Take a brush loaded and you in a few seconds will feel it. That quiet flicker of panic? Entirely normal. It’s also precisely the point. The ink painting is anchored on an inexorable reality on that no line is ever to be removed. You commit, or you don’t paint. To any person who has spent years drawing something in pencil or clicking on the undo button, that fact comes as a surprise. Going here!

The outside of a workshop session will look like a controlled chaos. Someone’s brush slips. The other student wastes much water and sees his bamboo stalk erode in grey mist. That is pretty, the teacher tells her, and she really means so.

That’s the nature of ink. The best thing is usually the accidents.

The philosophy of traditional East Asian ink painting that Western art does not often teach so overtly is less is more not merely a preference, but a perception of the world. One branch. Three strokes. Deliberate empty space. Children will even spend a whole afternoon painting nothing but rocks, and leave in silent re-thinking all that they thought they knew about simplicity.

The workshops differ significantly in terms of focus. Others focus on sumi-e the spare and radiant Japanese art wherein one stroke of the brush can connote the bulk of a whole mountain. Others are based upon Chinese brush painting, and they construct ink washes to give the effect of depth and movement. Other students discuss both, and eventually discover a voice, which lies in between both.

It is not as simple as beginners presume that materials do. The distinction in inexpensive rice paper and quality xuan paper may be the distinction between vexation and flux. This is dealt with in good workshops. A good brush retains water such that it changes the flow rate of ink in any subtle manner, it starts being less of a tool and more of a conversation.

Individuals come to these workshops due to any form of reason. Stress relief. Creative curiosity. One of the indistinct bucket-list items was triggered by a documentary on Zen monasteries. The majority of the people leave with what they did not go on holiday seeking: patience.

Ink cannot be rushed. It is not sizable to obedience. Practice and attentiveness are the only way out, as well as an increasing self-content with imperfection.

That proves more difficult to learn than it sounds- and subtly more useful than nearly anything that students bring home in addition to paints that are still damp.