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CHAPTER 1

The Art of Black Ink

The Relationship between Calligraphy and Painting

Among the historical differences between European-based cultures and the Far East is the method and tools of writing, so important for communication and keeping records. From the earliest times, a brush was used for writing in China and this practice continues today in many areas of Asia. The use of the brush as a tool in both writing and painting makes it difficult to draw a clear demarcation between them; there is an overlap between the utilitarian and the fine arts.

As we learned earlier, during the periods in history when China was ruled by emperors, among the populace were very well educated landlords and priests who were accustomed to dealing with brush, ink and paper every day. During their daily activities of copying sutras or writing documents for the government, they would take a break from their work to enjoy composing poetry and often would add a simple paintings to their work. Whether one would call it writing or painting, these works by the literati gradually became recognized as a genre of art. In Japanese their work is called bunjin-ga (bun = letter, jin = person, ga = painting).

It has been recorded that the earliest Chinese paper appeared around 206 B.C. during the Han Dynasty. It is generally supposed that the fibers from various plants woven for clothing, such as varieties of flax, were also used for making of paper. Archaeological finds in remote Chinese provinces include paper made from flax. Eventually fibers from other plants began to be used. As papermaking developed from the primitive to the sophisticated, the making of sumi ink from soot was also perfected. As the availability of paper became widespread and brushes of various types and sizes were developed, both writing and painting undoubtedly became more commonplace. In the Far Eastern countries down through the ages, all documents and other written forms of communication required sumi ink and brush, until European cultural influences brought new ways to write. Today, the world over, the convenience of ballpoint pens, fountain pens and pencils makes them a daily necessity. And computer-generated text—e-mails and such—has taken over much writing.

Yet, writing with a brush continues today. In contemporary Japan, every first grader in school learns to write with a brush in a special class reserved for calligraphy. In contrast to pens and pencils, the use of a brush, whether for calligraphy or painting, carries with it established methods and rules both historically and traditionally developed. The various types of brushes and the effect they leave on the various kinds of paper are of paramount importance. The amount of ink the brush can hold must be controlled and the effects created when painting lines, from wide to narrow, in tones from dark to light, requires knowledge, skill and experience. When one is taught as a child, this may become routine, but when an adult is confronted with brush, ink and paper for the first time, it can be a daunting challenge.

Learning some basic lessons from writing can help you. The brush is used in a similar way for both calligraphy and painting, and I feel that learning the use of brush through calligraphy brings better understanding of the basic qualities of lines for a painting. Therefore, I consider this a very important first step.

When writing with a ballpoint pen, one moves the tip continuously across the paper, but when writing with a brush, one often lifts it up and then down as it moves across the paper in order to create a line which narrows or widens. When writing with a brush, the movement will be a combination of right to left and up and down. This simple movement appears to be easy, yet it is difficult to master. Here are some helpful ways to learn and embody the key principles and to make a physical connection with sumi-e.

KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PEN AND A BRUSH: ENERGY

To understand the difference between the use of a brush and a ballpoint pen, let us first turn to the ideogram dai (“great,” “big”).

• Use your pointing finger as an imaginative brush, and trace the character on the next page. Beginning on the left end of the horizontal line, give your finger a little pressure, then relax the pressure and move on to the right.

• When you come to the end of the stroke, repeat a similar pressure but in addition bring your fingertip back a bit on the line, then lift your finger up. (This horizontal line alone is the ideogram for the number “one.” You have already written a word!)

• The next stroke to trace begins at the top and moves to the left bottom. Give a slight pressure at the beginning and move down with a slight curvature, then gently release your finger from the paper. Your fingernail should be last to leave the paper.

• The next stroke begins near the joint of the horizontal and upright lines. Make contact with the paper with your fingernail first, then as you move your finger to right bottom, the ball of the finger should make contact with the paper and give pressure. Gradually release the pressure so that your fingernail is the last to leave the paper.

Now you have experienced the writing of the ideogram of “great.” This simple exercise shows how different the use of a brush is from a ballpoint pen or pencil. Energy is a key difference. In the instructive text here, “pressure with the fingers” is used as a convenient way to explain the process but in reality, these “pressures” should be internalized chi or ki, energy which is centered in the lower abdomen to form a unity of body and spirit. The pressure of the ball of your finger should be accompanied with your inner energy. In the yin-yang balance of energy, this energy is considered “yang.” When pressure is reduced while the finger is moving to the right in the first stroke of dai the energy becomes “yin,” but the increased ending pressure is again “yang.” We can say, with only slight exaggeration, that the energy balance among “yang-yin-yang” has been experienced in this one line. This is the uniqueness of the use of black ink with a brush.

