What are the five colors of ink in Chinese painting, and what are the approximate proportions?

There are several ways to describe the five colors of ink in Chinese painting:

1. The five colors of green, red, yellow, white and black are collectively known as the five positive colors, or five colors for short. The five colors also refers to the five inter-colors of red, green, purple, blue and flowing yellow. Between the character for the word idle, read for see. Ink in five colors, the ancients had two meanings: after the Song Dynasty refers to the ink is divided into thick and light, before the Song Dynasty refers to the ink of different thicknesses corresponding to the five colors.

2. Zhang Yanyuan believed that the five colors in landscapes are presented differently with the changes in shade and seasons, and that if you use ink to show the changing features in general, you will produce the effects of mountain green, grass green, flower red, snow white, etc., and you don't have to apply pigments such as empty green, stone green, dansha, lead powder, and so on. Similarly, the phoenix bird feathers certainly show five colors, but the ink painting of the phoenix bird as long as the meaning to, will also give people the impression of a mixture of five colors.

Expanded Information:

Relation of the five colors of ink:

1. After the Tang Dynasty, the five colors of ink were more often talked about in terms of the depth of the ink color, often referring to burnt, thick, heavy, light, and clear. Burnt ink is semi-dry ink, dark and shiny. Heavy ink is dark black ink with added moisture and no luster.

2, clear ink is only very light ink, or even all water. It is not wrong to correspond to the five colors from the perspective of depth and thickness, such as thick as green, heavy as red, light as yellow, clear as white, burnt as black. The ancients claimed that ghosts were greenish-black in color, meaning that green corresponds to thick ink. Colored ink paintings are called heavy colors, and heavy colors often use red as a pronoun.

3. During the Five Dynasties, when the imperial examinations were unveiled, the names of those on the list were written in light ink, which functioned similarly to the yellow list common to the imperial court, indicating that light ink corresponded to yellow. The clear ink refers to transparency, which is actually the water of ink. The drawing place for ink is white paper, and clear ink can be regarded as white.

Baidu Encyclopedia - Five Colors of Ink