You vary the concentration of the ink according to preference by reducing or increasing the intensity and duration of ink grinding, as well as the amount of water that the ink stick is dissolved into. The tradition of making ink sticks is very old and there is an extensive literature surrounding the significance of them in Chinese culture, and probably of all the traditional inks you could use, Chinese ink sticks are the most rich in terms of cultural meaning. There is also, because of the many years of their use, a long tradition relating to the aesthetic appreciation of them, for instance, the best inksticks make very little noise when grinding due to the fine soot used, which makes the grinding action very smooth, whereas a very loud or scratchy grinding noise indicates an ink of poor quality that has been made with a grainy soot. The inkstone is also subject to a long cultural history, as are brushes, papers, bamboo pens and the various ways that the ink can be applied. The inkstick is considered one of the Four Treasures of the Study of classical Chinese literary culture.

What is significant for myself is that a culture can take something like ink and surround it with a mythical aura. Over the years a rich tradition is built that means that you can go back and look at a drawing made in ink a thousand years ago and think about how and why it is as it is. This helps us to then think about how any ink, any material that allows us to make marks, could also become just as deeply immersed into a cultural history. For instance oak gall ink can be seen as an ink carrying a very powerful history of its own. Ball point pen ink, although in the scheme of things is very new, has managed during its short time of usage to also become culturally significant. It is in the development of 'material myths' that you can glimpse a certain type of 'animist' attachment to the physical world, these inks are not just dissolved glue and soot, they are liquid life forces, black blood that can be used to animate the artist's vision. I also know of some artists that would say the same of the ink used in their biros.

In Japan where the Chinese tradition was passed on the art is called 'sumi-e'. (Sumi 墨 = black ink, e 絵 = painting). Zen Buddhist monks from China introduced ink art to Japan in the fourteenth century. Over time the main difference that began to emerge was one of reduction and simplification. The brush strokes that were used to represent forms were reduced in number and stripped down to an essential focus and were often combined with poetry.

The tools surrounding Japanese ink brush painting were also integral to the art and various types of brushes were invented to deal with the types of marks required. Even beginners were expected to use a quality brush and they were expected to understand its construction as well as its purpose. The town of Huzhou in China is known as the 'Hometown of Ink Brush' and brushes have been made there since the 13th century. 

A sumi brush hanger

Brushes had to be cleaned immediately on use and because the fibres were held together using animal glue, only cold water could be used to remove the ink.

The ink brush was invented in China around 300 B.C and is still manufactured using traditional materials. The handles are made from bamboo and the hair can come from a variety of animals, including goats, pigs, mice, weasel, buffalo, rabbit, etc. and they have even at times been made from human hair. When buying a brush the texture, (soft, mixed or hard), the size (from big to small) and hair length (long, medium or short) are the most important considerations. 

A 'large' Chinese brush made of goat hair (the terminology would be 'wolf-hair) and the hair is regarded as 'stiff'. 

I was looking at some ideas recently whereby the world could be depicted by various combinations of simple forms, and as always I am amazed at how long similar ideas have been around, in this case the basic Chinese brush painting strokes, include: upright vertical, oblique, reverse, hidden, exposed, scatter, drag, rub and dot and out of various combinations of these strokes images of everything can be constructed. 

Notice how important the elbow to wrist relationship is when maintaining fluid control of the brush

It is perhaps in the coordination between the body and these tools that a wonderful dance can be glimpsed. Fingers 're-find' themselves as they hold a brush in the most delicate manner. The elbow begins a new set of movements parallel to the horizontal surface of the drawing. Shoulders move up and down as pressure changes and breath control becomes essential to the rhythmic continuity of a brushstroke. The brush control in making certain marks that are 'like' forms found in nature is practiced over and over again, so that as the artist becomes more proficient these forms can be combined to make hybrids, which will enable even more 'likenesses' to forms seen in nature to be visualised. 

Rat's foot marks; light to heavy brush tip touch, 5 different directions

Chrysanthemum marks; 7 to 8 radiating out in different directions from the same point, weight on the brush slightly varied

Jie marks; dropping from centre, even brush weight

Blob shapes; wet oval strokes with blurred contours

Even-headed marks; horizontal strokes applied lightly with a little more pressure at the end of the stroke than at the beginning. The brush is dragged at an angle. (Often used for depicting rock formations)

Pine leaf dots; quick, downward strokes directed toward the centre, done with the tip of an upright brush.

Wutong leaf marks; the upright brush is pressed down in units of four strokes, with the tip forming the top and the upper bristle the bottom of the stroke.

Prunus blossom marks; 5 short strokes form a unit.

Outline marks; the triangles are outlined in black using three strokes

Pepper marks; often used for cedar leaves. Done with an upright brush quickly dabbed onto the paper using a brush tip.