This ideogram is dai, or “great.” Following the exercise steps in the text, trace over it with your index finger to better understand the intrinsic nature of brushwork.

The individual lines for the ideogram of dai.

Now try the exercise again, this time tracing not the character dai but its separated, individual strokes, focusing on each one. Follow the lines with your fingertips once more, this time focusing on your inner energy while your finger moves along the lines. The actual use of the brush with ink will feel different than this, of course. Nevertheless, this will help you to become aware of your inner energy.

PRACTICING WITH EI, DAI AND WA

Ei: Eternity—The Eight Strokes

There are eight basic strokes from which all of the kanji ideograms in Chinese, Korean and Japanese are formed (as written in the formal style). There is a character which includes all eight of these basic strokes, so practicing it is useful for beginners. This is the word ei which means “to prolong” and can be translated as “eternity.”

Ei: Eternity

To develop an understanding of the eight strokes, use your pointing finger as a brush to trace the strokes. Follow the directional lines shown in red on the next page. Feel the up and down pressure of movements across the paper. This should help to give you a feel for the visual effect you plan to create.

These brush strokes that are used to create all the other ideograms are also the basic strokes for creating a painting. For instance, Stroke 2 or Stroke 5 can be immediately used for a bamboo stalk, and Stroke 6 and Stroke 8 are essentially the shape of the leaves of bamboo.

When you do write this ideogram with a brush, some of the lines such as 2, 3, and 4 are actually formed as a single continuous line.

The movement of the energy and active empty space are the fundamental aspects in visual art and have been crystallized in this single ideogram. This is a clear illustration that the art of calligraphy is the foundation of the art of black ink.

Stroke 1 To create the “dot,” the brush should be placed lightly on the paper. The little pointed mark on the left indicates where the brush is lifted and moved on to the next stroke.

Stroke 2 The movement of the brush is directed to the right, as the red arrow shows. Notice, this line is very different from one created by a ball-point pen which is an even line from beginning to end! Substantial pressure should be given to the beginning and ending of the stroke. Give greater pressure down on the paper as you begin; then relax your fingers as you move right; but when reaching the end, increase pressure and give a slight bounce; then change the direction of the brush 90 degrees while the brush is still in contact with the paper for the downward movement coming next.

Stroke 3 In the process of changing the direction of the brush, notice how a bone-joint form is created. As Stroke 3 moves downward, relax your finger pressure and lift the brush up, then move down with pressure to the end of the line.

For Stroke 4, the brush is turned 45 degrees and moves to the left. It is lifted up to create the point. (Again notice the bone joint effect.) Note that Strokes 2, 3 and 4 are one continuous line.

Stroke 5 is similar to Stroke 2. At the end of the Stroke 5, turn the brush 45 degrees to the left and move down for Stroke 6.

Stroke 6 In this case, the transition between 5 and 6 is much smoother without added pressure. Compare the joint line between 2 and 3 with that between 5 and 6. This 5–6 joint will not result in a bone joint. Note that the 5–6 line does not touch the midpoint of 3 and is framed by the space of line 2–3–4. This is because 5 and 6 are thicker lines and the space is needed to create more active empty space. In the process of moving down for Stroke 6, lift the brush up slightly then down (more pressure), and finally the brush is gently lifted up. The tip is the last to leave the paper. Lift the brush, then move in a clockwise circle in the air to begin Stroke 7.

Stroke 7’s head is created with the definite “landing position” of the brush. As the brush moves down toward the left, it is lifted gently but the tip remains in contact with the paper. While the brush is in the air, your arm should be in clockwise movement and moving down for Stroke 8.

The line for Stroke 8 should begin with the tip of the brush. Gradually press down to the halfway point of the bristles, giving maximum pressure. Then gently lift the brush to create the end point.

Dai: Great or Big—Strokes for Painting

Dai is a simple ideogram containing three strokes. Let’s look at them again (see the facing page):

1. the A stroke is wide to wide;

2. the B stroke is wide to narrow; and

3. the C stroke is narrow-wide-narrow.

The strokes in this ideogram can be immediately transformed into the fundamental strokes for a bamboo painting.

Similar to the previous example of the eight-stroke ideogram ei, here the A stroke’s beginning and ending are given additional emphasis with pressure, while the center part is more relaxed: wide...to wide. If you create a series of consecutive A strokes, you will recognize a bamboo stalk in horizontal position. Draw them in an upright fashion, and you will successfully create a stalk of bamboo.

The joint lines of the bamboo stalk are exactly the same stroke—stroke A—but are much smaller. Each stroke has a definite beginning and ending with a slight curvature in the center.

Below that, notice how the same composition of lines, but much finer and smaller, creates bamboo sub-branches.

The B and C strokes can be used to paint leaves of bamboo. The B stroke, wide at the beginning, forms a leaf that is coming toward you.

