3. Chinese Colors
Definitions
In my books on bamboo, orchid and chrysanthemum, I did not talk very much about Chinese colors and how to use them. It is presumed that we use only black ink freshly ground and mixing it with water to have different shades of grey for every stroke in our exercises. When I mention the word " ink," it is black ink and when I mention "color," it is the color from Chinese color ink.
For painting plum, we may still use only black ink. In fact, "Mo mei," which means plum in black ink, has long been considered as the highest achievement by an artist in brush painting. But as this book is the last of the series of the "Four Gentlemen," I shall briefly discuss the colors we use and their effect on our painting before we start our lessons on painting plum.
Our discussion begins with the definition of the terms I use in all the books on the "Four Gentlemen."
Ink -- This refers to black ink from grinding the ink stick on the ink stone. Students sometimes call this "sumi" ink. "Sumi" is Japanese and it means black. The best kind of black ink is made of fine soot from burning pine wood or "wu t'ung" tree. Because of the quality of the gum or glue used in binding the soot together, some ink appears chalky and some ink has a bad smell. Modern manufacturers in Asia today may use petroleum oil for burning and some may use colloidal graphite to lower the cost. But good ink should be very fine and when it is properly ground, it is transparent and permanent.
Chinese color ink -- Strictly speaking, there are only three colors. They are all permanent and transparent. One is "hua ch'ing," which means blue from a flower: this is indigo blue, made from the sap or juice from the flowers of a water plant named "liao lan" since the days of the Book of Odes, circa 5th century B.C. The second is "t'eng huang," which means vine yellow: this is cambogia yellow, made from the sap from a type of vine in the wilderness of southwestern China and Indo-China. The last one is "yang hung," which means foreign red: crimson red from the flower of the cockscomb. "Che shih," meaning red stone but called sienna brown in the West, and "chu piao," vermilion, are not really "ink," although people in China for centuries have considered that together with indigo blue, cambogia yellow and crimson red, they make up "wu ts'ai," which means the "five color inks" for brush painting.
Organic and transparent ink -- indigo, cambogia and crimson are organic and transparent inks. Indigo and cambogia are poisonous.
Mineral color -- "Che shih," sienna brown, is made from a kind of soft reddish stone and a very fine organic gum. "Chu piao," vermilion, is also a mineral pigment which is a substitute for "chu sha," the real mercuric sulphide.
When "chu sha" is not mixed with gum, it is a deep red-orange color in powder form and used to make the oil based ink for stamping name chops on paintings. Chinese sienna brown and vermilion red are semi-transparent.
There are four more mineral colors widely used by Northern school artists: stone green, stone blue, stone yellow and carmine red. They are absolutely opaque.
Stone green -- Please remember when Chinese art books use the word "green," it always means a mixture of indigo blue and cambogia yellow. If it is the mineral color green, the word "stone" is used as a modifier. In Chinese, stone green is "shih lu," which is malachite (Hydrated copper carbonate) ground in powder form. It is permanent and opaque and in the past, it was always stored in powder form.
Stone blue -- Again, when the art books use the word "blue," they are referring to indigo blue. Stone blue is ground azurite (Copper carbonate) which is permanent and opaque . The mural paintings in the Tun Huang caves in western China show the proof of the great quality of both the stone green and the stone blue. Many of the murals were painted by Chinese Buddhist artists as much as ten centuries ago, but the stone green and the stone blue in the murals are still as fresh as when they were first painted.
Stone yellow -- This color is from orpiment (Arsenious tri-sulphide) and also permanent and opaque. The tone of this stone yellow is little brownish while cambogia yellow is more or less greenish. Some books call the stone yellow "old yellow" and the cambogia yellow "female yellow."
Carmine red -- Carmine red (Lead oxide) is also called red lead which is much paler than the crimson red. It is the finest mineral color and can be spread thinly on paper or silk. When a painting is painted with carmine red and made into a scroll, the carmine red will not show any cracking and chipping after many times of rolling and unrolling. But the stone green, the stone blue and the stone yellow are comparatively coarser and have a tendency to pile up thickly, and if the gum for binding is weak , they will not stay on the painting surface as firmly as the carmine red.