Because landscape is seen as the main and most important subject matter for Chinese inkbrush painting, there are several types of brush strokes that are required learning if you are to become proficient. For myself the most interesting issue that is associated with this particular approach is the way that line and texture become synthesised within single marks. In western European drawing traditions we much more commonly use line and then add tone and texture, but here we can see that by careful controlling of brush angle, speed of movement plus ink mix and amount, one can achieve wonderful textural and tonal control using line alone. 

There are some basic approaches to working from landscape, the marks above are mainly for working with depictions of masses of plant life, the marks below are usually used for large landscape forms at a distance.

Small axe-cut marks; triangular strokes resembling cuts made by an axe; done with a slanted brush.

Long hemp-fibre marks; long, slightly wavy, relaxed strokes. Done with an upright brush held in the centre of the handle.

Short hemp-fibre marks; shorter and more ragged than the long hemp-fibre strokes, done with the brush tip.

Ravelled-rope marks; each stroke retains a twist; done with the slanted brush.

Cloud-head marks; curving strokes built up in the shapes like cumulus clouds.

Mi dot marks; extremely wet, diffuse dots or marks creating a blurry, atmospheric effect, made by laying the brush sideways and parallel to the picture horizon.

Bands dragged in mud marking; free and spontaneous, the general shape is applied in wash. Before it dries, strokes are added to produce a less clearly defined effect.

Nail-head marks; resembles the profile of a nail with a prominent beginning and ending with a sharp tip. The brush is pressed down at an angle and the stroke is finished with the brush in an upright position.

Because of the integration of landscape with calligraphy, the flow of experience that was being captured also led to the development extremely long formats, which then had to be rolled. Rolled paper formats needed to be handled carefully and as a result handscrolls were developed. A hand scroll is viewed by one, two, or maybe three people at a time. It is unrolled with the left hand and rolled with the right, thus being viewed two or three feet at a time, from left to right. (See post on Emakimono scrolls)

Wang Hui (1632 - 1717) Endless streams and mountains; handscroll, 21 x 480½ in 

The rituals associated with this form of ink drawing ensure that these images are encrusted with entanglements, they pull together perceptual memories of landscapes, ritualised hand movements, symbolic equipment, and a language of marks; as well as giving material significance to ink, surfaces (papers or silks), the body and the landscape, all woven into a dance like performance.

The tradition continues and you will find several contemporary Chinese and Japanese artists exploring the possibilities inherent in both the media itself and the cultural myths that surround its use. 

PU RU (1896-1963): Lotus & Dragonfly

Lao Dan, Chinese ink on rice paper

Several contemporary artists use ink and brush work in their performances or installations, such as Xu Bing and Yang Yongliang who both in their own ways link the contemporary world with Chinese tradition. 

Xu Bing

Yang Yongliang

See also:

Cai Guo-Qiang’s huge gunpowder drawing, ‘Unmanned Nature’

Japanese aesthetics (part one)

Japanese aesthetics (part two)

Indian Aesthetics within western art

Japanese paper making

Oak Gall Ink

The ballpoint pen

Holding time in action The Zen poet painter Hakuin Ekaku

Emakimono and other narrative hand scroll images 

A detailed text on the brushstroke tradition of Chinese painting

Why ink sticks to paper

Graphite

Charcoal

Wax crayons and oil pastels

Chalks

The problem with mountains and words

What is a mountain? It is defined in the English language as a large landform that rises above the surrounding land in a limited area, usually in the form of a peak. What do we understand of a mountain from this definition? For instance is an undersea mountain such as the Ampere Seamount off the coast of Portugal not really a mountain because it is under water? Where does a limited area begin or stop? Words as soon as you probe them seem to become unstable and drift. 

A fixed set of mountain relationships

A more dynamic set of relationships

What is interesting in both these diagrams is how words 'anchor' the possible reading of them. 

*

I have been reading again. An activity that is always rewarding but which can also be very frustrating and my main frustration is how words work, especially nouns. I’m reading Levi Bryant’s ‘The Democracy of Objects’, looking to find a way of using words to help understand how we relate to objects. As seems to always be the case Bryant struggles with the problem of the ‘noumenon’.  The noumenon is something that exists totally independent of human perception, as opposed to a phenomenon, which is anything that can be sensed by humans. 

So the problem is this, if we can never ‘see’, ‘touch’, ‘taste’, ‘hear’ or ‘smell’ reality itself, but only sense what we sense, how can we ever include this posited thing that we sometimes call ‘reality’, the thing that is beyond our sense perceptions, in a framework of thinking about the world?