Thus the ideogram dai has the required fundamental lines for painting bamboo. Look at Morning Breeze on page 130, one example of a bamboo painting.

You should recognize that from one basic stroke with the brush, combined with an artist’s understanding of the function and quality of line, variations can be used to create a painting.

These brush strokes are characteristic of kan-ga, Japanese paintings which were influenced by Chinese calligraphy and painting. After he returned from China, the “saint of suibokuga” Sesshu (see page 20) used these brush strokes in almost all of his paintings of trees and rocks in outline form. The Kano School, the major school appointed by the Shogunate, also used this kan-ga technique in their paintings.

Wa: Harmony—The Three Styles

We can learn another helpful introductory lesson from writing the character for “harmony,” wa, in the three different styles: kaisho (formal), gyosho (semi-formal) and sosho (informal). It is possible to write these three styles using one type of brush. However, because the styles are so different—from the rigidity of formal writing to the flowing lines of informal writing—professionals and beginners alike find it much easier to use a proper brush for each category. We will discuss brushes in greater detail in Chapter 2, but some information is important to understand now because the use of each brush is directly related to the making of variations and quality in lines.

For writing ideograms in the formal style, called kaisho, the best brush is made with coarse hair. The power required in writing formal ideograms necessitates a stronger and springier quality for the brush, which is generally made from the weasel-sable type of hair. This “springy” aspect contributes to forming the definite beginnings and endings that the formal style may require.

The semi-formal style of writing, gyosho, requires an extreme balance while moving from wide to narrow and back to a wide line again. Generally speaking, in this style one continuous motion is used to complete the ideogram; the word gyo means “motion,” in this sense “without definite stops” as each stroke continues to the next. The brush for writing in semi-formal style has whiskers of small mammals such as a weasel or rabbit in the center of the bristle to create a springy effect, with soft sheep hair on the outer edge surrounding that core.

The informal writing style is known in common Japanese terminology as sosho: the “grass style” of writing. In this most simplified style of writing, a very soft brush is customarily used and all of the lines flow together in one ideogram; moreover, each word in a sentence continuously flows on into the next one. In Western cursive writing the letters of a word are connected, but in grass writing all of the words are also connected. In the example here, wa was completed as a single unified line. To make the one continuous line with effects that are wide to narrow, wet to dry, the brush that is used must be composed solely of soft sheep hair with bristles that are longer than in most brushes.

The spirit of ink is called bokki (boku = ink ; ki = spirit, energy). Again, it is essential when working in ink to focus your energy and transfer it to the page. It is not uncommon when viewing ink works to find examples where a person may have executed his calligraphy with bokki but his signature may not show the same dynamic vibrancy because the spirit of bokki was relaxed and the concentrated power was dissipated.

If a person is exposed to masterpieces and if the mind and spirit are pure and open, a mysterious power and force can be felt. When I was young and just entering my teens, my Japanese painting mentor would take me to a museum in Kyoto to contemplate great masterpieces. These experiences faded in my memory as I grew older. But in the 1970s while I was deeply engrossed in teaching sumi-e at the University of Illinois, scientists in Japan, by using an electron microscope with a magnification of 50,000 times, discovered that in the ink of some of the sumi-e works by great masters, the carbon particles show distinct patterns depending upon the energy expended at the moment the strokes were executed. (In English, a good summary of this study is found in Zen and The Art of Calligraphy by Omori Sogen and Terayama Katsujo, translated by John Stevens [Routledge & Kegan Paul, London], 1983.)

Simply stated, if it has been painted with chi, a line created in sumi ink (which is made up of carbon particles) shows a particular alignment of electrons, compared to the alignment of electrons in lines not painted with chi. Stick ink which is ground on a grinding stone must be used for this interesting alignment of carbon particles to occur. During the process of grinding the ink stick, the friction activates the electrons. When a person loads a brush with freshly ground ink and has the proper physical and mental preparation, that energy affects the electrons in the ink. The line created in calligraphy can record the energy of the artist. This “recording” of the electrons’ alignment will last for many centuries.

Wa in kaisho style

Wa in gyosho style

Wa in sosho style

Similar to being equipped with “antennae,” some artists, Zen priests, and other people with acute sensitivity are able to sense and respond to these unseen electron alignments. A common comment used to describe this sensing of traces of energy is, “I am moved by that work.” It is only recently that this scientific information was documented. But great artists of past generations seemed to intuitively understand that this dynamic energy or force had an effect on their work. Students were taught to open up their senses and receptivity so that they could “tune in” to these great works of art when viewing them.

