Zao Wou-Ki's watercolour and oil creations have undergone a neck-to-neck development. Stylistically, they have also kept their forces united. There is, however, no subordination as between Zao Wou-Ki's watercolours and ink paintings and his oils. On the contrary, he has always been aware that the development of his artistic direction necessitated a traversal between these two media.

Although Zao Wou-Ki purposefully eschewed Chinese ink after his arrival in Paris, he did not completely dislodge himself from his cultural roots. Chinese ink painting, such as Western art colours, composition and arrangement, and infused these into his water-based pigments to fabricate traditional Chinese watercolour works. His watercolour works tend to be small, and the artist assimilated his finer Chinese painting brushwork into a Western technique. Celebrated Chinese writer François Cheng (Cheng Baoyi) wrote in a 2003 article about Zao Wou-Ki's watercolour painting: "Its rhythm is reminiscent of the Ming dynasty and it has the interest of Song dynasty freehand brushwork. »

His watercolors give the feeling of a multitude of layers, in which the abstract landscape is dissimulated into mists. The abstract calligraphy traversing the middle of the composition, serves to express a multi-layered sense and add texture and density, thereby displaying an orderly rhythm; as Zao Wou-Ki said: "I do not want to fill it, but give it life." Zao Wou-Ki continues the momentum of Chinese traditional ink, while strengthening the rhythm of stacked colours and visual effects to construct distinctive watercolour works with Chinese traditional aesthetics.