It is not just any art lesson. Something so crude about the singleness of ink. You take a brush, you put it in the paint and within seconds you are drawing something that can never be duplicated. Each line you draw is a minor dialogue between you and the paper. You begin uncertain, clumsy, yet with each word you acquire something, something new, about technique, about style, about yourself. See student results and read more about our method.

You would imagine, that all about ink painting is just precision. But it’s not. Sure, there’s a learning curve. You will waste a considerable time in deciding the amount of ink to apply, the amount of pressure you need, and how to allow your brush to speak. What is soon discovered, though, is that ink does not like to be told what to do. It is a matter of letting the flow run its course and letting it get out of control sometimes. Mistakes? They’re just part of the dance. You see the more you relinquish the more thrilling, the process is.

And now you may not imagine that you are tied to a single style. The art of ink painting is full of diversities, of sorts of brushes, of kinds of ink, of methods. You could end up in the more conventional areas of bamboo or flowers or perhaps you will bend towards the abstract forms and even to the delight of yourself, you will end up in unexpected areas. The ink allows you to be able to express yourself in a manner that other mediums may not. You get to play with tones, textures and negative space. One day you will feel like painting a mountain; and there are days when you will simply leave the brush to do what it pleases to do.

It is not simply a matter of making something that is visually pleasing, it is a matter of experiencing something. The ink painting is rather still, nearly meditative. You lose yourself in the rhythm of your brush, in the regularity of your strokes. You can sense how the paper is straining to take the ink, or how it slides over. It’s calming. You perceive that every work is a mini-victory, that you have related to something greater than the canvas itself.

Just in case you are at all inquisitive, take a brush and have a go. No pressures, no need to be perfect. Ink painting is a breath of fresh air. You are not merely making art, but you are discovering a new perception of the world around you. The more you allow yourself to open to exploration, the more you will come to know about the rhythm of your own creativity. It is unruly, it is unpredictable, and it is worth doing it.