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Dear yuehjian,Thanks a lot for these very beautiful paintings! Yes, the lines left on paper are unavoidable since they are left by the bamboo screens when making paper. Here is one post about how inkston makes our papers,
In this post, you will see how these marks are created. In the sample pack you have received, all the types of paper are traditional xuan papers, which are made at this workshop with the tools which you can see in that post. Therefore, this is why all the papers got such lines, as you have already observed!
My suggestion to you on the gongbi painting paper/ silk: try at least to do some on silk. Silk is the best material for gongbi style paintings. It allows you to get more elaborate styles and have more freedom to play with tricks. For example, silk performs so well when you want to apply different layers for backgrounds. We normally do not recommend beginners to use silk. However, from your paintings, I believe you can master painting on silk very well. It is not must but we still want to suggest you — when painting on silk, try to use natural pigments (either plant extracted colourgs, or mineral based colours; or both); try to avoid chemical colours.
As for other paper options, since you know how to size paper, this also gives you such a wide range of options. I recommend you to try cicada wing paper. However, since you mentioned you want medium thickness, I think the cicada wing paper might not be favoured by you. Therefore, I would recommend you to consider handmade papers with Song and Yuan recipes. As you might know Chinese painting history, in Song and Yuan dynasty, Chinese Gongbi painting style reaches its peak moment. See these posts, for example,
Emperor HuiZong of Song Dynasty: https://www.inkston.com/stories/art/huizong-art-works/
Song Paintings on fan: https://www.inkston.com/stories/art/song-paintings-silk-fan/
Paintings from Song Dynasty are also the most favourite paintings of Inkston. In some of our other articles about Gongbi painting, we also referred back to this period in history,
By looking at these great Song paintings, you will notice that most of them are done in very fine silk. Silk and natural pigments (mineral based colours) are helping these thousand years old paintings shine even in 21st century.
Therefore, the point here is that Xuan paper has its own development history. The recipes are changing as time goes by. Sometimes it is because the recipes are lost due to war — there were many wars in the past centuries in China and Xuan paper has history of over 1000 years already. Another reason is simply because each period in history, people might have different painting preferences. And of course, there are also many other reasons in history to explain the paper recipes change. To be short, for Inkston, we recommend most the papers made with recipes of Song/ Yuan dynasty to professional artists who have special preference to Gongbi styles. These papers are all made raw/ uncooked. So, we expect you should know how to size the papers when necessary. These Song papers from Inkston are made from recipes which are very close to papers from Song Dynasty in history. Therefore, they are still not exactly like the papers from that period.
https://www.inkston.com/shops/paper/mulberry-paper/ Papers listed in this category include papers made with Song recipes. I would recommend you to look through this list and check if any would be suitable. Some of these papers have very obvious lines, while others almost none.
In conclusion, try silk or Song papers.
For silk, you can either choose Japanese silk or Chinese silk.
Japanese painting silk: https://www.inkston.com/shop/paper/japanese-painting-silk/
Chinese painting silk: https://www.inkston.com/shop/silk/chinese-painting-silk/
You can also try small pictures on the silk fan. Please note that the silk fan has a lower grade silk than the two silks mentioned above. All the silks available now at our shop are sized already but still needs some treatment according to you needs. You will also need to know how to ‘wash off’ and ‘add up’ gelatine to the natural pigments. These skills help you to make the most of the materials and give you extra more space to create on silk than to create on paper.
American artist Vinh Bui has painted quite a lot of Gongbi style works on silk. You can also take his paintings as a reference to see how the silk reacts: https://www.inkston.com/community/directory/vinh-bui/
We have one article specially talking about painting on silk. I think this might be helpful:
If you need, we can also customise a sample pack for you with special papers we have. The customisation fee is 15 USD and we need 1 to 2 weeks time for the customisation. 🙂 The samples will be up to the paper types we have at the moment at our studio. You can contact us for such query.
Thanks for reading such a long reply! I hope it is helpful!
Inkston Customer Helper
Could anyone share your experience with our inkstone cleaner? 🙂 Thanks a lot!
