When working with fluid mediums, the Eastern approach for loading a brush offers artists the opportunity to create brushstrokes exhibiting variations of tone and opacity within each stroke. Essentially the process of loading a brush consists of three key stages with each stage designed to produce different tones within the brushstroke (see the illustrations below).
Loading the brush with three tones
Brushwork of Yoshidaa Hyakusen, Imao Keinen, and Hagio Kyuko
Loading the brush so that a ball of paint
is positioned at the middle of the brush-end
A poorly loaded brush may result in two ridges of paint
created on either side of a brushstroke
Detail of Rosetsu’s brushwork
showing lateral angling of the brush
The second approach whereby the artist angles the head of the brush is one of the fundamental principles for both painting and calligraphy. The reason for this is simple. When the tip of the brush is angled (usually at about 45 degrees to the direction that the artist plans to make a mark) the brushstroke will exhibit all the artist’s deviations of direction by the line either thinning or swelling in its thickness. For example, in the earlier post, Passion in a Line, Carl Rohrs’ angled handling of the pen is shown in Bounce (see below). Not only does the angling of the pen give flow to the word but it also captures the spirit of the word’s meaning. Compare, for instance, the projected meaning offered by Rohrs’ calligraphy to the OCR-A font developed in 1968 for optical character recognition shown further below.
(upper) Carl Rohrs’ calligraphy
(lower) OCR-A std font
The second of the rules, communicating meaning, is perhaps the most important. This is because the end of a brushstroke can capture the spirit in which an artwork is executed and even the reason for a mark’s existence. In terms of how the end of the brushstroke can capture the artist’s mindset, I wish to compare the end of a mark that I see as looking like whipped cream (see illustration below) with the end of a mark that I see as looking like a lock of hair formed as a kiss-curl (see illustration further below). The first mark—“whipped cream”—suggests that the artist hesitated tentatively and lifted the brush vertically away from the canvas: arguably this would be a mindset in a state of distraction. The second mark—“kiss-curl”—suggests that the artist painted with confidence and the brush was lifted with speed in the direction that the brushstroke was laid: arguably a mindset where the artist is focused and in a flow of thought and action (i.e. “in the zone”).
Beyond the artist’s mindset that a viewer may intuitively feel or consciously rationalise through the manner of how a brushstroke is made, the chosen shape for the end of a mark is a element that the artist has total control over. For example, a square-ended mark may connote dry heat; a round-ended mark may connote humid coolness; a tapered-end on a mark may connote strong light. This list of potential meanings projected by a mark could be endless when contextualised with other marks. To illustrate how important the tail-end of a mark can be, I wish to return to Rosetsu’s Sparrows and Spider and focus on a single, but pivotal, brushstroke depicting a strand of web holding a spider in space (see detail below). Note how the line fades into the paper as it approaches the spider and consider how this treatment of the end of the line is so perfect for expressing the taut and delicate tension supporting the spider.
Detail of Rosetsu’s brushstroke
depicting the web strand