The tools, materials and expression methods used in Chinese painting are quite different from those used in western painting. Chinese painting uses brush, ink, minerals and plant pigments to paint on rice paper or silk, while western painting uses different tool materials and painting methods. For example, oil painting uses transparent plants to mix pigments and pigments on processed materials such as cloth, paper and board; Prints are not drawn directly by hand, but through three links: painting, carving and printing with printing as the medium; Watercolor painting uses the transparency of pigments to paint on white paper through the mixing, infiltration and superposition of watercolors; Gouache painting is to mix glue and powdery opaque pigment with water and draw it on paper.
The landscapes, flowers and birds in Chinese paintings often contain symbolic meanings, such as plum blossoms and pine trees, which symbolize the indomitable spirit of fighting cold and snow. Western landscape painting and still life painting mainly pursue the beauty of the picture and pay attention to the harmony of light and color, but the content of the painting is in a secondary position. The scenery of Chinese painting does not pay attention to or depict the light and color changes on the object, but pays attention to the charm of the scenery, that is, it pays attention to the likeness rather than the shape, and pays attention to "expressing the spirit with the shape" and "having both form and spirit". Western painting is restricted by scientific laws, that is, it is created according to the principles of perspective, anatomy and colorimetry. Use focus perspective to create a three-dimensional space on a plane. Traditional Chinese painting adopts multi-point perspective, which uses both scattered perspective and focus perspective. Western paintings are painted in colors, leaving no blank, while Chinese paintings pay attention to "taking white as black" and pay great attention to the management of blank, so that the parts without pictures, like the parts with pictures, become an indispensable part of the whole picture. Another main feature of Chinese painting is line modeling. The function of lines goes far beyond the requirements of shaping the body and becomes an important means to express the author's thoughts and feelings. Western painters also use lines to create images, but they pay more attention to the texture, quantity and space of images, while lines are in a secondary position. Without specific content to be expressed, such as shape, structure, light and shade, lines themselves have no value.
The inscription, postscript and seal of Chinese painting are unique to Chinese painting, and also the biggest feature that distinguishes western painting. Chinese painting is good at combining poetry, books, paintings and seals perfectly into an inseparable whole. Through the use of seal cutting, the viewer's appreciation and understanding ability can be improved or supplemented, and the changes of the picture can be enriched, which plays a role in contrasting, embellishing and balancing the composition.
With the introduction of western paintings, modern painters in China, on the basis of inheriting traditional techniques, constantly absorbed various painting techniques imported from abroad, including sketch, oil painting, watercolor painting, etc., which greatly enriched the expression techniques of Chinese paintings. Some painters also constantly innovate tools and materials, and skillfully combine western painting techniques with traditional Chinese painting techniques, which is undoubtedly a direction of Chinese painting development.
Artistic conception of Chinese painting
Conception is the establishment of the theme of the work. In China's ancient painting theory, it is emphasized that painting needs "conception first", so that painting will change and have strange meaning. The so-called "intention" refers to the consciousness and spirit in Wu Daozi's paintings in the Tang Dynasty. Zhang Yanyuan said: "The intention is before the pen, and the painting cares. Although the pen is not well written, it is also intentional. " In Qing Dynasty, Fang Xun also talked about the relationship between artistic conception and painting in On Painting in Jingshan. He said: "When painting, you must first make up your mind and determine your position. Yi Qi, Yi Gao, Yi Yuan, Yi Shen, Yi Gu. " He believes that mediocre paintings will be mediocre and vulgar paintings will be vulgar, because paintings lack the painter's most precious "artistic conception", so works are mediocre and vulgar. Gu Kaizhi, a famous figure painter in Jin Dynasty, said that painting should be "wonderful and close to thinking" and also said the importance of "conception". Artistic conception and charm are simple, fantastic, beautiful, vigorous, rich and quiet ... these are all formed by making an idea first and then putting pen to paper. As for the dark and moist ink color, it is used freely, showing the painter's interesting conception and brushwork.
