Art Supplies for Chinese Brush Painting

Hi everybody! Today I'm going to share with you what art supplies we need for Chinese brush painting. Firstly, brushes. Broadly speaking, there are three types of brushes. Soft hair brush, like goat or sheep hair brush. These brushes absorb water easily and can hold a lot of ink and water and it requires a good control of wrist and strength when drawing. Hard hair brushes, like weasel, wolf or even rabbit hair. Weasel hair brushes like these are widely used. It's strong, flexible and it's recommended for beginners. Mixed hair brush, like these two brushes, the inner side are hard hair, the outer is goat hair. So it combines the absorbency of soft hair as well as the flexibility of hard hair. If you're doing freehand style painting like me, three brushes are already good enough. A small weasel brush for really detailed and precise lines. A medium weasel hair brush. 90% of my work are done with this. A large mixed or soft hair brush for really big brush stroke or expressive lines. Secondly, ink. Many people who like Chinese calligraphy like to use ink stick and ink stone. Add water on the stone, grind the stick slowly on the surface to create dark smooth ink. But for convenience sake, I prefer bottle ink. These two bottle inks are made in Japan. It's smooth, have vivid bluish black color, spell knights and are convenient to use. For beginners, these Japanese bottle inks are already good enough to make knights painting or even calligraphy. Thirdly, pigment. Many people use tube color. A popular Chinese watercolor brand is Marys. It usually comes in a box of 12, 18 or 24 tubes with different colors. But I prefer a subtle tone. I use natural color instead. I only use four basic colors and these four colors can mix up to create many different colors. These natural pigments come in box or stick. This is indigo. It is made from natural plant and is in chips form. If matches with Marys color, the number is 495. Then scarlet, also in chips form. Matches with Marys collection is 302. Vermilion, the number is 399. The last one is yellow, the gamboge. This is made from a poisonous natural plant and it comes in form of lump or stick like this. The number is 218. Lastly, paper. We use special Chinese paper or we call it swan paper for Chinese brush painting. Based on the producing method, swan paper can be classified as raw swan, half raw swan and white paper. Raw swan absorbs water easily and quickly so it's perfect for the expressive freehand style painting as we love the tonal effect, shades and watermarks. But if beginners find it hard to control the water and ink, you could pick the half raw swan. Ink and water will not diffuse that quick on the half raw swan. While for the ripe swan, this paper is rather stiff in texture. It will not absorb ink and water. This paper is for gongbi painting which is a highly detailed and precise brush technique. Apart from the four essentials, brush, ink, pigment and paper, we also need brush holder, ink dish, pigment dish, one pigment with one dish, water container and a plate for mixing color. Lastly, we need a felt mat to prevent the swan paper sticking onto the table. So that's it for today. Thanks for watching.