Refers to the description of all aspects of a character's appearance. Portrait not only refers to people's figure, appearance and clothing, but also includes people's posture, expression and habits. Portrait description is an important aspect of portraying characters and one of the important methods of shaping characters.

In real life, everyone's portrait is different. Because everyone's background, occupation, status, education, experience and personality are different, it will inevitably leave different marks on the appearance of the characters. Portrait and personality are closely related. The quality of portrait description is very important to show the characters. Successful portrait description can make the characters more vivid and prominent. Therefore, excellent writers attach great importance to it.

To describe a character's appearance, it is very important to describe his eyes. The eyes are the windows of the soul, which are the most expressive and can best convey the secrets of the characters. Mr. Lu Xun once said: "To draw a person's characteristics economically, it is best to draw his eyes ... If you draw a full head of hair, even if it is lifelike, it is meaningless." ("How do I write a novel") He wrote in "Blessing". Two months later, when she was forced to come to Lujia for the second time because of her remarriage and her husband's death, although she looked at people "along her eyes", "there were still some tears in her eyes, and her eyes were not as energetic as before." When she knew that everyone around her was laughing at her remarriage, she always "stared and said nothing"; Before her death, "only those eyes that occasionally appear can show that she is a living thing." By describing the change of Xianglinsao's eyes, the author profoundly and vividly reflects the suffering gradually imposed on her by the feudal ethics of cannibalism.

Portrait description first encounters the problem of perspective. Portrait description has three perspectives: the author's perspective, the character self-observation's perspective and other characters' perspectives. Which perspective to choose to write depends on the author's creative intention and the need to express the character.

First, write from the perspective of the author's observation.

This angle is convenient for the author to express his love, hate and hatred, and express his distinct tendency. For example, Zhao Shuli described the portrait of San Xiangu in Marriage of Little Black Boys: "San Xiangu is different from everyone. Although she is 45 years old, she prefers to be an old lady, but her little shoes need embroidery, her trouser legs need wrapping, the hair on the top door is peeled off, and she covers them with a black handkerchief. Unfortunately, the official powder didn't smooth the wrinkles on her face, and it looked like donkey dung.

Second, write from the perspective of the character self-observation.

This angle is convenient to combine the portrait description and psychological description of the characters organically. For example, Lu Xun wrote in Gao Old Master Q: "On this day, from morning to afternoon, he spent all his time looking in the mirror, reading China History Textbook and looking up Yuan Lefan's Compendium ... First of all, he thought that his parents really didn't care about their children. When he was a child, he liked to climb mulberry branches and steal mulberry to eat. I broke my head, but I didn't give it a proper treatment. So far, I still have a sharp scar on my left eyebrow. Although he has long hair all the time, he can barely cover it by combing it obliquely from left to right, but it is also a disadvantage to see the sharp fork. If it is seen by female students, it will probably be looked down upon. He put down the mirror and sighed bitterly. The author asked the master Gao Lao

Third, write from the point of view of others.

This angle is easy to get the artistic effect of killing two birds with one stone. In the third episode of A Dream of Red Mansions, Cao Xueqin described that when Lin Daiyu met Jia Baoyu for the first time, she observed Jia Baoyu's whole body dress with the sensitivity and care of a girl. She looked at it: "But he is a young childe: he wears a purple crown with a bunch of hair embedded in his head, and Mei Qi is playing with pearls and gold with two dragons ... His face is like the moon in the Mid-Autumn Festival, his face is like a flower in the spring dawn, and his temples are like knives. There is a golden dragonfly on the neck, and a five-color silk belt with a beautiful jade tied on it ... the more you look at it, the fatter you look at it; Looking forward to family, if you laugh; A natural charm, all between the eyebrows and eyes; There are thousands of emotions in my life, and I know how to pile up my eyes. " This is a portrait of Baoyu painted through Daiyu's eyes. This portrait naturally incorporates the emotional color of Daiyu-it can be said that it kills two birds with one stone.

Portrait description can basically be completed at one time, and then dyed repeatedly, gradually enriched; It can also be divided into many times, as the tuxedo of the story is gradually completed. Portrait description can be nuanced description, simple sketch or cartoon brushwork. It can be a static description or a dynamic description. Russian writers' portrait description of Aubrey Lomov is meticulous, while Li's description belongs to simple sketch. Chekhov's Portrait Description in The Trapped. China writers often use dynamic description, that is, they often describe portraits in action, while western writers often use static description, but this is not absolute, and there are exceptions. For example, Tolstoy objected to using dozens of pages to describe the portrait of the protagonist statically, and advocated that "the portrait of the protagonist should be expressed through the movement itself, through struggle, conflict and behavior." (A literary work by Tolstoy)

In terms of portrait description techniques, we can also highlight the main features of portraits through metaphor, symbol and exaggeration. In short, there are various techniques to describe portraits, either using one method alone or using multiple methods alternately. However, no matter which method is adopted, we should pay attention to capturing the appearance characteristics of the characters and "convey the spirit from the outside to the inside" to avoid making the mistakes of facebook, set-up and stylization.