"Conception" does not come from the painter's hard thinking and subjective imagination, but from life and objective reality. As an excellent painter, you should not only have a deep foundation and cultural accomplishment, but also go deep into life. Taking landscape painting as an example, if we want to draw the direction of the Yellow River in Mount Tai on a scale, we can only learn from nature by including the reverie of autumn waters on that paper. The unique creation of all the great landscape painters in history originated from "nature". Dong Yuan painted landscapes in the south of the Yangtze River, Guan Quan painted the Central Plains and Taihang Mountains, Fan Kuan and Guo painted landscapes in the south of the Yangtze River and Taihua Plateau, Mijia and his son painted rainy landscapes, and Li Cheng painted plains and cold forests. All of them are analyzed and studied after obtaining sufficient materials, so as to get good works. Hao Jing of the Five Dynasties put forward the idea of "seeking beauty and creating truth", and Fan Kuan of the Song Dynasty advocated that "thousands of books began to be true". In the Ming Dynasty, Lv Wang painted a picture of Huashan Mountain, and prefaced it, saying, "I am the teacher of my heart, my heart and my eyes." Dong Qichang's "Reading thousands of books and Taking Wan Li Road". In the Qing Dynasty, Shi Tao's "Looking for a Wonderful Peak and Combining Manuscripts", Shan Dashi said: "Poetry and painting have the help of mountains and rivers. If confined to the inner door, more than a hundred miles away, untraceable, the wonders of the world. How can you develop your mind without your eyes? " Qi Baishi, a master of modern painting, said: "Nature is good at painting, but the method of painting is difficult to master." The above-mentioned famous artists all advocate that painters must "learn from nature, and gain heart from China". Emphasize the importance of travel sketching, collecting painting materials and broadening horizons.
Chinese painting modeling
The modeling of artistic works usually consists of points, lines, surfaces, shapes, colors, shapes and textures. The modeling of Chinese painting is mainly line drawing, especially meticulous painting. Line drawing is mostly used in figure painting, double-hook flower-and-bird painting and the sketch of rocks, trees, houses, cars and boats in landscape painting. Later, a variety of modeling methods such as rubbing, rubbing, spotting and dyeing were gradually developed, but line drawing is still the basis of Chinese painting modeling. This method expresses the texture and change of objects through the virtuality, rigidity, thickness and brightness of lines. For example, in the Song Dynasty, Li's "The Picture of Yanjiao in Wei Mo", not only the hair and beard of the characters are all presented, but also the clothes are exquisite and neat, and the carved flowers on the raft and couch under Wei Mo are also sketched carefully, and the pen is rigorous and meticulous.
In Chinese painting, line drawing not only uses it to shape the image and express the physical structure, but also gives viewers different feelings through different lines. For example, a horizontal straight line can give people a feeling of calmness, calmness, tranquility and stretching; The vertical line gives people a sense of straightness, fortitude and dignity, as well as a sense of power that hangs down or rises upward. Slant lines give people a feeling of surprise, adventure and dumping; Geometric curves give people a dull, tense, twisted and painful feeling; The curve of freedom gives people the feeling of freedom, liveliness, gentleness, pleasure and elegance. These feelings are all produced by people's visual experience and association in real life. It is the painter who skillfully uses pen and ink to create vigorous, beautiful, rigid, free and easy, smooth, rough, light, heavy, sweet and bitter lines, thus expressing the author's thoughts and feelings.
Line drawing was created by ancient painters in China through the accumulation of long-term artistic practice. Chinese painting began with hieroglyphics and gradually developed from a naive primitive stage to a unique artistic style with a certain artistic level. Later, it gradually matured in the Zhou, Qin, Han and Six Dynasties, such as Silkworm Spinning by Gu Kaizhi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Cao Clothes Out of the Water by Cao in the Northern Qi Dynasty, and the Five Dynasties Party Style by Wu Daozi in the Tang Dynasty. Sheikh, an art critic in the Southern Dynasties, listed "writing with a pen" as the second of his six criteria for evaluating China's paintings, namely "six methods".
