Ancient Chinese painting has its own unique way of being independent from the world, while style and environment are closely related. For example, the Tang Dynasty was dominated by murals. The murals in the Sui and Tang Dynasties have reached a very high level, so they are widely used in palaces, temples, tombs, etc. In addition, the development of Buddhism reached its peak in the Tang Dynasty and the content of murals was mainly based on this. Its function was to broadcast the content to people of all walks of life. Therefore, Buddhism has penetrated deeply into people's daily lives and spiritual lives. In addition to spreading religion, eulogies and praises of heroes were also recorded on the walls, while landscapes, fish and insects were regarded as purely decorative appreciation. The paintings of the Tang Dynasty cover figures, landscapes, animals, ghosts and gods, but the most important ones are figure paintings. This not only shows that the paintings of the Tang Dynasty continued the development of history, but also showed that the rulers at that time had enlightened policies and people's higher living standards.
There is a big difference between landscape paintings between the Tang Dynasty and before the Tang Dynasty. Before the Tang Dynasty, landscape paintings were still in a fixed state. The landscape paintings in the paintings were neither lively nor able to express the changes in their spatial shape. Therefore, although landscape painting appeared early, it developed and matured in the Tang Dynasty. The painters of the Tang Dynasty not only changed the painting style before the Tang Dynasty, but also derived a variety of styles through the hands of the painters. Painting in the Tang Dynasty saw new changes in expression techniques. It not only inherited the painting method that emphasized brushwork and color before the Tang Dynasty, but also created monochromatic line drawings and splash-ink painting techniques in ink paintings. In terms of the use of brushes, it can be said that painters represented by Wu Daozi use brushes more boldly, and the colors are simpler. The brushes are strong, powerful and thick, forming a unique brushwork. Therefore, we see in book reviews that "the pen is only a few words long, and the portrait should be as it should be." In addition, some say that the paintings of the Tang Dynasty are more realistic, and some say that the paintings of the Tang Dynasty are more freehand, and I saw this quote in the book - Wu After Daozi's paintings are inked, his apprentices will continue to add color, that is, "only between rough shades, and Daoxuan will allow it." Therefore, I think it can be roughly guessed that the paintings of the Tang Dynasty have a freehand tendency. Of course, many modern painters do not agree.
In ancient Chinese paintings, "nature" is regarded as the expression of the highest beauty. Ancient painters showed in their creation that it does not exist outside of nature, nor does it belong to nature, but it is within nature. You can see nature in the paintings of Gu Kaizhi and Wu Daozi, which is not only reflected in the form and spirit of the paintings but also in the unity of the subject and object artistic conception. His paintings do not pursue the deliberate use of brushes and colors, but they are full of charm. Apart from nature, the most important thing in painting is spiritual resemblance. From the very beginning, Chinese painting has not only focused on appearance but also placed more emphasis on spiritual resemblance. In traditional painting, physical resemblance only shows the realistic appearance of objects, while spiritual resemblance is the spiritual pursuit of expressing the inner essence of the painter. Painters of the Han and Wei dynasties were good at expressing dynamic momentum. Wei Xie of the Western Jin Dynasty was called "Although the shape should not be wonderful, it is quite vigorous." Having both temperament and temperament is different from "getting its shape and leaving its spirit". In the Song Dynasty, flowers, birds, insects, and fish occupied the dominant position. "The intention comes first with the writing" means that the artistic conception is necessary. From then on, the Northern Song Dynasty began to emphasize the "meaning" in paintings. The realism mentioned here is not an objective manifestation, but focuses on the purification of objects in paintings, that is, both form and spirit. This statement is equivalent to Gu Kaizhi's use of form to describe spirit. From the Song Dynasty, paintings began to focus on freehand brushwork, so there is a saying: "The best way to paint landscapes is to get the temperament of the landscape. To get its temperament, you have to embrace the ups and downs, such as jumping, sitting, pitching, or hanging one's feet." In modern language, we often The combination of freehand brushwork and expressiveness is the same as that of the time. Some literati painters focus on spiritual resemblance rather than meticulous depiction. Su Shi even put forward the idea that "when discussing painting, we should rely on physical resemblance to see children as neighbors." After the Yuan and Ming dynasties, freehand brushwork flourished, with more creative explorations in practice, including bold and exaggerated figure paintings and strange deformations of flowers and birds.
Traditional Chinese painting attaches great importance to the use of pen and ink lines, using lines as the basic means of painting figures, rather than the relationship between light and shadow and the tone of light and dark as Western painters do. As the main tool of traditional Chinese painting, the brush is used with different priorities. The lines drawn also show the shape of the object, and have a strong sense of formal beauty, which can express different painting temperaments and charms.
In addition, due to the unique nature of Chinese painting and Chinese calligraphy, the two arts were not separated at that time. Therefore, the Tang Dynasty also proposed that the source of calligraphy and painting is the same as that of calligraphy and painting. After the Yuan Dynasty, people paid more attention to absorbing calligraphy and using brushes to paint, enriching the expression skills of painting. In ancient times, painting was called Danqing. Xie He's Six Methods talked about "applying color according to the type", which means that the use of color is extremely important. This is completely different from foreign painting methods. The colors in traditional Chinese paintings are neither environmental colors nor environmental colors. They are not inherent colors, but are mostly subjective personal creations. In the paintings, we can see that there are both brilliant green and golden colors, as well as simple and elegant ink and light crimson. But it is not an imitation of nature, nor is it monotonous ink and wash painting. Chinese painting can use subtle changes in dry and wet ink shades to create colorful painting effects through monochrome. This perfect combination of pen and ink enables traditional Chinese painting to achieve beautiful effects and a very high level.
In terms of composition, the composition of Chinese paintings does not adopt the static perspective relationship in the West to determine points, lines and planes, but boldly and freely breaks the limitations of time and space. Chinese painters have long recognized the perspective relationship in painting. In traditional paintings, composition is called management position or composition. It not only refers to the changes in the form of objects, but more importantly, explains how to highlight the theme and express the artistic conception. For example, Zong Bing of the Southern Dynasty mentioned the preliminary basic perspective theory in "Preface to Painting Landscapes". By the Sui Dynasty, Zhan Ziqian's landscape paintings had already achieved the feeling of being thousands of miles away. Therefore, on the basis of following the perspective relationship, traditional Chinese painting expresses the artistic conception in painting at a higher level. Compared with the perspective relationship of Western painting, ancient Chinese painters paid more attention to the expression of personal painting emotions. When dealing with composition, he uses the bird's-eye observation method used in modern sketches and the unique painting method of constantly moving the viewpoint with the space, as well as the skillful techniques of summarizing and refining to deal with the complex and unpredictable nature. The structure of the picture pays attention to being sparse and airtight. In art, we pay more attention to the interest outside the image, the meaning outside the painting, a tree, a stone, a few strokes, and clever arrangement, attracting people's infinite reverie and fascinating.