How to Use Chinese Painting Pigments and Ink | Basic Techniques | YTA [en/zh sub]

Hey, it's Ashley from YoungTravelArt. If you are confused or want to learn more about Chinese painting materials, then this class is for you. We will cover ink, pigments, colors, shading, and more. I have more detailed instructions that goes beyond this video in the description below. Don't worry though, this YouTube video will have great information and tips you can apply to your painting right away. In Chinese painting, we combine blank ink with water to make different shades. There are actually five different blanks. If you don't believe me, that's okay, I'll show you. First, put the ink out in a bowl overnight. A few hours is okay too. Enough time has to pass for the ink to dry and the glue to separate from the water. The next day, you will see it almost all completely dried out. Mix in a little bit of water, then try to paint with it. You can see how it doesn't paint smoothly. This is called jiao mo in Chinese and charred ink in English. Dip the brush into pure fresh ink. Without adding water, just paint on the paper. It is really dark, right? This is called nong mo or super dark ink. Dip the brush into water, then mix with ink. This ink should come out lighter than the last one. This is called zhong mo or dark ink. Now dip a little more water to the ink and make a stroke. You can see it's much lighter. This is called dan mo in Chinese or light ink in English. Add a lot of water into the ink this time, then get super light ink called qing mo in Chinese. As you add more water, we go through all five tones of ink, jiao, nong, zhong, dan, qi or charred, super dark, dark, light and super light in English. Now let's talk about the texture. Besides the amount of water in your ink, the two factors that affect the texture are the brush's degree of moisture and stroke speed. You can decrease the moisture by wiping your brush on a clean paper towel after dipping it in ink. Doing this would give your strokes a dry texture. Painting directly after loading your brush produces whiter strokes. To understand how stroke speed affects texture, see my video Chinese Painting Basics Stroke. Notice the difference here between the same color dry and white. Both kinds of texture are used depending on our subject. Next we will use pigments and see what the difference is between ink and pigment. I use blue for an example. First dip the brush into water, then mix with blue, paint some strokes, then use a paper towel to absorb the water of the thin brush. Now we can see how the dry strokes are lighter than the white ones. Then add more water to blue to get a lighter color. This dry blue shows us how water can change the tone of ink and pigments alike. Next I will show you some interesting techniques. First accompany white ink with dry ink. To make it easy to see, I will use white light ink and the dry dark ink. Paint the light strokes for the first layer, then add another layer with dry dark ink. See how fast they connect. Now let's compare by doing the opposite. Dark ink first. There are a lot of white space between dark ink. The second layer is light white ink. Once it covers the first layer, you can see the dry color becomes soft compared to the left one. This makes it much sharper from the bottom layer. Now then you understand how the tonality of pigments and ink work. I will show you more combinations. This technique is called Nong Po Dan in Chinese. You could translate it as dark penetrating light. First paint with light ink, then dip the water into dark ink. Before the light ink dries, paint dark ink on it. They combine immediately. What would happen if we switched to the opposite technique as before? In other words, light penetrating dark, or Dan Po Nong, paint some dark lines first, then cover with light ink. The outline of these lines are not sharp. With the right amount of blank ink, we will press like this on the paper. Make a few horizontal strokes on the right. Paint with three strokes like this. This technique is called ink splashing, or Po Mo Fa in Chinese. Let's see what will happen when we keep painting like this. So these strokes are good for painting leaves. Paint with a light color, then paint dark ink on top. This is called Mo Po Se, or ink penetrating color. The opposite is to paint the ink first, light or dark, then color. Here the color should have less water. Dip the brush into orange, then the tip with a little bit of bright. Press the brush to get a changing color. This stroke is useful when painting a flower. Can you tell which of the techniques we used? Dark penetrating light, Nong Po Dan. I hope that today's class gave you some insight into how colors and shades work in Chinese painting. With the techniques you learned, you can paint all of subjects, like bamboo, a peony, and landscapes. See you next class!