I only recently came to know there’s such a thing called ink resist, and was pretty impressed by some of the artworks with this method. So I gave it a try. The result is a meh, but I l had fun and learned something.

So these are the steps I followed:

• pencil drawing;
• painting with gouache but leave some area blank; (some people leave only the pencil marks uncovered to achieve neat outlines)
• after the painting is completely dry, covered the whole page with sumi ink;
• again, wait till it’s completely dry, wash off the ink (I used the garden hose, no kidding.)
• and again, wait till it’s dry, and went back to fix here and there. (This step is optional, but I wasn’t that lucky.)

And here are the things I learned:

• Like drawing on black paper, this method is a bit counter-intuitive. The areas left blank in the first painting round will be the darkest after the wash. So planning ahead is important, which I didn’t do. In my painting, the blacks serve more like random texture than an organic part of the value pattern.
• The paint should be thick, to “resist” the ink and also because gouache is easy to wash off.
• This process asks for a lot of patience. 😜