General characteristics of Chinese painting
To learn Chinese painting, we must first understand the characteristics of Chinese painting, so this book begins here.
It is not easy to answer the above questions concisely in a few sentences. Chinese painting has a long history. It adapted to the cultural soil of China and took root and blossomed, with its own characteristics in conception, composition, techniques and stylized expression. These characteristics are exactly what Chinese painting theorists are discussing and summarizing at present. Here are a few examples.
First, focus on the idea, there is an answer-the idea of Chinese painting
In the creation of Chinese painting, conception is the first, and many painting theorists first emphasize this point, whether painting landscapes, figures or flowers and birds.
In the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Yanyuan wrote a passage about "Six Laws" in Notes on Famous Paintings of Past Dynasties: "The image of a husband should be shaped, and it should be shaped with backbone." The backbone is similar. Everything comes from the general idea and depends on the end of the pen. "He believes that intention is the purpose. Only in painting can there be abnormal and strange meaning.
Hua Guang, a famous monk who painted plum blossoms in Song Dynasty, was called Zhong Ren. As a work of Huaguang, there is a passage in Painting Plum Finger, which begins with "Painting Plum, Business First". In Qing Dynasty, Fang Xun wrote "On Painting in Jingshan". Here, he also emphasized the relationship between conception and painting. He said: "To paint, we must first define our own position, which means strange, high, far, deep and ancient." He believes that mediocre paintings will be mediocre and vulgar paintings will be vulgar, because paintings lack the painter's most precious "conception", so works are mediocre.
Leonardo da Vinci, an Italian painter in the Renaissance, had a similar experience. He once said, "A painter should describe two most important things, people and people's thoughts and intentions." This is very consistent with the idea of "wonderful and dense" put forward by Gu Xiaozhi, a figure painter in Jin Dynasty.
Where does the meaning come from? First, the painter's rich observation of real life and fully accumulated creative experience; Another point is the painter's self-cultivation, so that before the creation, what to draw and how to draw have formed a mature idea in his mind.
Song Dynasty painter Wen was praised by others as "well-thought-out", that is, before he started writing, he had the image of bamboo in his mind and was ready to start writing. "Planned" has become an idiom praised by our country for being good at planning and arranging things.
Before Zhang Yanyuan put forward the concept of "conception", Sheikh in the southern production era had the theory of "creativity" and "clear conception". Creative painting is unconventional, accurate in conception, living by scenery, with few strokes but many meanings. In this sense, as a painter, we should not only pay attention to practicing calligraphy and sharpen our personal performance skills in peacetime, but more importantly, we should seriously strengthen the skills of practicing ideas. It is worth noting that many painters often only pay attention to the practice of writing and ignore the practice of meaning.
Second, use line modeling to express the spirit-the modeling rules of Chinese painting
Chinese painting is in the form of lines, through which outlines, textures and volumes are drawn. Goethe, a German poet, said that art uses light to express its vivid expressions, and visible light is one of the modeling means in western painting. Chinese painting, on the other hand, is dominated by line modeling, which clearly distinguishes between Chinese and western painting in modeling means. However, this does not mean that western painting completely rejects the use of lines, but that light can be used as the main language of painting. French Rodin once emphasized that "a prescribed line runs through the universe", which refers to how plastic arts break away from the universe, and did not regard it as the main means of expression of painting. Traditional Chinese painting, on the other hand, has accumulated a very rich line type and skillfully portrayed various images, whether it is the broken lines of mountains and rivers or the lines of clothes.
"Writing God in Form" is a famous saying of Gu Kaizhi, a painter in Jin Dynasty, which established China's aesthetic view that artistic god is superior to form. It is very different from modern European aesthetics, which is purely abstract, that is, painting people is not only similar in shape, but also similar in spirit, drawing people's mental outlook, not stopping at the simulation of shape, not sticking to the truth of nature. This theory is the height that artists should strive to reach when establishing art. Under the guidance of this theory, many outstanding works with vivid descriptions have appeared in the past dynasties, which has become an important standard to guide painting.
Third, multi-point perspective counts white as black-the composition rules of Chinese painting
Chinese painting not only uses focus perspective, but also uses scattered perspective, which not only strictly adheres to the real space and white cloth, but also breaks the real space and white cloth according to the needs of composition, so that when an object appears in the picture, it can change its image and position according to the artistic needs of the object on the picture. Peony flowers below the horizon can also be placed above the Zhu Ping line to achieve the best perspective effect.
Chinese painting pays special attention to the management of blank space, and often borrows calligraphy techniques to make white black, that is, the part without painting should be carefully scrutinized and treated like the part with painting.
