There are many forms of art throughout the world, but a major one is ink wash painting.
This style of art depicts Chinese culture in an extraordinary way. From Eastern Asia to Western Asia, Chinese ink painting was invented during the Tang dynasty of China, and it is said to be used to capture a painting’s life, energy, and spirit. It is a type of Chinese painting using mostly shades of black, painted with an ink brush. Ink wash painting thrived during the Song Dynasty, as it was later introduced to Japan by monks in the fourteenth century. Western scholars usually sorted Chinese ink wash painting into three main periods: times of representation, times of expression, and historical oriental art.
To paint a Chinese ink painting, professionals, working on paper, chose subjects such as rocks, bamboo, or old trees. They chose subjects that could be drawn using controlled brush strokes, similar to calligraphy. Ink wash painting uses color schemes and shading done by changing the ink consistency. This type of painting differed from the colorful, modern-like paintings we see today, which made scholar-official painters proud of this unique style of painting.
I was fortunate to learn the ways of Chinese ink wash painting and experience this form of art from a Chinese artist. I used an ink brush to paint many landscapes and other things, such as flowers, fish, birds, mountains, and plants. Something that was challenging for me was the strokes. Each stroke had to be extremely precise and delicate, and had to be done in a specific way. As hard as it is, Chinese ink painting can also be pleasant in some ways, for example, expressing one’s emotion in a particular painting. You could be painting the same thing, but you could be painting it differently-maybe you could be using harder, angrier strokes, but the other person could be using light, feathery ones.
Nevertheless, Chinese ink painting is an exceptional way of portraying Chinese culture. This monochrome style of Chinese art expresses life, spirit, and energy. With ink wash painting, you can create items as graceful as fish and flowers, but you can also paint things like rocks, mountains, and more. Chinese ink wash painting still flourishes today, since many people do it as their profession.
