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Chapter 7 |
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Reading: Read Wash and Brush and reread the section Chiaroscuro.
Premise: Inkwash is an ancient painting technique, that, while seemingly simple, has been used to create works of intense complexity and power. The Northern Song painters in 11th-century China were able to create works of sublime power through their mastery of inkwash—their images reveal the universal power of nature.
While the works of such artists were the result of years of practice and observation, you can get a sense of how inkwash can be applied to paper to produce simple, yet striking images! There are two approaches to starting this project: 1) you can work from a photograph or magazine image; or 2) you can try your hand at painting what's in front of you! This project will describe the steps involved with the first approach. We'll use the photograph below.
The Memorial Union Building, Oregon State University
Time required to do this project: Allow six hours, not including developing or processing time.
*Materials: Black water-soluble ink; soft brush camel hair or bamboo brush; one piece of watercolor paper or heavy drawing paper; a pencil; tracing paper, transfer paper or black carbon paper; and a paper cup for mixing the ink. Watercolor paper can be expensive—two or three dollars per sheet—but you'll only need one sheet! Tracing paper and transfer paper can be purchased by the sheet, sometimes transfer paper comes on a roll. Transfer paper is like tracing paper, only with pigment on one side, so when you draw on one side. the pigment is transferred to the surface below.How to start: Load the brush with your ink solution, and paint a rectangle. Work at getting the ink to blend out to an even light gray. Let this dry completely! Once it has, divide the rectangle into five sections. Leave the left end section dry, but add a new coat of wash to the remaining four sections. You'll see that this area, with two coats of inkwash, is darker than the section you left with only a single coat. When this is dry, repeat the process, coating just the three right-hand squares. After each coat has dried, you'll add new wash to a smaller section, and each time you do, the pigment will continue to build up on the previous layers, creating darker and darker keys. After five applications, you'll notice that the area with five coats is very dark, while the area with one coat is very light. You have defined five areas of key, using all the same strength of wash (see example below).
Next, look carefully at the photograph and determine the areas of key. Look at the lightest areas first—the highlights, and outline them. Now determine which areas are slightly darker but fall into the same key range. An easy way to do this is to look at your key scale made moments ago with the wash. Look for areas that are the same key as the first layer of wash. Outline these areas with a pencil. Then look to the areas that are similar to the next level of key (the two-wash layer) and outline them. Continue until you have identified four or five levels of key, the last one will be the blacks or darkest areas. An easy way to see this might be to copy the photograph on a standard photocopy machine.
You must now transfer the image to a piece of watercolor or heavy white paper. Trace the outlines of the key areas onto tracing paper, then transfer the basic lines from the tracing paper to the watercolor paper by placing transfer paper or carbon paper between them. Transfer paper leaves a much lighter line, and is preferable. In our example, the student has drawn a grid of squares onto the photograph, and a larger grid of squares onto the watercolor paper. After completing the second grid, he "plotted" the points where the gray area lines crossed with the grid lines on the photograph, and transferred the points to the grid on the watercolor paper. He then drew in the lines defining the areas of gray onto the watercolor paper.
Once all the lines are transferred, you are ready to begin. Leave the outlined highlights white. Cover everything else with an even wash. Allow this to dry for 15 minutes. You have just created the highlights! Now identify the next areas of key—the lightest gray. Apply a second wash to everything except the light gray, and the highlights. You have now defined the second area of key-light gray.
After the board dries completely, look closely to identify the next area of gray, a middle gray. Again, wash over all areas of gray, except these middle gray, light gray, and highlight areas. You have defined middle gray.
Continue on with one or two more washes. Each time you wash over an area of gray, you ultimately add more pigment. The result is you are using pigment in an additive painting approach, and the more pigment you add the darker the area becomes.
Proceed until you have added your last wash to those areas that are intended to be the darkest. The results can range from the dramatic to the soft and understated, depending upon the image you select and the amount of pigment you add.
Below you can see two examples of this project completed by Oregon State University students. (Click the thumbnails to see the images more clearly).
Left: Shaun Rance, The Oregon State University Memorial Union Building; right:Aisling Morgan, Glaring Eye.
Variation: When defining areas of light and dark in the photo, you might try separating the highlights and light grays as one area, and the middle grays through blacks as another area. Leave the light areas white, and paint the gray areas black. This will give you a work with absolute contrast.
*About materials: Most, if not all, of these materials are available at craft stores, college bookstores, and quite often discount department stores. I suggest trying Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, Ben Franklin, etc. You can also order materials through
Dick Blick, Inc.
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