Materials and Techniques of Japanese Painting

The materials used in Japanese painting generally include: paper (or silk), brushes, pigments, and ink.

There are many types of paper, some of which are fine-textured and suitable for brushwork; some are soft and absorbent and suitable for rendering; and some are tough and suitable for heavy coloring. Silk is a flexible silk fabric. Whether paper and silk, often brushed with a layer of alum glue mixture to reduce the water absorption, and sometimes affixed with gold or silver foil to achieve a decorative effect. From time to time, wooden boards and canvas are also used for painting. Brushes are divided into ink brushes and color brushes, and there are eyebrow brushes, tracing brushes, dyeing brushes, rows of brushes, flat brushes, brush brushes, and so on, with different sizes, thicknesses, rigidities, flexibilities, and lengths. Ink is divided into Japanese ink (made in Japan) and Tang ink (made in China), and the raw materials are oil smoke, pine smoke and so on. Pigments are Hu powder, yellow, earth yellow, ochre, Zhu, cinnabar, red, ultramarine green, green green, green, purple, gold powder, silver powder, etc., generally for the mineral or vegetable quality, with glue modulation and become. Other utensils include inkstones, brush washes, easels, felts, and color mixing plates. There are two types of Japanese paintings: monochrome and color. Monochrome mainly with ink, white, ink and other techniques; modern Japanese painting mainly with color, there are two kinds of heavy color and light color, as well as boneless, gold color, gold foil, silver foil, and other techniques, after the war, Japanese paintings are mostly used in thick paint method.

The types of Japanese paintings are Eboshi (scroll painting), Zori-e (booklet painting), Zori-e (wall painting), screen painting, wall painting, and fan. In order to draw scrolls, Zori painting, screen painting is the most numerous and most representative.