First, the unique aesthetics of Chinese painting.

Chinese painting is obviously different from the west in tool materials, artistic pursuit and aesthetic ideal, and has a distinct and unique artistic form.

1: tool material

The tool materials of Chinese painting are pen, ink, paper and silk. Compared with the brush pigments used in western painting, it is significantly different.

The pen of Chinese painting is a writing brush. Brush is characterized by softness and elasticity, sharp tip and sharp edge, which is beneficial to line drawing and can draw smooth, euphemistic and dynamic lines by using various strokes. A major feature of Chinese painting is to use lines to shape images and express feelings.

Ink, Chinese painting ink, is refined from pure fine tung oil fume or pine smoke. According to the size of the mixing ratio with water, there can be subtle shades. To some extent, China painters got rid of the mysterious eye color in nature, and focused on the Mo Yun in the picture and the capture of the spiritual temperament of objects, thus reaching an elegant artistic realm.

Paper silk used in traditional Chinese painting has good ink rhyme performance, so that ink permeates it and naturally forms different shades.

It can be said that the pen and ink of Chinese painting and paper and silks complement each other, and * * * builds an artistic world with appropriate shades and brushstrokes.

2. Depiction means

The purpose of China's painting to depict the image is not to create a visual fantasy world like western realistic painting, but to some extent, to regard painting as a "gesture" behavior, that is, to express the creator's affection through the body. Light, shadow, light and color are all out of the attention of the creator. With the help of flexible flying lines and free pen and ink, a unique artistic world full of the emotion and will of the creative subject is created, which is the real purpose of Chinese painting artists when depicting images.

3. Overall effect

Compared with western painting, China's painting has a remarkable feature of "blank" in overall effect. China painters don't paint the background except the main body, leaving more blanks in the picture. Blanks in Chinese paintings with different shapes not only form a rhythm change, but also leave room for imagination, which has irreplaceable artistic effects. The blank of the picture is the result of the painter simply using pen and ink. Chinese painting has a tradition of advocating simplicity.

Second, the aesthetic characteristics of Chinese painting

Painting is an art that reflects the beauty of reality and expresses people's aesthetic feelings with lines, colors and shapes in a two-dimensional space. The general aesthetic characteristics of painting art are mainly manifested in the beauty of lines, colors and composition. China traditional painting has its unique aesthetic system, aesthetic viewpoint and aesthetic category.

1: artistic conception

Artistic conception is an important category of China's classical aesthetics, and it is also the most national aesthetic standard of China's traditional painting. It is not only the principle of painter's creation, but also the principle of appreciation. Artistic conception is the perfect fusion of emotion and scenery. The image that can produce artistic conception is not an ordinary image, but an image full of vitality, which can reflect the highly perfect unity of subject and object, form and spirit, emptiness and reality, movement and stillness, emotion and scenery. Its fundamental aesthetics is not satisfied with the external form imitation of limited things, but should express infinity in the limit, creating "images outside the image" and "scenery outside the scene", which can arouse readers' aesthetic imagination. Artistic conception is the essence of China's painting aesthetics system, which embodies the fundamental spirit of China's art and is also the highest realm pursued by his paintings.

2. Unity of form and spirit

Shape is shape, which is a description of the shape of an object; God, like a spirit, grasps the inherent characteristics of things.

3. Vivid charm

Charm vividly and accurately summarizes the aesthetic characteristics and basic spirit of China's painting art, which is the most fundamental aesthetic requirement of the traditional aesthetic standard of China's painting art.

Vivid charm focuses on macroscopic nature and life, and is based on the unity of artistic life structure and natural life movement, which has profound meaning of artistic ontology. If the painting works are lifelike, it will create endless aesthetic imagination space for the viewer.

4. The concept of harmony between man and nature

Its general connotation is that the relationship between man and nature is intimate and unified. Artists should blend in with nature.

5. The concept of unity of mind and matter

In China's classical aesthetics, "mind" represents the aesthetic subject, that is, people, and "thing" represents the aesthetic object, that is, objective things. "Unity of mind and matter" is an important category of China's ancient painting theory.

