My husband has done lots of ink drawings and ink drawings with color highlights for scroll blanks. There has been talk online from people trying it out as a new artistic endeavor. I know of many painted Japanese screens that I think are lovely. Copying even a small part of the finished piece could make for a nice illustration for a scroll. Here is my first effort.
This was done with a brush and pre-mixed black ink on hosho sketch paper. I had the adjusted scan of the original on a lightpad, so I could trace the image. I had done some pencil drawing on the trunk and branches to define them first. It was very difficult getting fine lines especially for the pine needles.
Here is the image that I was copying from on the lightpad. As you can see I don’t even attempt to draw most of the image.
And here is what that portion of original looks like. This is from a set of 8 scrolls, but only 4 are pictured in the book.
Source: Hickman, Money L., Coats, Bruce A., Guth, Christine, Pekarik, Andrew J., Rosenfield, John M., Rousmaniere, Nicole C. Japan’s Golden Age Momoyama. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.