文房四宝 Four Treasures of Study

现在我们来谈谈中国画作画时常用的工具。
Now let’s talk about the things, or the tools we are gonna use to paint Chinese painting.

我们把这些工具称作“文房四宝”，意思就是书房里的四件宝物。
In Chinese we called those tools as “Wen Fang Si Bao”, literally means the four treasures in your study.

这些是毛笔，我们叫做“笔”。
These are the brush, we call it “Bi”.

这是“墨”。
And this is ink.

这是“纸”。
And this is of course papers, you can see that.

这块石头是“砚”，叫做砚石或砚台。
And this piece of stone we call it ink stone or ink slap.

这件我们叫做“笔”的东西，在英语中叫做“刷子”。
The thing is that, this is called “Bi” in Chinese. But of course I see that in English it’s called brush.

在西方绘画中，你们用扁平的刷子，但在中国绘画和书法中，我们用圆形的刷子。
In western painting, you use a kind of a flat brush, but in Chinese painting or Chinese calligraphy,we use a round one.

在中文中我们说的笔，听起来与英文中的，“钢笔”是一样的。
And in Chinese we call it “Bi”, which sounds very much like or exactly the same as we would call it pen in English.

所以这是很传统的“中国笔”。
So this is the traditional Chinese pen.

握笔的姿势应该像这样。
And also holding this kind of pen, just like that.

“墨” 就是墨水，在英语里它是液体的。
And “Mo”, the ink，I know the ink in English is something liquid.

但是在中国，写毛笔字时，墨是一块像石头一样的东西，它是一根墨棒或墨块。
But in Chinese, painting a Chinese calligraphy, ink is a piece of something like a rock, it’s a stick, it’s an ink stick.

这种墨必须和砚一起使用。
And the ink has to be used together with this piece of stone.

就是这种砚台。
This ink stone, or ink slap.

我们往砚台中倒一些水，在它上面磨墨，然后我们就可以得到用来写字作画的墨汁。
And we pour some water into it, and we rub the ink stick, and then we can get the liquid ink we are gonna use in painting and writing.

再用毛笔蘸上墨汁，就准备得当了。
And then can use the brush and dig it into the ink and you get everything ready.

我们还需要纸。
And then we need to have paper.

这种纸叫做“宣纸”。
This kind of paper we call it “Xuan Zhi” in Chinese.

它非常有韧性但又很软。
It’s very very strong but soft.

这种纸能很快地吸收液体和墨汁。
And they can absorb liquid of water or ink very quickly.

这样艺术家们就可以轻而易举地在这种纸上制造他们想要的特殊效果了。
It’s very easy for the artist to use ink to have some special effect they want on this kind of paper.

以上这些就是画传统中国画时需要用到的东西。
Well, these are the things we are gonna use when we do Chinese traditional painting.

文房四宝
the four treasure of the study

笔
writing brush

墨
ink