For an object orientated ontologist this is a real problem because if as Kant argued we can never experience the noumenon, and therefore we must act as if it doesn’t exist, only things experienced by human beings are therefore important. Indeed if Kant’s argument was to be followed in terms of its implications, it wasn’t worth even thinking about something that couldn’t be proved to exist. Kant also is responsible for that central plank of the aesthetic sensibility, 'disinterested interest', an idea of contemplation that involves a judgment of satisfaction without reference to one's desires or appetites. A situation that suggests that human beings can in someway disassociate themselves from their entanglement into the systems of the world they live in. Kant it seems to me is very responsible for this objective/subjective divide yet he implies on the one hand that we need to stand outside of the world to make objective judgements but on the other hand that we can never actually experience the world but only our subjective perceptions of it, which appears to be a contradiction in terms, or once again a problem with words. 

But things do happen without human beings and the universe has obviously been getting along fine without them for billions of years, making stars and planets and using gravity, electro-magnetic and nuclear forces to construct all sorts of things way beyond our capacity to even begin to understand what is going on. So what is the problem, why do philosophers always get stuck here? It seems to me to be about the nature of words and if we all communicated using physically made things it would be a different matter. 

In the diagram above 'A' represents reality or what is actually out there; everything; stars, worlds, tables, foxes, trees, including ourselves and our perceptions. 'B' represents the totality of an individual human being's experiences, or perceptions or imaginative world. It is obvious that this must be smaller than 'A' and that most of 'A' is never experienced or perceived or even imagined. 'C' is the capacity of human language to articulate things about 'B'. Language is only a part of a human being's make up and as such it is only a small aspect of any individual's totality of experience. However because humans use language to 'think' with when articulating certain sorts of problems, they can get confused with the way language as a system works. We tend therefore to be always reflecting on 'C' because of this loop. We are not for instance aware of the over 50% of our body being bacteria and how that thinks or operates or does whatever it does. You will find it very difficult to regulate body temperature by using language but your brain is doing this all the time without any conscious effort on your part. 

Levi Bryant is looking at systems theory, in particular how the differences between autopoietic and allopoietic systems, can be thought through. Bryant points out that a system draws a distinction between itself and its environment. In this way he begins in his own way to get around the problem of the noumenon. For instance if a system is a closed thing, you can argue it is all about itself and you don’t have to include things from outside the system in any conversations about the system. So for instance Bryant points out that if human society is all about communication, it is the system of communication that constitutes society and humans can be seen more as a perturbation or possible irritation that might be inflecting the system from its purpose. A way of thinking that I think is interesting, but very strange. It pushes the most important aspect about the system, its purpose, away and sees it more like an ‘irritant’. So is this how we must think about ‘reality’, as a sort of itch we need to sctratch?  Maturana and Varela’s first description of an autopoietic system was of a biological cell. Its structure; acids, proteins, membrane, cytoskeleton etc. reflecting how the external flow of molecules and energy is internalised, a process that in itself was actually producing the components, which in turn both maintained the cell and co produced the components that made it up. (This it is often pointed out is not unlike a wave propagating through a medium). In contrast allopoietic systems, such as a car factory, use raw materials to generate organised structures like cars, which are something other than the factory. The system also includes the factory's wider "environment", such as supply chains, workers, dealerships, customers, contracts, competitors, cars, spare parts, and so on. As this system becomes self-supporting, then Bryant argues it could also be considered to be autopoietic. I began to feel that in Bryant’s model a factory could come into being without an external thing predicating it, the raw materials I presume coming from one part of its system and labour from another but the car manufacturing system has to at some point acknowledge a reality external to it. For instance what if oil runs out? But things are never one thing or another; everything is an infinity of possibilities and words tend to hold those possibilities in check. It is as if they ring-fence existence and don’t allow us to really think about the awkward physical objectness of objects. I think this objectness is a complicated twisted up infinite complexity that is so awkward that we can only ever experience bits of it and this is why we cant admit to the ‘noumenon’ because as an ‘it’ or a thing in language it cant really exist, because humans cant step outside of human language to think about things. In fact language can't even really articulate much about what it is to be a human being, because humans are far more complicated than language, as the ABC diagram above illustrates, human language is just a small part of being a human. But I’m using words so will have to either continue to have a go at using them to get my ideas across or draw something. 

I have been drawing mountains lately because for me they represent a whole host of things and I like the slippage of representations that they can go through. In order for me to use ideas about mountains to communicate concepts I have to make some sort of relationship with the idea of a mountain and as in many ways, this is an ungraspable object, I need to see it as something graspable. My drawings are part of that process of 'befriending' the mountain, looking for what's 'inside' the idea of it. 

As you grasp the mountain it could be that it becomes something else, in this case a flowerhead. 

I had been thinking of how birds and flowerheads could be made into one

Once you inhabit a concept you are yourself changed by it. 