Chinese white -- Chinese white (lead carbonate and/or lead hydroxide) is also called white lead. In Chinese , it is "ch'ien feng" and for centuries was used as a cosmetic without knowing its harm to human skin. Although we have discovered many mural paintings in China painted with a white paint made from powdered pearls or the ashes from burning sea shells, when painted on paper and silk the white color is always the "ch'ien feng," or white lead.
Gum -- The gum used for organic and transparent colors is from plants. It does not spoil easily nor does it give off a bad smell.
Glue -- The glue is generally from animal hide, bone, hoof and cartilage. Buddhist artists, because of their beliefs, do not use animal glue for painting or any other works. However, the glue is stronger than the gum and widely used to bind mineral colors by the secular artists of Northern school.
Color sticks -- Color sticks are made of mineral colors. There are six different colors in total: stone green, stone blue, stone yellow, carmine red, vermilion and white. They have to be ground on separated ink stones the way we use the black ink sticks. They are mostly of poor quality and do not easily produce color of the right consistency. The truth is that all the mineral colors should be stored in powder form and mixed with gum only at the time when we need them for painting. Gum should be removed after use, otherwise the mineral color may become too hard and lack brilliance. So the color sticks in any shape, any color, are dull and grainy, especially the yellow and white, even if they are ground with clean water on separated stones.
"Chu mo" -- This is the name for the color stick made of "chu sha," the real mercuric sulphide, which I mentioned previously. It literally means vermilion inkstick, while the term "hei mo" is the black inkstick. Scholars in olden days painted bamboo in vermilion from this stick to celebrate the New Year. Many of these sticks are of good quality when they are produced by famous makers for this purpose. But some types of "chu mo" are designed only as symbolical presents on special occasions and are not to be used for painting. One may be very disturbed by their poor quality which is concealed by the deceptive appearance.
How and Where to Use Organic and Transparent Ink
The use of black ink has been studied in detail in my previous three books. In this book, let us study only the organic and transparent color inks.
Organic and transparent inks are actually vegetable dyes and they all come in the form of chips and cakes, never in liquid form. Some of them come in small ceramic cups. Those chips and cakes consisting of a high percentage of gum will be covered by a shining skin-like film which is the excess gum and not easily dissolved in water. Those light gummed ink chips and cakes look dull and dry, but when they are moistened with water, they produce color ink quickly. We have to keep them dry after use and never seal them wet in an air-tight container to avoid mildew.
Indigo blue mixed with cambogia yellow produces green ink for birds, insects, flower stems, leaves, rocks, mountains, wash for waterfalls, ...And if it is used alone, it is for sky, mist, water, pine needles, robes...So a brush painter who paints color paintings needs a great deal of indigo blue. It dyes the fibers of the paper permanently and penetrates to the other side of the paper. It mixes with black ink very well and makes black and grey ink seem darker and colder, specially black inks contain a brownish and warm tone. It is not good to mix the indigo blue with watercolor. The mixture will be very muddy and grainy. Sometimes we can see that the result of the chemical reaction has turned the color into black particles floating in clear water.
The best kind of cambogia yellow is called "chu kuan huang" (the yellow from a bamboo trunk) which is always noticeably in the shape of the inner tube of a bamboo trunk. Mountain people in south-western China or Indo-China collect this yellow sap by inserting a sharp-ended bamboo trunk into the skin of a type of vine in the wilderness. Many days later, the tube will have filled up with sap and the sap begun to dry and shrink slowly. When the sap finally becomes hard and crispy, we see a brownish hollow stick inside the bamboo tube. This yellow is such a strong dye that should as little as a dust-like, particle drop on wet paper, that part of the paper will have a yellow stain on both sides of the paper as big as a coin. We must remember that when this lump of yellow is dry, it is brownish, but when it gets wet, it becomes bright yellow. If too much cambogia yellow is used, it will run and spread beyond our control when...
