From the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, the main material for making ink was pine smoke. According to the Song Dynasty's Heavenly Creations, the ink maker at that time: "Nine out of ten people took pine cigarettes".
In Song Yanmo, people burn pine trees to get cigarettes. Before logging, the gum of pine trees will run away, but the rosin will not run away, and the burnt cigarettes will stick together.
The way to flow rosin is to drill a small hole in the root of the pine tree, put a small lamp in it, heat it slowly, and the gum of the pine tree will flow out, and then put the pine tree in a kiln to ignite and burn. The kiln fire will burn for several days, and after cooling, it can be blown into the kiln for free.
Tung oil, hemp seed oil, soap green oil, rapeseed oil and soybean oil were commonly burned in Ming Dynasty. Actually, there are lard and paint oil. When burning oil smoke and ink, the oil lamp is placed on the shelf below and a board is placed on it. Slowly, the board turned black and the carbon black was scraped off.
The main fuel of lampblack ink is vegetable oil such as tung oil, rapeseed oil and sesame oil, which is suitable for calligraphy and painting. Running script and regular script are fluent in strokes, painting landscapes, flowers and birds. In Song Yanmo, pine is mainly used as fuel and is generally used for painting. For example, the distant mountains with landscape paintings have a sense of vastness.