Paper
Without these basic tools, you cannot paint. As a beginner, you may not want to invest in expensive tools until you see that your interest is sufficient to pursue the hobby. As in Western painting, however, better equipment helps to produce a better product. For example, you can select a detail brush and landscape paper for a landscape painting, or a large brush and wide, absorbent paper for a dramatic Zen painting.
Brushes
Brushes come in many types, depending on the following characteristics:
• diameter (number of hairs)
• size of handle
• type of handle
• tapering shape
• length of hairs
• type of hair
• softness or stiffness of the hair
The tapering shape of the hairs when wet is very important. No other types of brushes, such as Western watercolor brushes, have the tip action necessary to produce strokes properly.
The painter may use a variety of brushes depending on the types of strokes desired. You need to learn to judge the size of the brush and the kind of stroke it will produce. The scale of the strokes should relate to each other and to the subject. You can safely use 3⁄4 of the hair when pressing down or sideways.
The calligrapher needs brushes that are fuller at the base and taper to a long point. The more hairs in the brush, the more ink that can be fed slowly to the point of the brush and the less often you have to reload it, which disturbs the train of thought.
Types of Handles
Bamboo Handles —Almost all oriental brushes are made with bamboo handles. Bamboo is plentiful and easier to make into a brush handle than wood. Bamboo grows into many diameters, and the size and number of hairs used match the diameter of the bamboo stalk.
Wooden Handles —A few special brushes are made with wooden or even plastic handles. These are very large brushes with many hairs in bundles. The painter usually uses these types of brushes to make large washes on backgrounds or to write large characters in calligraphy. Western-type brushes made with wooden handles have a metal ferrule that holds the hairs and also holds the metal to the wooden handle. The advantage of the wooden brush and the metal is that the metal will not swell when wet for long periods of time, and the hairs will not fall out like they do in a wet, swollen, bamboo brush. The disadvantage is that the metal can tear the paper if you press too hard trying to use too much of the hair length.
Types of Hair
Chinese brushes are usually referred to as hard or soft. Even combination brushes can be hard or soft. The basic distinction is brown fur—hard, white fur—soft. Brushes can be made from many unusual hairs, such as the soft hairs inside a kitten’s ear, mouse whiskers, or dog tails. The majority of brushes found in shops are made from goat, rabbit, wolf, raccoon, beaver, deer, horse, badger, and sometimes squirrel. In many cases, a brush is made with a combination of hairs, where each type of hair serves a purpose. For instance, rabbit hair makes a very soft brush that bends and does not hold a shape, but adding a core of a firmer hair enables the painter to control it better.
Oriental papers are very fragile when wet so brushes with soft outer hair are preferable to preserve the surface of the paper. Soft rabbit hair brushes are used to make wet wash areas and the soft petals on flowers.
For outlining and detailed strokes, you want to use a stiffer brush. Some of the stiffest brushes are made by splitting the edges of bamboo rings into small slivers of fiber so as to resemble the hairs of a brush. The maker must have a steady hand and be very skilled at slicing the bamboo stalk.
Other stiff brushes are made by burying bamboo stalks in dirt to digest out the soft material, leaving only fibers. These brushes are stiffer than animal hair brushes. You can use them to stroke the flying manes on horses, to make tails that reach out into space with fine separations, and to create rocks and textured areas. For such effects, you can also use a brush made out of horse hair, which is a strong, coarse hair that bounces when pressed against the paper. You can also use a horse hair brush to make “flying white,” where the brush stroke is streaked with white where the ink is absent in some areas. This streaked, dry brush effect is desirable in some cases to add interest and variety. A horse brush is also used for painting horse manes and tails and rooster tails.
Types of Brushes
| Type | Hairs | Uses |
| soft | rabbit, kitten's ear, soft sheep and goat | Flat, extended brush used for bamboo, washes, shading, and blending backgrounds. |
| medium soft | soft: rabbit, goat, and sheep outer hairs; firm: badger, wolf | flowers, birds, graded petails, animals, details |
| medium | badger, wolf, weasel, chicken feathers | orchids, bamboo, stems on plants |
| medium hard | medium: coarse goat; hard: wolf, split bamboo | outlining, details, calligraphy, fine lines, landscape |
| hard | horse, wolf, split bamboo | stiff, sweeping strokes, horse tails, large calligraphy |
Some brush hairs hold more liquid than others. A large calligrapher’s brush made of goat or sheep hair or hair with barbs will hold half a cup of ink. This type of brush is used to paint large characters, such as those seen in front of shops or in banners. Because of the quantity of ink needed in these cases, where the quality of the ink is not so important, you would normally use pre-ground, liquid ink. For most types of painting, ground ink is preferable. The brushes available may be Japanese or Chinese. Some Japanese and Chinese brushes are similar with different names, and some have the same mix of hairs. Some people in China paint without a brush. They use a fingernail grown long and stiffened so that it can hold the ink like a quill pen. These nails produce a special long, thin kind of stroke that a brush cannot do. The nail helps with lines and getting ink to the place you want to use it. Hand painters also use the side of the palm, the side of the little finger, and the base of the thumb.
Names for Brushes
Many brushes have names written on them to indicate the type of painting for which the brush is used. For example, “landscape brush” is used to paint the rocks, trees, and lines found in landscapes, and “orchid/bamboo” is used to paint orchid and bamboo. These versatile brushes can also be used for calligraphy. Other brushes without names are often referred to by their purposes or appearance: squared-tip bamboo brushes, detail brushes, wash brushes, and calligraphy brushes. Those who have used various brushes and know their uses can identify all of these brushes by their appearance since these tools are important to the artist’s production.
Names Painted on
