After decades of artistic exploration, Qi Baishi knows that painters must be able to grasp the living appearance, texture, movement mode, environmental relationship and personality characteristics of objects, otherwise, even similar paintings will be dead. He has been observing shrimps all his life and painting them, trying to express their physical and mental characteristics profoundly. Qi Baishi lived by a pond since childhood and often fished for shrimps. Began to draw shrimp when I was a child; After I was about 40 years old, I copied shrimps painted by painters in Ming and Qing Dynasties such as Xu Wei and Li Futang. At the age of 63, the shrimps he painted were very similar, but not "alive" enough, so he raised several long-legged shrimps in a bowl and put them on the drawing. Daily observation shows that the method of drawing shrimp has also changed, and his shrimp painting has become one of his representative artistic symbols.
This painting was painted by Baishi at the age of 89. At this time, the white stone painting shrimp has entered the realm of metamorphosis, showing the shrimp swimming in the water in concise pen and ink. The thick arrowhead mushroom and dried shrimp are transparent and light, which shows the maturity of Qi Baishi's painting art in his later years.
This picture is the shape of shrimp, lively, sensitive, alert and vital. It's easy to draw because you have mastered the characteristics of shrimp. Take the shrimp in the picture as an example: three strokes on the head of the shrimp show a sense of movement in the dark.
A pair of thick ink eyes on the left and right, a little Jiao Mo in the middle of the head, and two light inks on the left and right, thus making the shrimp head varied. Hard shell is transparent, from deep to shallow. And shrimp loin, one section at a time, several strokes in a row, forming the rhythm of shrimp loin from thick to thin.
With the change of pen, the shrimp's waist presents various abnormal States, some bow forward and some swim straight. There are also people who bend over and crawl. The shrimp tail is also three strokes, which is both elastic and transparent. A pair of front paws of shrimp, from thin to thick, from several joints to two paws, are like pliers, one opening and one closing. Shrimp tentacles are drawn with several light ink lines.
It seems easy, but in fact it is extremely difficult: if the painting is alive, the life of the shrimp will come out; When the painting froze, it lost its life. The lines of shrimp whiskers seem soft and firm, broken and solid, straight and curved, messy and orderly. The shrimps on the paper seem to play and swim in the water, and the tentacles seem to move.