How to understand the color of Chinese painting

As far as the traditional color concept is concerned, the "replacement, parody, shaping and tampering" of natural colors has a long history. China people's understanding of color has long shown its particularity, and its five-color view of "black, white, red, yellow and blue" has national characteristics. Since the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, our people have listed red, yellow, blue, black and white as positive colors, and their status is noble, rejecting intermediate colors and compound colors. At the same time, Chinese painting emphasizes "colored ink", concretizing it into multi-level color levels such as "focal, thick, heavy, light and clear", giving it the function of being compatible with all colors. Black and white are harmonious, which can convey countless color levels. This is the key concept in the color theory of Chinese painting, which is very different from the primary color theory of western painting. Compared with the traditional western color concept, China painters will not consider how to use hue mode to consider the similarity between the color of the picture and the inherent color, and never intend to reproduce things with color. Obviously, in the Six Dynasties, Sheikh's color concept of "coloring with the class" ran counter to the inherent color concept of western classicism. As the most important color concept in Chinese painting-"color with class", it requires China painters not to simply record and copy the colorful colors of the world, but to generalize, refine and exaggerate them, thus forming a unique color world that conforms to the oriental aesthetic psychology. It is more difficult for China painters to express things with monochrome ink language from the perspective of technique, because the change of "black and white" is too subtle, which tests the painter's sensitivity and control ability to color. China's artistic spirit is to respect the "Tao" full of subtle changes and despise the "skill" of simple simulation, so we can't see the bamboo painted in the literati's paintings, and the simple simulation is incompetent or retarded in the eyes of China literati. China painters make mistakes, learn from nature, and create artistic images with high aesthetic value. Thus, after thousands of years of traditional evolution, the traditional coloring method has obvious elements of "cosmetic surgery" and "tampering".

Secondly, the color of Chinese painting skillfully transforms profound philosophical propositions into operable contrast, creating a unique visual model. The color concept of China's paintings is very philosophical, and it completes the transformation of this philosophical meaning through color contrast. This philosophy is to communicate with Laozi and Zhuangzi, and the way of comparison is also very national. Zou Yigui also made a similar statement in "Painting on the Mountain": "When the five colors show each other, there must be a main color, with one color as the main color and other colors as the auxiliary color. Blue and purple should not be juxtaposed, yellow and white should not be on a par, red and green alternate with each other, occasionally one or two, dark green and light green, positive and negative." For another example, literati paintings have such a summary of black and white: "Black is the father of color and white is the mother of color".