Amazing China's art!

Regardless of fine arts (gong bi 工笔) or abstract arts (xie yi 写意), black ink must be used in traditional chinese painting. Painting that used only black ink is known as “shui mo hua 水墨画”, while painting that used black ink and colours is known as “cai mo hua 彩墨画”.

Most artists would like to use water and black ink only because the black ink itself will bring out the “yun wei” in the painting. When you are drawing a bamboo leaf or stem, you don’t have to draw the outline but with only one stroke. You can see the colour of the bamboo stem, showing from light to dark, making it looked like 3 dimension. This is the “yun wei 韵味” of the painting.




While drawing waterfalls and clouds, light black ink and water are used in “certain parts” on the white paper. The area left alone will form waterfall and cloud without using white ink. (Actually the waterfall and cloud are only white paper without any colour.)







Below is an example of “gong bi hua” :




Below is an example of “xie yi hua” :