The reason why line drawing can show colorful forms and beauty is inseparable from the use of pens. One of the artistic beauties of China's figure painting is mainly manifested in figure modeling, clothes pleats and the treatment of clothes. From Gu Kaizhi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty to Yan, Wu Daozi and Han in the Tang Dynasty, as well as various schools in the Song Dynasty, they all have their own line drawing techniques. All kinds of names in eighteen antis were scattered in all kinds of books as early as before the Tang Dynasty. Its name can be found in Zhou's Yi Men Guang Bi, Wang's Coral Net in Ming Dynasty and Drawing a Picture to Interpret Dreams, and it is called "eighteen antis" (hereinafter referred to as "eighteen antis") in ancient and modern times. For a long time, it has become the basic procedure of traditional line drawing techniques.
The function of line drawing is not only to outline and express shapes with lines, but also to convey the spirit by writing shapes. Gu Kaizhi's theory of "conveying spirit with form" is the first theory in China to explore the dialectical relationship between form and spirit in painting. Gu's theory of "vivid with form" was first used in figure painting, and later extended to landscape painting and flower-and-bird painting. He argues that God exists in the image of objective noumenon, and God is expressed through the image. Without form, god can't stay; A form without God is like a blind eye without pearls. From form to spirit is the deepening of artistic conception by the representation of all things. That is, "the use of divine form, the quality of divine form." Su Shi said in the Northern Song Dynasty that "children's neighbors can be seen by talking about the similarity of paintings", which means that this kind of knowledge is the same as that of children. Huang Xiufu, a figure painter in the Northern Song Dynasty, said, "If quality has charm, invisibility is better than literature; If there is a similar shape without charm, it is flashy. "
Using lines to convey form and spirit is based on the painter's thoughts and feelings. Different times, environments, life experiences and artistic accomplishments have different images, tastes and effects in the works of different authors, even if the same thing is expressed. How China's line drawing expresses feelings depends on the density, cadence, rhythm, shade and dryness of the pen and ink, so as to achieve the situation of "integration of things and me" and give viewers endless imagination and beautiful enjoyment. As far as the formal beauty of line drawing is concerned, only the lines that express feelings have infinite vitality and unique aesthetic taste.
After the Tang Dynasty, the creation of landscape painting increased, and the line techniques gradually enriched, resulting in painting. The method of painting is to constantly use the double lines of the pen to express the texture, sense of quantity and sense of body, so as to adjust the relationship between lines and the content that some lines cannot express. This painting method was once used in landscape painting. Modern freehand brushwork figures and flower-and-bird paintings also absorb brush strokes, supplementing and enriching the shape of lines.
Lines are the lifeline of Chinese painting. Since ancient times, China painters have provided colorful expressive skills for China's artistic creation through line modeling. For painters, lines are not only the brushwork of painters, but also the means for painters to express their personality and emotions. It determines a painter's style, such as Wu Daozi's elegance, Li's fluency and richness, the implication of empty valley, Zhao's fullness and Wu Changshuo's simplicity, all of which are expressed by hooking, twisting and brushing lines.
The brush and ink lines of Chinese painting are created for a specific purpose. They can not only express the sense of movement, strength and rhythm, but also convey the meaning. Therefore, lines themselves have infinite vitality and aesthetic efficiency. They come from life and reflect both the objective life and the author's subjective feelings. Life gives pen and ink a creative basis, and painters use the function of lines to add luster to pen and ink.
Chinese painting course
Chinese painting always emphasizes statutes, emphasizes procedures and requires standardization of pen and ink. Since ancient times, it has continuously created, supplemented and enriched various programs. Pen has brushwork, ink has brushwork, and there are certain procedures for picture composition, line application, image creation, color configuration and even inscription printing. For example, various descriptions of figure painting, various strokes of landscape painting, and various points and hooks of flower-and-bird painting are all valuable experiences summed up by painters of past dynasties after years of creative practice and long-term life refining and accumulation, which have formed excellent cultural traditions and are valuable artistic heritage of the Chinese nation. Of course, this plan is not immutable, but with the development of the times, drawing lessons from foreign techniques, constantly improving and creating new plans, constantly enriching and developing, making it more perfect, conducive to the development of national art, and unique in the world art forest.
