Chinese Brush painting is not unlike watercolor in some ways. We might be calling our techniques by different names but they are referencing the same principles. We are all dealing with the collective results of water, color and paper.
Xuan paper is the preferred paper we paint on and the absorbency of the paper is affected by whether it is sized or unsized with alum and the type of fibers that the paper is made from. The ability to control ink tone is one of the virtues we look for in a brush artist.
Feathering in watercolor involved forming a gradient that goes from saturated to more transparent by adding water to diffuse the color. In Chinese brush painting the diffusion can go both ways.
This is an example of saturated to light, or rich into light in our vernacular. The addition of ink or color onto a still wet brushstroke created the effect often employed for painting duckweed in Chinese painting
Clean water is applied around the hairline to promote ink diffusion, to make the brushroke more fluffy. It is not uncommon for Chinese Brush artists to hold two brushes in their hands, one with ink and the other one just a plain wet brush.
Here is an example of the opposite, light into rich. Brush with clean water is placed in still moist dark spots to create the voids
The following is an example of using stale ink ( the ink becomes more viscous due to evaporation, but the binder in the ink has also settled out somewhat ) The dark spot tends to stay put where as the water content from the ink seeps outward to form a clear margin.
An example of blooms by painting with coffee. This reminds me of water stain from a leaky roof. I
suspect the suspended fine coffee particles helped to create the dramatic border.
Unsized Xuan is more apt to record these gradients as the paper is more "indelible", relatively speaking. It traps all the nuances of a brushstroke. Sized or semi-sized paper on the other hand allows the ink or color to float a little bit longer before being latched on by the fibers, thus any gradients formed are usually more homogeneous and with smooth transition.
This is where my hair dryer comes into play. I use it for many reasons; hastening the drying time notwithstanding. Daft antics it is not. I use it as if it was the stop bath in the darkroom.
Anybody who has ventured into a photo darkroom knows to take the photo paper out of the developer once the ideal amount of silver grains are formed and move it to the acidic stop bath to halt the chemical reaction. Thus once I've attained an ideal diffusion or gradient with my ink or color, I would summon the power of heat and airflow to dry up my brushstroke to prevent further diffusion.
Thus instead of using a chemical, I use a tool; a hair dryer.
So my idea of using a hair dryer was not well received. People had no access to electricity or a hair dryer in the old days was the reason given.
To simply loathe the idea of borrowing from relevant technology is beyond me. Why must we pretend to be living in the past to be authentic. Does dressing up in faux period wardrobe make us more credible? Must we foster the stereotype of ancient Chinese to be convincing? Should we be luddites?
I'm sure name chop carvers didn't have access to power tools or computer aided graphics back in the old days. Should we be cooking our own soot and not use color dispensed from a tube when painting? So why the double standard. I mused, philosophically of course, how would the Witches Dance sound like in Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique if violins were not allowed to be played col legno. How dare we strike the strings with the back of the bow?
For the eerie effects, your Honor!
A Duan inkstone was presented as a show and tell piece. The inkstone is produced from stones of Zhaoqing, Guangdong. Duan is the ancient name for today's Zhaoqing. Duan Yan ( Yan means inkstone in Chinese) is known for the fineness of its stone, thus it is not detrimental to the brush and for its ability to produce a nice ink suspension, given the right ink stick. Of course the ethereal workmanship and decoration motif must also be mentioned.
An expert immediately proclaimed that this inkstone can store ink overnight without the ink drying out and that it can produce 7 colors/tones of ink.
Chinese consider ink as a color, but the color of the ink refers to the different gradients and appearance of the ink spot. Thus the ink is dark, light, watery, scorched, or stale. Commonly the 5 colors are meant to remind us that we need to have variations in ink tones. Stale ink is interesting in that the ink is left out to evaporate and becomes more viscous. At the same time the binder in the ink settles out a bit so the resulting solution diffuses with a prominent clear margin around the dark area due to the less amount of binder in the solution. The contemporary paint Huang Binhong established the canon of 5 brushstroke methods and 7 ink colors. He added the interpretation of ink that is accumulated through repeated applications and scorched ink on a mostly dry brush to be written very slowly to allow the residue moisture from the brush to slowly seep out.
Thus the color/tone of the ink refers to how the ink is treated and applied and really has nothing to do with the inkstone per se. As far as storing the ink without it drying out, it has more to do with relative humidity and dew point and the porosity of the stone.
Invariably the conversation veers to the type of brush we paint with. The same expert gave some eyebrow raising comments. The brush hairs are from the "autumn hair" of animals, meaning the hair that animals/birds grew in autumn in anticipation of impending winter, he uttered. Autumn hair is a literal translation from the Chinese words 秋毫. It means fine long hair. It is used metaphorically to describe something that is minuscule and detailed. These 2 words are used in the context when a person discerningly examine details, the individual is examining autumn hair. A disciplined regiment who does not pilfer its citizens is said to not violate a single autumn hair. Someone who masters the brush art is said to have wicked beauty permeating to the tip of the autumn hair. It is plausible that such hair was employed for brush making in ancient history, or that the creme de la creme brush still uses such niche material, but to hype and exaggerate all Chinese brush as such is entirely unethical and not warranted. I think.
Of course the audience oohed and aahed in bewilderment.
Must we routinely mystify and embellish our art and implements in order to gain accreditation? Aren't the facts interesting and revealing by themselves? Are we living vicariously through these half truths to justify the present? Have we become snake oil peddlers?
Have I turned into a polemicist?
Who's being pedantic?
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