Fourth, the harmony between color and class-the color rule of Chinese painting
The color of Chinese painting is not limited by the cold and warm tone of light source, but pays more attention to the inherent color of the object itself, rather than emphasizing the conditional color under special light. When painting an object, give it basic colors to achieve harmony between color and object, color and line, color and ink, and color and color.
Five, the scene is vivid-the artistic conception of Chinese painting
Chinese painting requires the combination of pen and ink, emotion and scenery. In reality, there are infinitely rich scenes, and the painter has a strong image appeal. With this feeling, the painter aroused the passion to describe these scenes, so the works reappeared in the form of replicas of the scenes, blending the scenes together.
As for the vivid charm, that is, the artistic spirit created by the painter, which is different from the general sketch painting, should be vibrant, fresh and lively, poetic and fascinating to the viewer. If you don't show such vivid and rich connotations, you can't give people these feelings, and you can't reach the fascinating artistic conception of Chinese painting.
Six, poetry, calligraphy and painting, printing paper and pen-the unique form of Chinese painting.
It can be said that only Chinese painting can have the practice of inscription and seal. Not only can literati paintings show their unique skills in poetry, painting and calligraphy, but even ordinary paintings always need inscriptions and seals to have a strong traditional artistic atmosphere.
Inscriptions and poems can improve or supplement the audience's appreciation and understanding of the works, and can also enrich the structural changes, playing a variety of roles in setting off each other, complementing each other, embellishing and balancing the composition.
The performance of tools and materials of Chinese painting also determines the characteristics of Chinese painting. Chinese painting uses silk and paper, especially the appearance of raw rice paper, which gives full play to the pen interest and ink color. The permeability of Xuan paper and the sharp cone of the brush make the nib change endlessly, which produces wonderful effects. At the same time, various imitations and descriptions, paintings and brushwork have been formed.
From sketch to freehand brushwork
At the beginning of traditional Chinese painting, copying was used as an entry means to gradually outline objects. Then turn to freehand brushwork, not only freehand brushwork, but also meticulous meticulous meticulous brushwork, which also has its freehand brushwork elements. Because when Chinese painting depicts objects, whether it is meticulous or freehand brushwork, its handling methods are freehand brushwork, not simply copying them again, but trying to take the essence and forget the roughness, simplifying the complex, highly refining and processing the objects, focusing on the internal understanding rather than the realistic representation of light and color.
According to Dong Qichang's records, many famous landscape painters created their works with real landscapes as their themes, such as "Li Sixun wrote overseas mountains, Ma Yuan Xia Gui wrote Qiantang Mountain, Zhao Wuxing wrote Xue Yingshan, and Huang Zijiu wrote Haishan". Later generations look at these paintings and feel that they are both sketching and freehand brushwork; Learn from nature and not be trapped by natural phenomena. Take Huang Zijiu's Fuchun Shan Jutu as an example. The author takes Fuchun Mountain as the background, not the environmental geography map of Fuchun Mountain, but the idealized realm of Huang Zijiu.
This shows how ancient painters recognized and expressed various images of nature, turned physical objects into artistic images, and gradually made them regular and stylized, and also showed their rich expression techniques.
By comparing the Biography of Chinese Painting with other paintings and the application of this scheme by painters of past dynasties, readers can feel the process of Chinese painting changing from natural ecology to art form, and how to process and summarize it. From this, we can also understand the handling methods from sketching to freehand brushwork, and master the modeling characteristics of Chinese painting from the technique.
Prominent theme
Wang Keyu in the Ming Dynasty said in Coral Outline: "The paintings painted by the ancients have profound meanings and have their own owners when they put pen to paper." "Master" is also the theme. Highlighting the theme is a universal feature of artistic creation. Once a theme idea is formed, you can decide what theme to express, then decide the choice of materials, even the title of the work, and what kind of expression to adopt, all of which depend on what the theme expresses. For example, Yan's masterpiece "The Story of the Orchid Pavilion in Xiao Yi" (biography) in the Tang Dynasty has many twists and turns, but Yan chose two typical plots of intention "intentional, deceitful and deceptive" and eloquence "unintentional, kind and deceived" to highlight the theme. The theme is highlighted in the word "earning", and other details are abbreviated or summarized, which is completely in line with the description of this fact in the Law Book.
