Artist Biographies in Asian Ink

By Eric Wucherer

Here are some questions I asked Marshall Wu regarding Asian ink painting. Mr. Wu is the Curator of Asian Ink at the U of M Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, and is also an Asian ink artist.

Mr. Wu thinks that it does not take a lot of practice to paint in Asian ink. But, you do have to paint for a few years to get very good at it. He learned to paint in college and tried it for another couple of years, but he does not have enough time to paint very much. Mr. Wu says that the hardest thing for him to paint is lines that are sufficient. The second hardest thing is to put these lines together to make a picture. Before he started to paint in Asian ink, he had done calligraphy with a brush, thus making it easier for him to learn to paint.

I questioned Mr. Wu if it was hard to make the ink stones needed to make the ink that you get when you rub the ink stick against the stone with water, and he says it is kind of difficult to make the stones. He says it takes experience to make good ink stones. I wondered if it was hard to get the proper shade of ink in the water, and he told me that it was not extremely difficult to get a good shade; it just takes practice. I was curious as to how he used different colored pigments in the demonstration he gave to us. He told me that you can buy different colors, but they're expensive, and that for practice, you should use watercolor.

These are my opinions on Asian Ink:

• I think it takes some practice to learn to paint Asian ink, but not an incredible amount of time.
• I have painted with Asian ink for about two days(for a school project).
• I think that the hardest things to paint in Asian ink are the proper strokes, because you need to apply the correct amount of pressure to the brush at the correct places.
• I was not good at Asian ink painting when I started(at the start of two days), and I am not much better now. I am not particularily good at Asian ink painting.
• I think it is pretty difficult to get the proper shade of gray in the ink, because it is hard to tell if it is coming off of the ink stone.