Today science continues to be used to better quantify and qualify the energy in other ways. A new training system was developed in Japan for younger students to help teach how to recreate the energy of chi or ki. Sensors are attached to various parts of the body to measure brain waves and the physical state of the body. By seeing the changes made visible on a monitor, a student can more immediately understand how controlled breathing and concentration used as physical preparation can bring about a meditative condition, a state of chi or ki.

A famous Zen saying states, “The way of art is the way of the Buddha.” This basically means that at birth the mind is innocent and pure but as the years go by, our minds accumulate desires and trivia of all kinds. Zen meditation purports to remove those countless interferences, bringing one back to a clean slate, so that one is ready to face the world again. In any creative act, when a person is totally focused on that process or performance with heart, mind and soul, it is similar to the Buddhist zazen process; the mind is completely cleared of extraneous thoughts. This is the wonder: that over the ages, ink particles can convey artistic impact with depth and feeling when created in such a state.

In this calligraphy by Zakyu-an Sensho, notice the nijimi effect (nijimi = ink spreads beyond the original lines) of the beginning brush “dot” in the first (top) ideogram. When arriving at the third ideogram, the brush movement is somewhat slower so that the paper will absorb the remaining ink. The brush is then reloaded with ink and writing is resumed with the fourth ideogram, “Buddha.” Note that the second and fifth ideograms are the same word and mean “way.” In the art of calligraphy when writing in semi-formal style, it is common practice to vary the visual image if the same word should appear in the same phrase. Word for word, a direct translation of this would be “Art way is Buddha’s way.”

LEARNING FROM CLASSIC MASTERPIECES

One vast change in our society since the beginning of the twenty-first century is how very tight security has become. These safeguards apply to transportation, mail of all kinds, even e-mail; and to many buildings, including museums. When you enter a museum in most countries, you will go through security and your bag will be searched, or you may even be asked to check it. But there was a time in the past when it was a common sight at museums to see art students, with a complete set of equipment such as oil paints, setting up an easel in front of a well-known painting and proceeding to make a copy as a study in the craft of a particular artist. This practice of copying has been used in art education for ages. Although copying masterpieces in a museum today has become a near impossibility, on the other hand because printing techniques today have become so technically advanced, one can easily obtain remarkable-quality reproductions for copying and studying at home.

Studying the ink paintings of great masters by working to make copies of them is a useful way to learn. This is my own copy piece of an autumn landscape masterpiece by Toyo Sesshu, “the saint of suiboku-ga.”

But copying correctly may not be as simple as it sounds. As an art student when I was young, I experienced such copying studies in Tokyo. And in the late 1980s, I traveled to China to study and compare the Chinese methods in art education with my own approach at the university level. While there, I attended the Zhejiang National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzou. There the professor of painting in charge of instructing “visiting students” gave me his work of a sumi-e landscape to copy. I set about to faithfully copy his work and awaited his return to the studio for his critique. He told me, “You have copied the work well and the paintings look so much alike. However, your method of copying is not correct.” Unsure of his methods and wishes, I had taken his recommendation to “copy” as meaning to reproduce an identical version of his work.

But when artwork is to be reproduced for the painter’s education, the first task is to study the brush techniques. These details in brush strokes should be studied and then internalized. Secondly, when recreating a work of art, a personal quality of the student or copier should remain.

As a professor in fine arts in universities in the United States, I have not used copying as a teaching tool. However, during one of my intense summer sumi-e workshops, we did focus on making copies of two masterpieces, in this case works by Sesshu. Toyo Sesshu (1420–1506) has often been called the “saint of suiboku-ga.” Sesshu traveled to China in 1467 to study techniques and styles of the Sung to Ming dynasties. These works are in the style of the Northern Sung paintings which were very popular in China during that time. Upon his return to Japan, Sesshu blended what he had learned in China with methods and techniques he developed on his own, and crystallized these into his own style. Many great masterpieces of his work in both Chinese and Japanese landscapes still remain today.

This pair, landscape scenes of autumn and winter, are replicas of Japanese National Treasures. The images shown here are my own copy pieces.

Sesshu often used light transparent hues over his suibokuga, which we also used for the autumn scene in our workshop reproductions. In addition, to add a sense of patina, I used tea which had been steeped overnight, in some cases diluting it with water for a lighter stain. This method of using tea is common when recreating ancient masterpieces. (Counterfeiters and forgers of old artworks also use this technique.)

In my copy of the winter landscape, the snow is enhanced by leaving more whiteness of the paper visible, especially on the trees.

This is my own copy piece of another Japanese National Treasure done by Sesshu. The winter landscape is enhanced by leaving more whiteness of paper visible, especially on the trees. In making study copies of masterpieces, the original artist’s signature may be copied; however, one is not permitted to copy the original artist’s seal, which holds much significance in Japanese culture.