6. Unity of reality and reality

The unity of opposites between reality and reality, "virtual" refers to fiction, virtual spirit and illusion; "Reality" refers to entities, facts and objects. Chinese painting attaches great importance to the relationship between reality and fiction. Chinese painting pays attention to implication, pursues poetry and painting, opposes direct exposure, and correctly handles the relationship between reality and fiction, which is an important means to express the artistic conception of Chinese painting.

7. Neutralization is the most important thing

Neutralization refers to the unity of harmony and rhyme. Confucius' golden mean is neutralization. Chinese painting attaches great importance to the harmony of the main artistic conception.

One of the basic skills of Chinese painting-using a pen

Zhang Yanyuan said in the Tang Dynasty: "The image of a husband should be tangible and have a backbone. The shape of the spine depends entirely on the will and the pen. " Zhang Yanyuan emphasized the relationship between pen and conception modeling. Conception needs modeling, and modeling needs a pen, which has become the basis of Chinese painting.

1: pen and line

In Chinese painting, the pen is actually a line, and the line is the most basic modeling method in Chinese painting. Line is by no means a description of the outline in the shaping of the body, but also shows the texture, sense of quantity and movement of the object. For example, in landscape painting, axe chopping gives people a strong and tough feeling; Pima gives people a soft feeling and so on. The use of lines reflects the ability of China painters to generalize, refine and understand objective images, and their great creativity in controlling objects.

In Chinese painting, the relationship between line and shape is mainly reflected in the communication between the character of line itself and the author. As Shi Tao said, "I write almost everything in the world with pen and ink." The lyrical freehand brushwork of pen and ink (line) is due to the various changes of the painter's brush strokes, which makes the line itself have an ever-changing posture. On the one hand, colorful line forms can arouse viewers' association with the beauty of similar objects in various images of real life, making abstract lines an indirect tortuous reflection of the formal beauty of real things, thus causing people's different feelings. On the other hand, in the process of brush strokes, the painter's personal feelings, interests and thoughts are injected, so that the lines in Chinese painting have obvious characteristics of the painter's personality, achieving lyricism, fluency and freehand brushwork, and then expressing the painter's aesthetic ideal, temperament, mind and personality. This is what the ancients called "painting as a person".

2. Pen and meaning

Zhang Yanyuan's theory of "all ridges are based on meaning and belong to the pen" regards meaning as the "root" of the pen, and "root" is the commander in chief. "Yi" contains extremely complex cultural connotations and is a complex reflection of the painter's subjective world, that is, various feelings, ideal cultivation and temperament. "Meaning" is subjective, but it is not purely subjective fiction. It is through the use of lines that China painters realize this "lyrical freehand brushwork". Therefore, in the Qing Dynasty, Bu Yantu thought that "it means great use ..... so a good painting must focus on the pen first, not on the pen, not on the pen. ..... So those who learn must think before they act, which means that the pen is used for the purpose. "

As a subjective world activity, "meaning" itself cannot be directly "written". The main point of Chinese painting with intention is to make a pen with god and lead god with meaning, that is, the so-called "meaning to god" and "god to power" "Intention before writing" means that the painter has formed an idea before writing, and once the pen is written on paper, it is intended to be in the pen.

It is under this modality that China painters often grasp their ever-changing emotional process, seize the sudden and fleeting creative inspiration, keep the freshness and continuity of creative impulse, and never lose the painting machine in one go.

3. Pen and power

The use of Qi requires the painter to concentrate all his energy on the pen end, and writing will naturally produce strength, which is "pen power". Because the temperament, self-restraint, emotion and thought that constitute the painter's "meaning" are different, the spirit that runs through the pen will be different. The "Qi" of a pen is different from Qi, which also causes the diversity, complexity and variability of the "pen power" of a pen. For example, Wu Changshuo's brushwork is simple and muddy, while Zhao's brushwork is like a "cotton-wrapped needle", and his lines are quite straightforward, and he is also known as "the wind in the Wu Dynasty" and "the water".

China painters pay attention to saving the pen first, making the pen work with qi, and creating all kinds of brushstrokes with different verve. The change of brush strokes is reflected in the change of brush strokes, and the diversity of nature and human life provides the creative source of brush strokes for China painters. For example, Wang Xizhi realized the elastic change of brushwork from the rotation of goose neck, Zhang Xu realized the brushwork of weeds from watching Gong Sundaniang's sword dance, and Su Shi and Huang Tingjian realized the mystery of brushwork from rowing against the current and boatman rowing respectively.

