Sumi ink is one of the most delightful mediums in the artist's repertoire. It is a cake ink, made from lampblack, glue, and a light scent, such as musk, carefully prepared and pressed into sticks. These sticks are beautiful in themselves, usually decorated with Chinese characters or figures. Sumi ink has a brilliance and range of tone, not found in liquid inks. To use Sumi, you rub the cake of ink in the hollow of a small stone block, thinning it with water. Even the manner of rubbing affects the delicate character of the ink.

I have used various papers for Sumi ink drawing, rice paper and vellum are interesting, but any good quality paper for board is suitable. Egg tempera can also be combined in the same way with Sumi.

Prisma colour is a term used for works, done with artist's coloured pencil. I use two different types of these pencils. Prisma pencil, which is a soft thick rather waxy pencil, manufactured in Canada, and Stabilo, a German pencil, which is harder and dryer in quality. Both are extremely light resistant and durable.

I use them in a layered style, using several layers of different colours to achieve a rich and subtle tone. These works are done on illustration board, which I usually tone with egg tempera first. The tempera can be used also, in various parts of the painting. These two mediums seem to work together particularly well. The pencils giving a slight delicate texture to the surface and the egg tempera a soft waxy glass.

Dorothy Renals