Most of the landscape paintings in the Song Dynasty are made of silk, with fine hook work and rigorous description, while they are rendered layer by layer with ink, dignified and quiet. Paper used for landscape painting in Yuan Dynasty is beneficial to dry brushwork. "Not bound by law, but the meaning goes beyond the image." Ink painting is dry and wet, unpredictable and vast. It can be said that China's landscape painting techniques, harmonious Song and Yuan Dynasties, have achieved great success. After Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, landscape painting was obviously not as good as Song and Yuan Dynasties, and there was no heavy sense of history and culture in Song and Yuan Dynasties. Painting in Song Dynasty showed unprecedented richness, exquisiteness and realism. Paintings in this period are further divided into landscapes, flowers and birds, figures, religious paintings and miscellaneous paintings. Due to the diversity of painting styles and themes, the techniques and theories of ink painting reached a peak with the development of landscape painting and flower-and-bird painting in the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty. During this period, famous artists came forth in large numbers: the works of famous landscape painters such as Hao Jing, Guan Tong, Dong Yuan, Ju Ran, Li Cheng, Fan Kuan, Ma Yuan and Xia Gui had a far-reaching influence on later generations. In terms of flower-and-bird painting, with the spread of thematic paintings such as ink bamboo and ink plum by literati such as Wen Tong, Su Shi and Mi Fei (which kept pace with Lan and Ming in the late Southern Song Dynasty), "literati painting" which advocated subjective interest and interest in pen and ink form began to rise, such as the traditional ink painting "Eight Buddies in the Old Song Dynasty", which opened up a new road for the development of ink painting in later generations. Xu Xi pioneered the "wild escape" ink form, and his grandson Xu Zongsi developed the "boneless method" ink flower and bird among the people following his ancestral work. Of course, ink painting has also made new progress in figure painting in Song Dynasty. For example, Kai Liang's "pen-reduced" paintings, such as The Fairy with Ink Splash and Li Baixing's Singing, have removed the personality characteristics of the poet Li Bai with extremely simple brushstrokes and become one of the most successful figure paintings in the history of painting.
The variation of aesthetic consciousness brought by Yuan Dynasty inevitably had a far-reaching impact on the development of Chinese painting. Generally speaking, ink painting is developed on the basis of literati painting represented by Zhao. In painting theory and creative practice, we attach importance to the painter's subjective will, interest and expression of thoughts and feelings. Zhao advocates the realism of painting, emphasizes the consistency between painting pen and ink and calligraphy, flaunts retro, and advocates the interest of calligraphy pen and ink. As the head of (Zhao, Huang, Wang Meng, Zhenwu, later replaced by Dong Qichang), he led a new round of important changes in ink painting in Yuan Dynasty, got rid of the institutional painting style in Song Dynasty, attached importance to subjective expression, and pursued simple, elegant and profound artistic interest. They used dry brush to wipe instead of wet brush to smear, and gradually replaced silk with paper. Their artistic achievements reflect the creative development of China's painting and play a decisive role in the painting theory and creation in Ming and Qing Dynasties.