When China painters use pens, they rely on luck. Their pens follow the trend of the air, and the painter's genius naturally overflows intentionally or unintentionally. The king of Qing Dynasty said: "God meets heart, and heart meets god.". If you can't do it, you have to do it. There is no intention to seek work and meaning, but the strangeness of work is beyond words. " In the process of painting, China painters often say that to get rid of distractions and maintain a relaxed and natural state of mind and body is to make the pen end auspicious, use the pen smoothly and see the power with the pen.

Three. One of the basic techniques of Chinese painting-using ink

Ink is the basic technique of Chinese painting. Painters have always attached importance to the use of pen and ink, the rise of freehand brushwork and the widespread application of life propaganda, and the use of pen and ink has become the basic feature of Chinese painting.

Chinese painting ink mainly uses the skills of ink color change. Due to the different ink content in the pen, it changes from dry to wet and from thick to light. Replacing color with ink has produced the saying that ink is divided into five colors. Zhang Tang and Yan Yuan's "History of Famous Paintings in Past Dynasties" said: "Ink is transported in five colors." The five colors are coke, thick, heavy, light and clear, and each ink color has a change of dry, wet, thick and light, which is the wonder of Chinese painting ink. In addition, there is a saying that ink is divided into six colors. In the Qing Dynasty, Tang Dai said in "A Brief Introduction to Painting": "Among ink colors, there are six colors. What is six colors? Black, white, dry, wet, thick and light. " There is another cloud: "ink has six colors, which makes black and white difficult to distinguish, and there is no yin and yang light and shade;" Dry and wet, no green and beautiful; " The shade is not petal-shaped, but there is no bump and distance. "The richness of color changes in Chinese painting ink can be imagined. The ink color that has not changed must be dull and become a lifeless dead picture. The success of a painter is often inseparable from the skill of using ink. For example, Qi Baishi painted shrimp, so it is well known to women and children. An important reason lies in the proper use of ink. He painted the shrimp three times: "At first, it was only slightly similar. Once it became true, it became darker and lighter. "Now, what we see in his works is a lifelike shrimp shell, transparent and tough, especially the head of the shrimp. Where the ink on the skull is light, a thick ink is shrimp brain, which is really wonderful.

The skill of using ink in Chinese painting is not reflected in how many ink colors can be transferred in the palette, but how to make different ink colors reflected on paper, especially how to make a pen produce various ink color changes. With the continuous development of Chinese painting, the skills of using ink are becoming more and more mature, resulting in various expressions such as "splashing ink", "accumulating ink" and "breaking ink".

Four: One of the skills of Chinese painting-color characteristics

China's paintings have always attached great importance to the use of color. In the Catalogue of Ancient Paintings, Sheikh of Nanqi took "color matching" as one of the "six methods". This theory that different colors endow different types of images is the basis of the use of colors in Chinese painting.

Chinese painting pays attention to "color by category", but it also attaches great importance to the influence of space environment on objects. With the influence of space environment on objects and the change of space environment, the color of objects will change accordingly. Xiao Yi made a careful observation of this phenomenon in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. In Song of Rocky Mountains and Rivers, he said: "Autumn hair clan bones, summer shadows, cold and hot, warm days and cool stars." This is China's earliest explanation of the difference between seasons and climate, which caused the color change of objects, especially the change of cold and warm colors. In Song Dynasty, Guo's "Lin Gao Quan Zhi" summarized the influence of seasonal changes on water color and sky: "Water color: Chun Lv, Bi Xia, Qiuqing, Kehei; Sky: Spring shakes, summer is light, autumn is clear, and home is dark. " In the Qing Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty, Guo's quotation from "Sketch of Painting" is even more vivid: "Mountains have four seasons, and the wind and rain are gloomy, with different changes, and they are not colored to resemble their appearance. "The so-called spring mountain is like a smile, summer mountain is like a drop of green, autumn mountain is like light, and winter mountain is like sleep. This is also the spirit of the four seasons. "