Wu Changshuo's painting not only has the elegant style of literati painting, but also incorporates the factors of secularity and commonness, showing a characteristic of appealing to both refined and popular tastes. In Wu Changshuo's paintings, we often see traditional literati paintings such as plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum and narcissus. He took plum and narcissus as his friends and stone as his self-portrait, but he was free from vulgarity.
For example, peony is a symbol of wealth, and citizens like to paint peony, but painting peony is easy to become vulgar, so he often paints peony with daffodils or stubborn stones, so that the two can live in harmony, and elegance and vulgarity set each other off.
In the late Qing Dynasty, with the prevalence of epigraphy, many painters who were good at epigraphy and calligraphy seal cutting injected profound and exquisite epigraphy literacy and skills into their paintings, and their paintings showed magnificent epigraphy charm. Wu Changshuo has devoted himself to the study of Shi Guwen for decades, and his Shi Guwen writing is innovative and unique.
Wu Changshuo fully applied the experience of epigraphy calligraphy to painting creation and formed his own style. Seal cutting is often used to draw plum, orchid and lotus. The plum blossoms in his works are red plum, green plum, plum in the snow and plum under the moon. He seldom writes about the whole plum tree, but he often writes in groups to show the different situations of plum trees.
When Wu Changshuo painted plum blossoms, he said "sweep" instead of painting. The word "sweep" just reveals that when he painted plum blossoms, he was interested in his own life and had a quick and lively manner.
When Wu Changshuo painted grapes, wisteria and other plants, he often used cursive brushwork. His cursive script also incorporates the flavor of seal script, which can really be described as "holding seal script as a weed".