Sumi workshop
Today I took part in a Sumi (Japanese ink) workshop given by Christine Flint Sato, an artist based in Japan.
We got to play with lots of nice brushes and we found out how the ink and brushes are made. Surprisingly, it is still mostly done by hand as there are parts of the process that can't be done using machinery. I was using Chinese ink because Japanese ink is quite hard to come by over here and it is also a lot more expensive. I think the only difference is that Chinese ink has more glue in it because China has harder water. The ink comes as a stick (made from soot and animal glue) which you have to grind using an ink stone with a little water. (You can see these in the picture above, the ornate gold imagery on the stick gets ground down too and adds a sheen to the ink. Japanese ink is generally less ornate, usually with only a few characters on it.)The brushes are made from different types of animal hair such as badger hair (or Racoon dog as they call it in Japan), horse hair, goat hair and chicken feathers.
You have to work in the opposite way to watercolour in terms of washes, as the first layer will always be on top. So it's more like cell painting in that respect. I had fun, but there are so many varients and techniques that it will take me a lot more practice to make use of it!