Ink Paintings

Ink wash painting is a traditional East Asian painting technique which involves use of brush (or sometimes pen) and black ink. On most of the drawings ink painting looks like watercolour: the image is blurry, with fuzzy boundaries.

This type of painting is usually done on highly absorbent paper or sometimes silk. Traditionally the brushes used for such painting have to match many requirements:

• have a bamboo handle;
• be made of long hair of goat, horse, sheep, deer, wolf or other animal;
• brush hair must have a tapered shape.

The image is mostly applied using wet-on-wet technique — though it is traditional for ink painting, this technique requires extremely high skills. Even the smallest mistake can spoil all the work.

Traditional Eastern ink painting

One of the first mentions of ink wash painting in China refers to 5th century, and this technique was quickly developing during 6th-10th century. Ink painting was introduced to Korea short after it was discovered in China. The top of this style development was between 960-1279. Wang Wei, Chinese painter of 8th century, is believed to be the first person who applied colour ink and started the tradition of not only black and white painting.

For Asian countries this type of painting was first of all a philosophical act. Artists believed that with a help of supplies and ink they not only depicted an object but caught its spirit. This is a kind of an expressionist form of art as drawing accurately and technically correct isn’t a must — the main idea is to capture object’s ’soul’. In landscape painting artists would often depict imaginary scenes with mountains and water as the most used objects.

Ink painting in Western countries

As in Western art there weren’t a strong calligraphic tradition like in China, ink painting didn’t get a serious development and was most often used for ’simple’ art: creating illustrations for books, drawing topological materials, creating drafts of paintings. But some world known artists used ink to create an amazing drawing fine art works: Goya, Rembrandt, Edouard Manet, Picasso and others.

ART.biz — an online Gallery collection — offers a chance to buy various ink paintings and sketches created by artists from all over the world. We offer only original paintings for collectors, art dealers and everyone who is in love with art.