The creation of artistic conception of Chinese painting is the result of a series of internal efforts such as the author's life feeling, image thinking and artistic ideal. Art is not a reproduction of life, but through the author's repeated refining, generalization and high artistic processing, painstaking management, painstaking management and originality, we can create intriguing excellent paintings. In order to highlight the main picture, you can cut it into a blank "Silence is better than sound here". Chinese paintings often use less to win over more, take emptiness as reality, take emptiness as reality, and take white as black, with the aim of giving viewers room for re-creation. Ma Yuan and Xia Gui, painters of the Southern Song Dynasty, are known as "Ma Jiao" and "Xia Banbian" because of their concise compositions and good at overcoming complexity with simplicity. For example, in "Fishing Alone in the Cold River", Ma Yuan only drew a solitary boat with an old man bending over to fish, and carefully ticked a few ups and downs of light ink lines on the side of the boat to show that the river was quiet and there were no people and boats everywhere. Ma Yuan, on the other hand, is moving in "quietness". Through the dynamic depiction of the old man holding a pole and concentrating on the front line, he highlights the vastness of the surrounding natural environment and shows the chill on the river. Chinese painting does not attach importance to the visual authenticity of the image, gets rid of the limitation of time and space concept, and pursues the freedom of expression. Chinese painting emphasizes the objective grasp of the world, which is called "seeing the big from the small". A painter can condense, generalize and synthesize what he sees, hears, knows and thinks into a kind of macroscopic consciousness. "The creation of heaven and earth is in harmony with it, and the amplification of yin and yang is allowed to be divided and combined." The works created in this way are neither a simple representation of objective things in a specific time and space, nor a random display of subjectivity, but an artistic realm beyond the representation of time and space after the integration of objective world and subjective feelings, and also a unique expression method of Chinese painting with high generalization ability.
Types of Chinese painting
The types and main features of Chinese painting are the basic knowledge that needs to be understood first to appreciate Chinese painting. There are many categories of Chinese painting, and the differences are different. If divided by subject matter, there are three categories: figures, landscapes and flowers and birds; If it is distinguished by means of expression, it can be divided into meticulous brushwork, freehand brushwork and concurrent brushwork. Freehand brushwork can be divided into big freehand brushwork and small freehand brushwork. According to the different social functions and use forms of painting, Chinese painting can be divided into murals, New Year pictures, posters, comic books, group paintings, single paintings and illustrations. If distinguished by the identity of the author, the works of court professional painters are called institutional paintings, the works of literati are called literati paintings (or literati paintings), and the painters are folk artists who specialize in painting (also known as Master Dan Qing). In addition, there are finger painting, lacquer painting, boundary painting, iron painting, fan painting and so on. Chinese painting also has various mounting forms such as scrolls, books and screens.
Limited by space, it is impossible to describe the above categories and paintings one by one, but only the most commonly used ones are as follows:
Fine brushwork is to describe objects in a neat, meticulous and meticulous way. Fine brushwork is divided into two categories: fine brushwork and fine brushwork. Meticulous brushwork is a complete description of objects with ink lines, without coloring. Sketch was originally used for painting, but Li, a painter in Song Dynasty, developed it into an independent painting. His sketches, like flowing water, are endless and expressive. His "Five Horses Map" is a first-class sketch in ancient times. Figures and horses are drawn with single lines, with accurate proportions, clear musculoskeletal structure, and even the luster of horse coat is shown in detail. Heavy color meticulous painting means that meticulous painting is neat, fine and lays a heavy color. In the early days of China's painting, meticulous painting played a major role. The silk paintings found in Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha, Hunan Province are full of genuine meticulous colors, especially the T-shaped "non-clothing" in Fei Fei's tomb, with ingenious composition, fine line drawing and gorgeous colors, which shows that the meticulous colors reached a high level at that time. Heavy-colored pigments such as cinnabar and turquoise are widely used in ancient paintings, so paintings are called "Danqing", which shows the important position of meticulous heavy colors in ancient paintings.