Think of a mountain as a large series of interconnected eco-systems. The first one near the top is very rarefied. It’s cold and icy here and only a few creatures live there. The mountain is several thousand feet high and at that altitude snow and ice are normally found most of the year around. As we descend the mountain things change and the mountain begins to support a much wider variety of creatures. Trees grow and soils become established for the growth of other plants and in turn insects, birds and mammals proliferate. The mountain is an integral part of an autopoietic system, a part that cant be removed without the system collapsing. 

However this particular mountain is now part of another system, a thinking tool that I am using to make a point about words, I first saw this mountain when I crossed the Alps to go to Italy by train over 50 years ago and it has lodged itself in my memory ever since, and is used by myself as an image to carry certain ideas.

This mountain is also one climbed many times by serious mountain climbers. They have developed a series of maps, tools and equipment as well as a network of specialist guides in order to ensure the smooth running of the ‘club’ of mountain climbers that tackle this mountain every year. The communication network that connects these climbers being not unlike the idea of communication that Luhmann argues society actually consists of. He, as Bryant puts it, would say that there is no pre-established or pre-given environment to which a system must ‘adapt’. (Luhmann is another systems theorist who takes Maturana and Varela’s initial ideas and applied them to society at large). 

Routes through the Pennine mountains

Mountain with contour lines imposed upon it

The relationship between contour lines defining heights and their positioning on a plan view

A cone shaped mountain

Exactly the same diagram I used to represent reality and the relationship we could have with it, can be used to illustrate the dividing lines associated with changes in height as you progress up a mountain. You can never know all of a mountain 'A', my experience of it is 'B' which can only be a certain aspect of the mountain and the ability of my language to articulate that experience is 'C', those aspects of my experience that are translatable into a language. However 'A' could also represent a contour of 1,000 feet, 'B' 1,200 feet and 'C' 1,400 feet. 

A much more comprehensive system lies over and above both the mountain and anyone experiencing any part of it.

In all cases the mountain exists as a central aspect of an environment within which several interrelated systems operate. I understand clearly that I would only ever be able to experience a tiny amount of the infinite number of different aspects that the mountain has as its totality of being. This would be the same for all other things experiencing the mountain. However if I can just accept this, I can develop a belief system that also accepts that the mountain can be all these things, most of which will be invisible to me, but which at times when bits of the mountain’s existence bump into my own, can be brought into play by systems within which I operate. 

But in order to think about this I need to get past the word ‘mountain’ and the word ‘I’. If instead there were no things with defined edges, or names but instead different experiences that overlap, communication would be more to do with processes of exchange and development. In exchange for the changing heights experienced by weather, creatures, minerals and plants, different systems are constantly evolving, including new ones that are predicated by glacial melt due to global warming. The mountain as an entity disappears and is replaced by a series of possibilities, some of which I am interacting with, even if only by engaging a few brain cells with a memory of a time when I experienced travel through its environs. These interactions avoid the tendency of words to polarise situations, the making of them either or. The idea of a dictionary that defines each word is itself a problem, because nothing is what it is. Just as a whole mountain is not experience-able by myself, nothing else is either. I cant see the subatomic structure of my fingers as I type these words but I am aware that others have seen the sub-atomic structure of human finger bones and ‘trust’ or have a belief system that I rely on to see me through. I have a belief in some sort of conditions of knowledge and of course I also realise that logic would argue that all beliefs are suspect because they are not grounded in fact. But my argument would be that the word ‘fact’ is itself a false idea and that there are no things as such like facts, but only ever changing circumstances, ones that I have to either work with or against. By working with these changes I might survive longer than by working against them, for instance as I feel it gets colder as I climb the mountain, I put on my gloves. This is a systems relationship, but all parts of the system are constantly in evolution, some more quickly than others. This allows for various timeframes to exist all concurrently, the rocks existing in slow time, whilst the insects exist in a fast time. Only the humans exist in a word stream, the mountain has no words for humans and neither do my fingers. This is why I feel happier when working with materials, I sense the plastic nature of clay as I work it and it responds to the shape of my fingers as I squeeze it. A series of forms emerge as a dialogue between us, but when I use words it is as if only my inner word stream exists, it makes itself as it strings itself together and it obeys a particular logic. 

So go stand outside and grab hold of a clump of earth and draw it, smell it and grind it between your fingers, just sense it for a while and don't think about it, because your thoughts will quickly turn to words and your words will make it very hard to believe in the reality of that dirty thing that soils your fingers and is becoming a new finger/dirt thing experience as you do. 

See also

Connecting the singularity
Faraday's lines of force Theory, what is it and when to use it
Why I draw A reflection on the limits of verbal and written languages
Drawing as climbing
Drawing as an entanglement with life
Object orientated ontology

*NB the uncaptioned watercolour of a mountain is an image by Caspar David Friedrich. His images have often been written about as meditation aids, whereby you can gain a perspective on the human condition and become more aware of our insignificance in comparison to nature.