What Truly Distinguishes Traditional Ink Colours from Western Watercolours

In painting, colour is never merely a colourful means to an end. It determines how we approach the brush, how quickly we need to work, and how a painting will age over decades.

Anyone working with water-based colours eventually encounters two major traditions: traditional East Asian ink colours on one side, and Western watercolours on the other. At first glance, they may seem remarkably similar — a little water, a pan or tube, a brushstroke.

But as soon as the brush touches the paper, you can feel that two very different understandings of material, craftsmanship and nature come together.

Let’s take a closer look at what lies at the heart of these two colour systems.

1. Earth and Plants vs. Laboratory Synthesis

Where Do the Colours Come From?

The first major difference lies simply in the origin of the pigments.

Traditional East Asian ink colours draw directly from nature. Historically, they have been broadly distinguished into two groups:

Mineral colours (shise):These are made by finely grinding natural rocks and minerals — such as brilliant cinnabar, deep blue azurite, rich malachite green or warm ochre. These pigments have a tangible mineral presence and density.

Plant-based colours (shuise):These are derived from extracts of flowers, bark, resins and other botanical materials, such as indigo, gamboge or carmine.

Modern watercolours still contain a number of natural and earth pigments, but many of their key colours are now based on synthetic pigments developed through chemical research, such as phthalocyanine blue or quinacridone pigments.

This allows modern Western watercolours to achieve exceptional brilliance, intensity and consistency from one production batch to another.

Traditional ink colours, by contrast, are less concerned with maximum saturation. Their beauty often lies in the natural, almost silky-matte depth of mineral and botanical materials.

2. The Invisible Core

Glue or Gum?

What holds a pigment onto the paper is its binder. And this seemingly invisible ingredient has a profound influence on the entire painting process.

Traditional ink colours traditionally use animal-based glue, or hide glue. The purified collagen glue is combined with the pigments while warm.

Once a stroke made with these colours has fully dried, it becomes relatively resistant to water. This is important because traditional paintings on paper and silk are often subsequently mounted using wet processes (tuobiao). If the colours could simply be reactivated with water, the entire painting could bleed or dissolve during mounting.

Watercolours, on the other hand, traditionally use gum arabic, a plant-based tree resin. It holds the pigments in place while keeping them water-reactive after drying.

This creates one of the defining characteristics of Western watercolour: freedom through reactivation. A dried edge can be softened again with a wet brush, pigment can be lifted from the surface, and colours can flow into one another directly on the paper.

3. Transparency and Opacity

Two Different Ways of Seeing

There is a beautiful principle in East Asian painting:

“Colour does not cover ink, and ink does not cover colour.”

Traditional plant-based colours can be extremely finely dispersed and highly transparent. They can rest like a delicate veil over black ink lines without hiding their movement or strength.

Mineral colours, by contrast, can provide considerable opacity. They create dense, tangible accents on the surface of the paper.

Watercolour approaches transparency in a somewhat different, more systematic way. The white paper itself becomes part of the colour.

Transparent washes allow light to pass through the pigment layers and reach the white paper beneath, where it is reflected back to the viewer. This interaction between pigment, light and paper is one of the reasons watercolours can appear so luminous.

4. Time and Permanence

Measurable Lightfastness vs. Living Patina

Modern Western artist colours are extensively tested in laboratories. Standards and ratings such as ASTM classifications and the Blue Wool Scale can provide information about how resistant a pigment is to fading under controlled light exposure.

Traditional ink colours approach permanence from a different historical perspective: through centuries of practical experience.

Pure minerals such as malachite and azurite can survive for thousands of years, as demonstrated by ancient artworks and pigments preserved in archaeological sites.

However, natural materials can also change in their own distinctive ways. Cinnabar, for example, may gradually darken under intense UV exposure due to changes in its crystal structure.

Plant-based colours are generally more light-sensitive than many modern synthetic pigments. Yet within East Asian aesthetics, subtle changes over time are not necessarily regarded as a flaw.

A colour that gently matures can become part of the artwork's story — a form of patina that reveals the passage of time.

5. Xuan Paper vs. Watercolour Paper

The Dialogue Between Colour and Surface

Colour never works alone. It always exists in a relationship with its surface.

Fine Xuan paper is remarkably thin, breathable and highly absorbent. Painting with ink colours on it requires decisiveness. The fibres absorb water almost immediately, meaning that every drop matters — and once a mark has been made, there is often very little opportunity to correct it.

Heavyweight watercolour paper, often 300 g/m² or more, is designed to absorb substantial amounts of water while maintaining its structural stability.

This makes it possible to work extensively with wet-on-wet techniques, layering and gradually building transparent washes from light to dark.

The difference is therefore not simply about the colour itself. It is about the entire relationship between pigment, water, brush, paper and time.

Why Are There So Few Direct Laboratory Comparisons?

If you search scientific databases for precise laboratory studies directly comparing traditional East Asian ink colours with modern Western watercolours, you may find surprisingly little.

One reason is that Western testing standards such as ISO and ASTM developed largely within modern pigment, coating and industrial colour research. They are designed to isolate and measure individual material properties under controlled conditions.

The East Asian painting tradition approaches the act of painting much more holistically.

The interaction between the inkstone, glue concentration, water quality, paper fibres, pigment and even the state of mind of the painter cannot easily be reduced to a single laboratory measurement.

And perhaps this is precisely what makes traditional ink painting so fascinating.

Both systems have their own logic, strengths and beauty.

Modern watercolours offer remarkable freedom, luminosity and reactivatability. Traditional ink colours carry a quieter, more grounded material presence — connecting the act of painting to minerals, plants, water, paper and the rhythms of nature.

Neither approach is inherently better.

They simply invite us to see, touch and work with colour in different ways.

Deepen Your Practice

The 6-Month Tea & Ink Live Session Programme

Understanding materials doesn't happen through reading alone. It unfolds through regular, attentive practice.

If you would like to spend six months gradually exploring the world of traditional ink, colour and meditative tea practice, I warmly invite you to join my 6-month Tea & Ink Live Session Programme.

Together, we take the time to explore the relationship between brushstroke, paper, colour, scent and breath — layer by layer — while developing a sustainable and calming creative ritual for everyday life.