Finding a good theme in Chinese painting creation does not mean that everyone can highlight the theme. If you only want vivid description of the characters, or rich changes in the picture, or direct description, it can't be regarded as a prominent theme. The author only considers what should be highlighted from the unique laws and expression techniques of Chinese painting, and is good at summarizing and determining the theme according to the form of Chinese painting, and using the depiction of characters and the organization of details to set off the theme, so that the viewer can understand the painter's intention without explaining it from the picture. So what does Guo think? Quot when painting, the proposition is the top grade, and there is no painting without a topic. "
In the case of a clear theme, we should also give the work a most appropriate title, in most cases, it should be on the screen. The title should be concise and meaningful, or it can directly reveal the theme or imply the meaning of the theme, so as to make the finishing point.
Accumulated material
Literary and art workers need to accumulate a lot of materials in their lives. Writers use words, and painters sometimes use words, but they mainly sketch with brushes. When a painter is in contact with natural scenery, flowers and figures, he should always take sketches as records and collect the observed objects with a brush at any time. Like the painter Qi Baishi, for all kinds of niche. The physiological structure has been carefully observed and understood. Persistence also exercises the artist's ability to observe life and shape.
Mr. Lu Xun mentioned, "The author must practice sketching outdoors or indoors every day to make progress. It is most beneficial to sketch outside. "
The original material recorded from life, like the mined ore, is also the source of living water, which is infinitely vivid and rich. Compared with the material obtained by taking photos and copying pictorial, it is cordial and profound. In the practice of in-depth exploration of natural scenery and people, accumulating a lot of materials and conceiving new painting themes will cause endless communication.
Theme type
Themes are different from materials, which are smelted ores, and themes are the most suitable materials to express a certain theme from a large number of materials. If the materials are not refined, the content to be expressed will lose its distinctiveness and typicality.
Explaining genre with a popular metaphor is like tailoring different styles according to different body shapes. For example, it is not appropriate to use the genre of small picture books to make large murals. Another example is "The Orchid Pavilion in Xiao Yi" mentioned earlier, in which the genre of figure painting is better, while "The Map of the Yangtze River" is of course better in the form of a long scroll of landscape painting. And all kinds of Yongmei's poems and paintings, it's perfect to surprise your mouth with flowers.
There are differences in figures, landscapes, flowers and other forms and genres, such as meticulous painting, freehand brushwork, heavy color and ink painting. After determining the theme of the painting, the author should start with the content and then consider the genre to be used. Such as long or short, whether to use a big scene or a close-up pen.
Two basic skills
1. In the process of the formation of Chinese painting, there are many traditional expressions. To master these methods, a common method is: works before the mausoleum and teachers' drawings. Wang Shigu, a seven-foot painter, copied everyone in Song and Yuan Dynasties, and all of them had considerable attainments. After decades of copying and experience, he feels that he has fully grasped the green mountains and green waters, which will be discussed in detail in the chapter of copying.
Second, the rich environment in life is the painter's most vivid picture book, and the painter should constantly hone himself in life. Chinese painting has always emphasized taking nature as a teacher. Only from this rich treasure can we develop artistic treasures, get inspiration from nature and collect a wide range of materials.
The two basic skills complement each other and are indispensable. They just copied the manuscripts of their predecessors. After a long time, they lose the ability to create independently. If you only rely on sketching, you will often lose the traditional brushwork.
After the painter has a good foundation of copying Chinese painting, life is the most important. Shi Tao, a painter in Qing Dynasty, said that "a pen is not a life without spirit", and it is not good to think hard in a room. The disadvantage is that there is no image collected by yourself, and you know nothing about the character and mental outlook of the characters, so this image will be conceptualized. On the contrary, when you draw the most familiar characters in life, once you close your eyes, people's spiritual temperament, voice, face and smile will be much more vivid.
Take the painter as an example. Although both workers and farmers are laborers, they have different personalities and temperament, and they need silent polishing in life to stand out. Painting landscapes, flowers and birds is also inseparable from field trips, sketches and experiences. Of course, as an artist, in addition to pen and ink and the basis of life, the cultivation of character and morality can not be ignored. In the past, people used to say that books are like people, and paintings are like people, that is, the character and accomplishment of a painter are often naturally revealed in his works.
In the Qing Dynasty, Wang Xing wrote in the book "On Painting in Dongzhuang" that "those who learn painting should first make it expensive". In the Qing Dynasty, Shen Zongchun said in qi zhou and Xue Hua: "The style of writing is as high as the character", "The mind draws the shape, and people are divided into evil". It is enough to show that painting and calligraphy critics should not only analyze the artist's artistic level, but also comprehensively analyze the painter's character and moral character. Only painters with high artistic quality deserve people's study and respect.
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