of style in the brushwork.
Before beginning to paint, the artist always prepares fresh ink. This is done by rubbing an inkstick in water on an inkstone, an action which for the Chinese artist has as much psychological importance in the preparing of the mind for the work at hand as it has practical application and has long been regarded as an almost sacred rite.
The finer the grain of the inkstone, the smoother the ink and the longer time needed for grinding. The ink is ready for use when it reaches an almost oily consistency, running heavily and sluggishly back down the trails which the inkstick leaves behind on the sloping surface of the stone. By that time the rather sharp noise of the grinding has become muffled and softer. With the gradual evaporation of the water, the mixture becomes still more concentrated.
Sometimes ink is taken onto the brush directly from the inkstone. But, in order to judge and control the thickness, the more usual practice is to take the ink with the brush from the stone into a small porcelain dish. More water may be added as desired to produce the amazingly rich variety of tones of which India ink is capable, from the deepest black to the most delicate pearl-gray. This richness of tone was perhaps one of the reasons why the Chinese inclined toward ink painting, which produces its pictorial effects not with colors but simply with ink tones and brush technique.
Chinese painting took over the usual mineral and vegetable colors used in all early painting. The most important mineral colors are azurite blue (shih ch'ing), malachite green (shih lü), umber (chih shih), and white lead (ch'ien fen). The main vegetable colors are indigo (hua ch'ing) and rattan yellow (t'eng huang). Among the mixed colors tsao lü, a mixture of indigo and rattan yellow, and chih mo, a mixture of umber and ink, are the most important.
Among the vegetable colors, rattan yellow is obtained from the same kind of reed from which in medieval Europe the color known as dragon's blood was obtained, but the dragon's blood, probably because it was more concentrated, was red in color. Rattan yellow (like dragon's blood) is poisonous, and every Chinese painter is careful not to test the brush with his tongue when it is filled with rattan yellow.
This typically Chinese custom of tongue testing may be briefly mentioned here. Painters control and alter the contents of their brushes with the tongue. They seem to have developed a special aptitude for gauging how much ink or color a brush has by feeling the dampness of it on their tongues. And they use saliva to regulate the ink flow, especially those who paint with a relatively dry brush. It is probably almost impossible to tell whether this method has been used merely by looking at a finished painting. Nevertheless, one Chinese professor of our own time has managed to write a scholarly essay on the control of ink by the tongue in the paintings of Ni Tsan.
The two most important mineral colors, azurite blue and malachite green, are prepared by the artist shortly before use. They settle in four main layers in the mixing dish, the bottom layer being the thickest. This thickest layer, called t'ou ch'ing or t'ou lü (literally, "top blue" or "top green") is opaque; the second layer is less opaque; and the third and fourth are transparent. The painter reaches the different layers with his brush by shoving aside the upper layers and going down in the paint dish to the layer he wants. This layering effect becomes important when we come to consider such styles as the still to be discussed blue-green style (see page 116).
Other frequently used colors include vermilion(chu sha), mineral yellow (shih huang), foreign red (yang hung), and French red (mutan hung). But lapis lazuli is almost never used.
As has often been proved, Chinese painters—particularly the modern ones—prefer paper rather than silk as a painting surface. One explanation that is always given is that paper lasts longer and can better withstand the ravages of time.
The colophon is written with brush and ink. It may contain various kinds of information: the artist's age or family connections, the occasion, style, or subject matter of the painting, and the like. Both the colophon and the seals often play an important role in establishing the authenticity of a painting, although they can be and have been so skillfully forged that they cannot be accepted as proof positive.
THE LINE IS THE FIRST STEP IN ANY attempt to reproduce three-dimensional space on a flat surface. This line is rendered in Chinese painting by a stroke of the brush. There is a direct connection between the brushwork of painting and that of calligraphy. This has been stressed time and time again in China, and Western writers have often accepted this Chinese idea rather uncritically. Certainly in some lower forms of painting, and in some of the higher forms too, the connection is very close indeed. But in a host of forms in between the two extremes, the brushwork, together with all it implies, has undergone many changes. This is particularly true of paintings which achieve their pictorial effect not by using color but by breaking up the brush strokes.
The idea of the reconciling of opposites, which permeates the whole field of Chinese painting, applies also to brush strokes.