What is freehand brushwork? This is a painting method that contrasts with meticulous painting. It needs extensive and concise pen and ink to describe the shape and spirit of the object to express the author's artistic conception. It is said that in the Tang Dynasty, Xuanzong ordered painters Li Sixun and Wu Daozi to paint the scenery of Jialing River together in Datong Hall. Li Sixun is good at meticulous painting. It took him several months to finish this mural. Wu Daozi painted three mountains and rivers in Jialing, Vandory in one day. It is conceivable that he can't paint with meticulous and colorful techniques. It must be broad and concise. This shows that there was a difference between meticulous painting and freehand brushwork. In Song Dynasty, Su Shi put forward "literati painting", arguing that painting "does not seek similarity", but expresses the author's subjective thoughts and feelings through writing feelings. The only painting he left behind was a dead tree and a stubborn stone, with one or two bamboos exposed behind the stone and several fine grasses under the tree. This painting expresses his thoughts and feelings that he is not satisfied with politically, but the great calligrapher speaks highly of him, saying that the branches are "bent without a clue" and the stones are "grotesque, like a hollow chest". After the Yuan Dynasty, freehand brushwork prevailed with simple brushwork, vivid modeling and hearty and interesting style. In this way, freehand brushwork and meticulous brushwork, which abide by tradition and law, have formed two schools with different styles, and they are competing to shine in the painting world and handed down from generation to generation.
However, for a long time, there has also been a tendency to blindly advocate freehand brushwork and deliberately belittle meticulous painting. The representative of literati painting who holds this prejudice is Dong Qichang in Ming Dynasty. Later, someone expounded his ideas and said, "There are paintings by literati and paintings by writers. Scholars' paintings are wonderful, so they don't have to ask for work; A writer's paintings are not necessarily wonderful. So, it doesn't work well, but it doesn't work well. "He is against literati and writers, against freehand brushwork and meticulous brushwork, which clearly shows his contempt for meticulous brushwork. This erroneous concept continues to this day, treating meticulous painting as inferior art, and even some young people learn painting instead of meticulous painting, which is very wrong.
Murals, the history of China murals, are certainly much longer than silk paintings. According to historical records, murals were very popular from Shang and Zhou Dynasties to Han and Tang Dynasties. At that time, pictures were painted on the walls of palaces, temples, grottoes, government agencies, universities, guest houses and graves. Themes include sages, loyalty, realistic figures, heaven and earth ghosts, mountain gods and sea monsters, landscapes, flowers and birds, and animals. It is really true that "all kinds of people are born" and "each does his best". In the future, murals have always been an important part of architectural decoration.
The earliest murals we can see are relics of the Qin and Han Dynasties. The murals of the Western Han Tomb found in Luoyang depict the scene of the couple's ascension to heaven in the form of long scrolls.
The existing ancient murals, the world-famous ones in Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, were built in the second year before Qin Dynasty (AD 366) and experienced the Northern Wei, Western Wei, Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties, Song and Yuan Dynasties. It was built in all previous dynasties, and it was the most prosperous in the Tang Dynasty. There are now 492 caves with historical murals and sculptures, making them one of the largest treasures of Buddhist art in the world. Among them, the "Bunsen Story" with the theme of expressing the so-called "self-sacrifice to save others" of Buddha Sakyamuni's predecessor occupies a prominent position. For example, the story "Give My Life to Feed the Tiger" in The Birth of Prince Sagana describes the story of Sakyamuni's predecessor, Prince Sagana, who sacrificed himself to feed the tigress. Sa Chenna and his two brothers went on a trip to the mountains. When they saw a tigress ready to swallow her cub because of hunger, the prince was full of pity, so he stabbed himself to death and devoted himself to feeding the tiger. The prince in the painting, with his eyes closed and his head down, lay quietly under the tiger's jaws, as if out of voluntary pity. As can be seen from this example, murals mainly use visual methods to publicize Buddhist teachings. However, there are also many works reflecting people's social life at that time, such as farming, fishing and hunting, architecture, flour milling, hulling and pottery making. There is a hunting map of the Northern Wei Dynasty, which depicts a scene of hunting life of nomadic people in the northwest. One of them jumped up and bent down to shoot the tiger. Another man galloped on horseback, chasing a group of wild animals such as antelopes. There were many other wild animals in the picture, which were very athletic and magnificent. Dunhuang murals have a process of artistic development. The Southern and Northern Dynasties were dominated by Buddhist story paintings, which inherited the tradition of painting in the Han Dynasty and obviously absorbed the characteristics of Indian Buddhist art. By the Sui Dynasty, foreign art gradually merged into China style. By the Tang Dynasty, Dunhuang murals had developed into a highly typical art with China style. The main content of Dunhuang murals in Tang Dynasty is "Jing bian", that is, to publicize Buddhist stories vividly. There are more than one hundred "Pure Land Changes in the West" in the Mogao Grottoes. "West" refers to "western paradise"; "Pure Land" is a pure Buddhist country. "Pure Land Change in the Western Heaven" is often magnificent, centering on Amitabha Buddha and surrounded by bodhisattvas of all sizes. In addition, there are geisha music, birds and animals, pavilions and pavilions, showing a colorful scene. This painting is full of imagination, but it is actually a "disguised" reflection of the hierarchical feudal system and the enjoyable life of landlords and nobles at that time.
