Ink as the Soul of Chinese Painting
Ink technique is the distinctive language of Chinese painting. Alongside brush method, it constitutes one of the two pillars of the art. Chinese painting takes ink as primary and color as supplementary — thus, ink itself is considered color, fundamentally different from the Western concept of "black." Ink alone can complete a painting and express the full richness of the visible world.
The Principle of "Five Shades"
The Tang dynasty art historian Zhang Yanyuan declared in his Record of Famous Painters of Successive Dynasties: "Through the manipulation of ink, the five colors are complete." The "five shades" are traditionally identified as dry, wet, thick, light, and black — or alternatively as scorched, dense, heavy, pale, and clear. Each shade, combined with varying degrees of wetness and dryness, produces an infinite spectrum of tonal expression.
The Six Essential Ink Methods
1. Thick Ink Method (Nongmo): Ink mixed with minimal water, producing dense, heavy tones. Applied to shaded surfaces, recessed areas, or nearby objects, it establishes the painting's darkest register. Li Tang's Ten Thousand Gorges with Wind in the Pines employs thick ink to render the shadowed rocks and streams at the mountain's base.
2. Pale Ink Method (Danmo): Ink thinned with abundant water for light, translucent tones. Used for illuminated surfaces, protruding forms, and distant scenery, it creates the painting's brightest register. Wang Lu's Album of Mount Hua exemplifies the use of pale ink to depict sunlit peaks and distant mountains.
3. Splashed Ink Method (Pomo): The brush, saturated with ink, moves freely across the paper in broad, unconstrained strokes, pursuing the artistic effect of rich, flowing ink rhythms. Splashed ink and splashed color may be combined. Xu Wei's Ink Lotus employs splashed and broken ink to vividly render decaying lotus leaves; Zhang Daqian's Ten Thousand Li of the Yangtze River uses splashed color to evoke the layered peaks of the Three Gorges.
4. Broken Ink Method (Pomo): A second application of ink is added before the first stroke dries, allowing the two to interpenetrate. Variants include thick breaking pale, pale breaking thick, wet breaking dry, and dry breaking wet. Xu Wei's Ink Grapes demonstrates the thick-breaking-pale method to convey the overlapping transparency of grape leaves.
5. Scorched Ink Method (Jiaomo): Extremely concentrated ink, darker even than black ink, used to accentuate the deepest, most prominent areas and convey a sense of mass and age. Su Shi's Withered Tree and Strange Rock employs scorched ink to render gnarled, ancient forms.
6. Accumulated Ink Method (Jimo): Successive layers of ink are applied after each preceding layer has dried. Beginning with pale washes and gradually building to heavier tones — washing and rubbing in repeated cycles — this technique achieves extraordinary depth and richness of texture. The modern landscape master Huang Binhong was renowned for this method.
Many painters have also developed additional techniques — overnight ink, splashing ink, absorption ink, dripping ink, and flicked ink — each deployed according to expressive need, often in combination, to achieve the richest possible artistic effects.