Take a brush and ink and you know it the first time it slips into your hand there will be no undoing it afterwards. That small surge of panic? Completely normal. It’s also entirely the point. Ink painting is constructed on the philosophy of honesty that is blunt: each stroke is final. You commit, or you don’t paint. To any person who has years of experience of being either drawing with pencil or hovering over the undo button, that fact comes as a surprise. Read more here!
The opening of a good workshop is likely to be an organized tumult. Someone’s brush slips. Some other student by putting his bamboo stalk in water causes it to melt away to shapeless grey smoke. It is beautiful, says the instructor, – and you can tell they mean it.
That’s the thing about ink. The accidents are normally the best.
The East Asian traditional ink painting has a philosophy that is not often taught in western art schools with the same zeal. Less is more is not merely a sense of style command, it is a whole perspective. One branch. Three strokes. Breathing negative space. Students have been known to spend an entire afternoon painting, in fact, nothing but rocks and walk off quietly reconsidering all that they have ever known about simplicity.
Workshops come in many forms. Others fix their eyes on sumi-e, the one brushstroke, so to speak, in Japanese culture, in which a mountain is lifted with, or upon, a single stroke. There are also those that are inspired by Chinese brush painting, where layers of washes are applied to create the impression of depth and stillness. Others touch on both of them allowing students to explore their own middle ground somewhere along the way.
Content is much more important than amateurs expect. Cheap rice paper resists you. The quality xuan paper goes with you. The difference alone can make or break an afternoon with either defeating or really alive. A good brush is also different in its ability to retain water state – the manner in which ink is expelled starts to become strange rather than application and more of a conversation.
Individuals come to such workshops with anything. Stress. Creative restlessness. There was a vague inspiration triggered by a documentary on Zen monasteries. He ends up with most things he did not go in search of: patience.
Ink cannot be rushed. Cannot be bullied. Cannot be negotiated with.
You watch. You practice. You learn to sit with imperfection – and most of us, I dare say, have been extremely careful not to do so throughout the larger part of our lives.
That proves to be more difficult than anticipated. And better than nearly anyone who crosses the door can look forward to carrying home with him his slightly damped and slightly smeary and unexpectedly beautiful work.