After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), most tomb murals in the Tang Dynasty were found near Xi 'an, Shaanxi. There are a large number of murals in the tombs of Li Shou, Li Xian, Li Zhongrun and Li Xianhui, including figures, birds and animals, landscapes, buildings and household appliances. Among them, the most wonderful works are those depicting court figures, which are the image materials for us to study the history, culture and life of the Tang Dynasty. For example, The Portrait of Maids in the Tomb of Li Xianhui (Princess Yongtai) depicts the expressions of a group of maids from different angles, focusing on their plump, dignified, luxurious, restrained, lonely and empty appearance and internal characteristics. Beautiful image, rigorous structure, smooth lines, bright colors and high technical level.
The mural of Yongle Palace in Ruicheng, Shanxi Province is a masterpiece of Yuan Dynasty. It is a well-preserved and highly artistic ancient mural in China. Lv Dongbin, one of the "Eight Immortals" in folklore, grew up in this area. The murals in Yongle Palace are Taoist stories, which show the worship of Laozi and Lv Dongbin. In the Sanqing Hall of the main hall, there is the largest map of Yuan Chao, which is solemn and magnificent. The whole picture is distributed on the four walls of the main hall, with eight main images as the center, and a * * * painted 286 people, each of whom is more than three meters high. In these group images, the main image is solemn, the jade girl is gentle and beautiful, the warrior is flying, and the real person longs for immortality, all of which are real and moving. For the description of the vast ranks, the author skillfully deals with the mutual echo between the characters, some gather on their backs, some turn around and talk, some look around, some listen to each other, making it a unified and changeable whole. Inherited and developed the traditional methods of Tang and Song murals in techniques, and used simple, round and powerful pens; Brilliant and calm colors, rich in decoration. The other two halls are a bit like comics and folk custom paintings, with specific and complicated contents. In these murals, the names of the author Ma and his son, Zhu and his disciples and Zhang are preserved. These folk painters and celebrities have no historical records, inherited the excellent tradition of ancient painting in China and made important contributions!
The murals of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom are very popular. Its contents are often associated with revolution, but most of them have been destroyed. Now there are dozens of relics in Nanjing, Suzhou and other places. The watchtower of Linjiang in Tangzi Street, Nanjing, the guarding city map of Fangshan in Jiangning, the besieged city map of Jixi, and the watchtower map of Jinhua depict the heroic scene of the Taiping Army during its offensive and defensive, and praise the magnificent spirit of anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism.
Fine brushwork (or small freehand brushwork): It is a painting method that combines fine brushwork and freehand brushwork. In recent years, because meticulous brushwork is too delicate and labor-consuming, the number of people who specialize in meticulous brushwork has gradually decreased. Many painters who are good at meticulous brushwork take the advantages of both meticulous brushwork and freehand brushwork and turn to meticulous brushwork.