Hi Adilly,
There has been a short discussion on our inkston’s facebook art club page. You might be interested to have a look.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/inkston/1115357515298400/?comment_id=1115365608630924
It would be great if you can participate in this discussion! 🙂
Good luck!
Yan
Yes, we agree with multapaakku! 🙂 I just want to add one more point. Who made the brush also makes the brush special. Sometimes, you might feel all the brushes look alike. However, they are not at all. More experienced brush craftsman knows way much better about what type of hair should be used for which type of brush, how the hair should be processed, etc. All these are crucial elements for a good brush.
And, we do not think these brushes in the photo are for collection purpose. However, if the brush is more for practical use, this also means each brush has its own lifespan. You will need to try them and feel how well they can still serve for your painting purposes.
We do have some tips to help decide the value of brush. You can refer to,
Thank you very much! We were told by the Old Hu Kai Wen factory that this is low grade She stone. However, I am not really sure which grade it belongs to because compared to the top grade She stones, such as those customised by Inkston, this stone seems different. However, we are sure to tell you that this Old Hu Kai Wen stone is better than the YuShan stone.
Thank you very much again for your great feedback! We have just adjusted the shipping categories for the blank seal stones.
The smallest seal stone maintains its original price of 1 $ each and it is ‘free shipping’ now.
The medium size seal stones’ prices have been increased by 0.5$ each and they are ‘free shipping’ now.
The big size Grace seal stones’ prices have been increase by 2$ each and they are also ‘free shipping’ now.
We have received big size blank seal stone with new colour. The colour is between grey and green. We will launch this new stone in November. 🙂
Thank you very much again for your very good feedback! Appreciate! We will be more careful with details on inkston! Please leave us a message when you are making any new order with us in the future. We will add a blank seal stone in your parcel!
No, please do not apply the backing before painting. This is because all handmade xuan papers which are made with high percentage natural fibres ‘breath’ too much when you are painting. Therefore please apply the backing after your painting is dry. This will ensure that the mounted painting is flat and the colours in the painting can also be enhanced.The best adhesive is the one you made in your kitchen. We have shared the recipe here,
Glue: it is made with flour and alum. Also, in order to ward off mould etc, you can also add some antibiotic agent in the flour when making the glue.
And always bear in mind: the best materials for Chinese painting is always natural. This will help preserve the painting for centuries and will allow later restoration.
Dear gretchensmailbox,
A very good question! The answer is it depends. If it is the natural colour chips, some of them are pure pigments while other might have added with some natural glue already. However, you might still need to adjust it according to your needs. You can also find ways to get rid of the glues which have been added in the chips. Yes, there are tips to do so. 🙂
However, for the classic Old Hu Kai Wen 12 colour inksticks, all of them are added with extra things such as natural gelatine made from animal fat, herbs, etc. This will allow you to use them directly. However, it would also be difficult for you to adjust the glue percentage contained in the colour.
I hope this is helpful! 🙂
best regards
Inkston Customer Helper
Dear tbousjb,
We are sorry to read your message late! Thank you very much for your feedback! Yes, we are re-calculating the shipping charge for seal stones. However, we believe our shipping charge for all other items are reasonable. And if the order is over 150 USD, there is free shipping.
Please feel free to contact us at any time for any query you may have! We answer as soon as we receive the message.
best regards,
Yan LUO
Inkston Founder
aha, yes, I do have some painted by Weina! I will take photos tomorrow. It is the painting in my bedroom and I love it!
I sort of agree with you! Just try to keep the seal clean as possible. Of course it is impossible to absolutely clean off the ink. And yes, you can use different ink colours. Using scrap paper is an idea but this might damage the carving. Maybe a toothpick would be more helpful.
Hi, I do not think the white mortar and pestle is good to grind 12 mineral colour inksticks. The inksticks need inkstone to grind. 🙂
Yes, the bowl is unglazed. However, the surface is not as fine as natural stone. Therefore, even if you can grind inkstick on the bowl, the ink you get from this way is not fine as it should be.
