Chinese painting can be roughly divided into; Figures, landscapes, boundary paintings, flowers, fruits, feathers, animals, insects, fish, etc. There are techniques such as meticulous brushwork, freehand brushwork, sketching, color setting and ink painting, and color setting can be divided into resplendent, turquoise, boneless, splash color, light color and light crimson. Mainly use the changes of lines and ink color to describe the image and business place with hook, dot, dye, thick, light, dry, wet, yin, yang, direction, back, virtual, real, sparse, dense and empty; View layout, wide field of vision, not limited to focus perspective. There are murals, screens, scrolls, picture albums, fans and other picture frames, supplemented by traditional mounting techniques. Figure painting gradually matured from the late Zhou Dynasty to the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties. Mountains and rivers, flowers, paintings of birds and animals, etc. It was not until the Sui and Tang Dynasties that an independent painting discipline was formed. In the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty, various schools of thought competed for each other, and ink painting became popular, and landscape painting became a major branch. Literati painting developed in the Song Dynasty, but reached its peak in the Yuan Dynasty, and the painting style tended to be freehand. Ming and Qing dynasties and modern times continued to develop, paying more and more attention to expressing ideas and smoothing the mind. Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Tang Dynasty and Ming and Qing Dynasties were successively influenced by Buddhist art and western painting art.. Traditional Chinese painting emphasizes "the nature of foreign teachers is the source of China's heart", requires "meaning to save the pen first, and draw as best as possible", and emphasizes the integration of things and the creation of artistic conception, so as to achieve the purpose of describing the spirit with form, having both form and spirit and vivid charm. Because calligraphy and painting are of the same origin, they are closely related to the operation of bone and line, so the seal cutting of calligraphy and painting affects each other and forms a remarkable artistic feature. The tool materials for painting are pens, ink, paper, inkstone and silk specially made in China. Modern Chinese painting has made a breakthrough and development in inheriting tradition and absorbing foreign techniques.
The earliest painting "Prayer Woman and Solanum nigrum" (also known as "Dragon and Phoenix Beauty Map") was unearthed in the tombs of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, and the earliest and most complete existing work is "A Woman's Historical Map" by Gu Kaizhi in the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
Chinese painting has a long history. Painted on silk before the Song Dynasty, the materials were expensive. Therefore, the themes of China's traditional paintings are mostly portraits or life records of court nobles. It was not until the Song and Yuan Dynasties that the improvement and popularization of paper materials and the rise of literati painting made the themes and techniques of Chinese painting diversified, and the poems on paintings were the beginning of the homology of painting and calligraphy. After the Ming Dynasty, painting spread to the public and became a part of citizens' life, and genre painting came into being. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the west wind spread eastward, painting materials were diversified, and western painting elements were added, which developed in many aspects.
There are many differences between China's traditional painting and western painting. They pay attention to the similarity of spirit rather than form, emphasize observation and summary rather than on-the-spot copying, use scattered perspective rather than focus perspective, and attach importance to artistic conception rather than scene. The development of modern Chinese painting has also begun to absorb some skills of western painting, such as the configuration of light and shadow, the accuracy of human anatomy and so on. Some painters also use the artistic conception of Chinese painting in their oil painting creation.
Characteristics of Chinese painting
Chinese painting has its own obvious characteristics. Chinese painting, according to the ancient paintings of Sheikh in the Southern Dynasties;
* Pay attention to "vividness", not stick to the similarity of the object's appearance, but emphasize the expression of the author's subjective interest. Chinese painting emphasizes "expressive form" and pursues a feeling that "beauty lies between similarity and difference"
* Pay attention to the charm of pen and ink, and the brushwork requirements are: flat, round, staying, heavy and changeable. Ink method requires that ink be divided into five colors: coke, thick, heavy, light and clear.
* Pay attention to the "bone-based pen", don't focus on perspective, and don't emphasize the influence of the environment on the light and color changes of objects.
* Pay attention to the blank layout and the "momentum" of objects.
It can be said that western painting is an art of "reappearance" and Chinese painting is an art of "expression".
Chinese painting is to express "verve" and "realm".
painting tools
"Pen, ink, paper and inkstone" is an indispensable tool for ancient literati in China, and is known as "Four Treasures of the Study". Its significance is not limited to words and paintings. China literati endowed it with profound cultural connotations and feelings, and there were countless stories about ink and stone written by literati and painters in past dynasties.
pen
The writing brush was created by China and influenced the traditional writing habits of Korean, Japanese and other Asian regions. Brushes are divided into bristles, soft bristles and double-sided brushes. Hard hair is represented by wolf hair (weasel tail), and soft hair is represented by wool (goatee). According to different kinds of paintings and personal habits, the pen is different. Sheep hair is soft, wolf hair is full of vitality, and double brushes are soft and strong. China's calligraphy and painting are inseparable from the use of brush. Especially Huzhou (now Shanlian, Zhejiang), Xuanzhou (now Jingxian, Anhui), Jinxian, Jiangxi and other places.
black
There are two kinds of ink: "oil smoke" and "pine smoke". Oil smoke ink is made of tung oil or burning smoke. Song Yanmo is made of burning pine branches. The ink produced in ancient Huizhou has always been loved by literati, and Huizhou ink has the reputation of not exchanging gold. There are two kinds of pigments, which will produce different effects when used. One kind is vegetables, such as cyanine, gamboge, rouge, peony red and so on. Its performance is transparent and delicate, but it will fade with age; The other is minerals, such as cinnabar, cinnabar, turquoise to tricolor, turquoise to tricolor, ochre, stone yellow, white powder and so on. , opaque, strong hiding power, long time does not fade.
paper
There are many kinds of paper used in Chinese painting, such as Xuan paper produced in Xuanzhou, leather paper in Sichuan, cloth paper in Yuxian, Henan and cotton paper in Laiyang, Hunan. By extension, not only paper, twill, silk and other fabrics are painting materials. However, Xuan paper has many kinds, high output and good quality, and its characteristics can give full play to the charm of pen and ink required by Chinese painting, and it is cheaper than silk, so Xuan paper has almost become synonymous with China painting paper. Xuan paper can be divided into raw Xuan and cooked Xuan. Cooked propaganda is processed with alum water, and ink is not easy to penetrate. It can be painted neatly and carefully and painted repeatedly, which is suitable for meticulous painting like silk fabrics. The winning election is not processed by alum water, and the ink is easy to penetrate and cannot be changed. Moreover, infiltration can produce rich changes in pen and ink, so freehand brushwork is used to select the best.
inkstone
The inkstone is used to grind ink. It is required to be fine and moist, easy to ink, and the ink quality is fine and uniform without residue. She inkstone in Shexian county, Anhui province, Duan Xi inkstone in Guangdong province, Yan Tao inkstone in Gansu province and Cheng Ni inkstone in Shaanxi province are the most valuable inkstones, which are called the four famous inkstones. There are often ancient people who do not hesitate to pay anything for a famous inkstone.
Besides Four Treasures of the Study, there are many related painting tools, such as seals, inkpad, pen container, pen washer, pen container and Wen Zhen. And Four Treasures of the Study in a broad sense also includes the items mentioned above.