Portrait painting: painting with the main theme of expressing characters' images and deeds, collectively referred to as portrait painting. Due to different subject categories, it can be divided into Taoist paintings, ladies' paintings, portraits, genre paintings and historical story paintings. Due to different expressions and styles, it can be divided into several categories. Delicate description and outline coloring are called meticulous figures; Painting with pure lines or a little ink is called figure painting; On the basis of line drawing, strong color is applied, which is called a figure with meticulous brushwork and heavy color; In addition, the ink is the main color, and the color is slightly faded, which is called the meticulous color. Freehand figure painting is a kind of concise and summarized pen and ink, which focuses on depicting the charm of characters. For example, Liang Kai, a figure painter in the Song Dynasty who is famous for his conciseness, changed meticulous brushwork to ink brushwork, striving for conciseness and clarity, which is more difficult than meticulous brushwork.
China's figure painting originated the earliest. According to Confucius' Family Talk, there were murals of historical figures in the Zhou Dynasty, and the silk painting "Dragon and Phoenix Map" unearthed from Chu Tomb in the Warring States Period is the earliest known single figure painting. Wei, Jin, Sui and Tang Dynasties are important periods for the development of figure painting. Cao Buxing, Gu Kaizhi, Lu Tanwei, Zhang Sengyou, Yan, Wu Daozi, Natalie, Zhou Fang and Sun Wei all made outstanding contributions to figure painting in the art history of China. During the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty, the literati painting system began to take shape because of the royal aristocrats and literati's active participation in painting practice and theoretical research. As the mainstream of painting in Yuan Dynasty turned to landscapes and flowers and birds, figure painting declined. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were Chen Hongshou who was good at drawing figures, and there were also painters who were good at drawing freehand figures, such as Hua Yan, Huang Shen and Luo Pin. Ren Xiong, Ren Xun and Ren Yi, the "three ministers at sea" in the late Qing Dynasty, made new progress in the style and techniques of freehand figure painting.
Landscape painting: a painting with natural scenery as the main body is called landscape painting. All famous mountains and rivers, field villages, urban gardens, places of interest, palace terraces, boats and horses can be included in landscape painting. If subdivided, it can be divided into ink painting, turquoise, jade, light crimson and so on. Jiehua is classified as "Jiehua Loutai" among thirteen schools, and some are classified as branches of landscape painting.
Ink-wash landscape painting is a kind of landscape painting that is painted with ink and not colored. The legend of ink and wash landscapes originated from Wang Wei, a poet and painter in Tang Dynasty. The book "Landscape Strategy" written for him said: "Fu painted Taoism, taking ink painting as the top, and it was natural. Or write a picture of a hundred miles away, east and west, north and south, Waner is today, spring, summer, autumn and winter, born in the pen. " In other words, ink painting is the most handy way to express nature, which can be seen from small to large and transcends time and space. The author can fully display and accept the rich and colorful sense of pen and ink, and its multi-level and unexpected changes are difficult for any color to work.
Greening landscape can be divided into big green and small green. You Chuntu by Zhan Ziqian in Sui Dynasty is regarded as the earliest green landscape in China. In the Tang Dynasty, Li Sixun and Li Zhaodao determined the format of green landscape. Green coloring focuses on shade, thickness in thinness and elegance in thickness. Turquoise uses many kinds of pigments. Judging from the main colors, azurite and turquoise are the main colors, which look brilliant and solemn, with a sense of prosperity and lush vegetation. Small turquoise is mainly due to the different proportions of ink and turquoise, and some small turquoise is dyed on the basis of light crimson color. Little turquoise is more flexible and its expressions are more and more diverse. Large turquoise requires neatness and elegance, while small turquoise can be written part-time, and the technique is relaxed and lively. Now most landscape painters like to paint with small turquoise.
Jinbi landscape: it is another coloring form of green landscape, that is, it takes azurite and azurite as the background color, and finally draws the outline with gold thread. Through this golden thread, the landscape painting is decorated more brilliantly, like a painted algae well. Depicting a rich sunset scene, reflecting a layer of golden light on the edge of the rock to enhance the sunny atmosphere, covering the prominent rock surface with a thin layer of gold powder, or setting off the sunny autumn colors with rouge and white powder to make turquoise and resplendent.
Pale crimson landscape: it is a light-colored landscape painting with ochre as the main tone on the basis of ink painting. As early as the Five Dynasties, Dong Yuan's paintings had already appeared in the embryonic form of pale crimson landscape, and it was not until Huang Zijiu inherited Dong Yuan's method in the Yuan Dynasty that he completely formed the format of pale crimson coloring. Both Shen in Ming Dynasty and Wang in Qing Dynasty painted in this elegant style.
Boundary painting: it is a painting theme with the performance of architecture as the main content. It uses long, straight and even lines to express classical buildings such as pavilions. It is difficult to draw straightness only by hand, so it is called boundary painting. For example, Guo Zhongshu in Song Dynasty, Wang Zhenpeng and Li Rongjin in Yuan Dynasty, Chou Ying in Ming Dynasty, Yuan Jiang and Yao Yuan in Qing Dynasty were all famous painters.
Flower-and-bird painting is a branch of traditional painting in China, which mainly depicts animals and plants and has distinctive national characteristics. Further subdivision, it can also be divided into subfamilies such as flowers, feathers, fruits and vegetables, livestock and beasts, grasshoppers, scales and so on. Through the description of natural creatures, it expresses the author's thoughts and feelings, embodies the spirit of the times, and indirectly reflects social life, with strong lyricism and profound connotation. Flower-and-bird painting can be divided into meticulous flower-and-bird painting and freehand flower-and-bird painting according to the fine or unrestrained description method. Because of different ink colors, it can be divided into simple flower-and-bird, ink flower-and-bird, thick ink flower-and-bird, colorful flower-and-bird and bone-setting flower-and-bird.
China's flower-and-bird painting has a long history. It turns out that flower-and-bird painting is attached to decorative painting. As early as six or seven thousand years ago, various patterns such as flowers and birds, running deer, jumping frogs, branches and leaves of flowers and trees were common on painted pottery vessels in the Neolithic Age, but they have not yet become independent works of art. Although the tomb murals and portrait stone carvings in the Warring States, Qin and Han Dynasties mainly depict people's activities, they are still inseparable from flowers and birds as a foil. For example, the silk painting "Phoenix Map" unearthed in Changsha more than 2,000 years ago has the image of dragons and phoenixes. During the Han and Six Dynasties, flower-and-bird paintings began to take shape. The upper mural of Taocang in the Eastern Han Dynasty, Two Crows Living in a Tree, is the earliest known single flower-and-bird painting.
Flower-and-bird painting officially became an independent branch of painting, which began in the early Tang Dynasty and matured in the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty. At this time, a court painter, represented by Huang Quan in West Shu, appeared. In order to meet the needs of the court, their painting style is neat, meticulous and magnificent, and they are good at making rare birds and flowers. Outside the Painting Academy, Xu Xi of the Southern Tang Dynasty was good at Hua Ting wild birds, and showed strong wild interest in ink painting, which was the originator of setting bone flowers. Because Xu and Huang have different situations and painting styles, there is a saying that "Huang's family is rich and rich, and Xu's family is wild".
With the rise of literati painting in Yuan and Ming Dynasties, Xu, Huang and others were impacted and lost their former glory. In the early Qing Dynasty, the retro air enveloped the painting world, and the court admired Huang Xu, which was beautiful, sweet, vulgar and lifeless. Xu Xi's pastel, Yunnan's patriarchal clan system, has no bones, forming a weak and graceful "Changzhou Painting School"; Shen Quanshi's Huang Jiagou line drawing is exquisite, and its influence is as far away as Japan. Although they have technology, they lack innovation. At the same time, Zhu Da (Badashanren) and Shi Tao have sprung up suddenly, and the eight ink paintings of flowers and birds are concise, with exaggerated images, crazy styles and novel compositions; Shi Tao's pen and ink are bold and varied, advocating "pen and ink should keep pace with the times" and emphasizing his own unique style. Zhu and Shi opposed archaization and advocated innovation, which brought vitality to dying flower-and-bird paintings and had a great influence on later generations. "Yangzhou Eight Eccentrics" liberated and developed pen and ink skills and pursued art.