There are several types of painting in China

Chinese paintings can be divided into three categories if we look at the way of using the brush, namely, work-brush painting, writing painting and combination of work and writing. These are three different forms of painting expression.

Working-brush painting is characterized by neat and meticulous brushwork, coloring with layers of rendering and subtle details, which have to be sketched with extremely meticulous brushstrokes. In contrast, the brushstrokes of a freehand painting are concise, bold, and even splashy. The author's interest is expressed through the portrayal of the shape and spirit of the object. Generalization, exaggeration and rich associations are used to achieve a far-reaching mood. These two styles of painting have been practiced since the Tang Dynasty. The combination of work and writing, also known as "both work and writing", is a style of painting between the first two, such as in a painting, landscapes painted in a realistic style, the pavilion with a brushwork, the combination of the two, to form a unique effect.

Chinese paintings can be divided into four categories: figure paintings, landscape paintings, bird and flower paintings, and animal paintings if considered from the content of the paintings.

Figure painting has a long history, originating around the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. It was used as a tool for political rule during the Qin and Han Dynasties, and the style diversified during the Wei, Han, and North and South Dynasties, with the Sui and Tang Dynasties being the heyday of Chinese figure painting. It is characterized by its unique charm and the combination of form and spirit. Portrait painting, which depicts real people as objects, is also known as portraiture, portraits or transmissions. Portrait paintings from the pre-Qin and Qin dynasties to Sui and Tang dynasties were mainly used for political education and rituals. It is recorded that Emperor Yuan of Han Dynasty had a lot of beautiful women in his harem, so the emperor let the artist paint portraits of the court ladies and decided their treatment according to the beauty of the portraits. This type of work is more often used in brush painting.

Shanshui painting is a characteristic branch of Chinese painting that originated in the Sui Dynasty. It uses scattered perspective and emphasizes the effects of "flatness and distance," "height and distance," and "depth and distance," and its techniques include "hooking," "painting," and "painting. ", "chapped", "coloring", "point" four steps, specifically, the first ink line outlines of the rocks and tree trunks, and then use a variety of chapped drawing Specifically, first outline the rocks and tree trunks with ink lines, then use various chapping techniques to draw the light and dark effects of the rocks, then render them with light ink and pigment, and finally dot the trees with ink or pigment. The works of this type are all written in the sense of painting.

Flower and Bird Paintings, as the name suggests, refers to Chinese paintings with flowers, birds, fish, insects and bamboos as the objects of painting. Animal paintings, sometimes called animal paintings, specifically refer to works that paint animals such as tigers, horses, eagles, cows, cats and dogs. The former is often painted with brushstrokes, while the latter is often painted in a freehand style.

Chinese paintings can be divided into three categories: ink paintings, heavy color paintings and white paintings if analyzed from the method of using ink.

Ink and wash landscape is the foundation laid by Wang Wei, a poet of the Tang Dynasty. Without using colors, the ink is used to express the scenery of peaks, mountains and rocks by the thickness, dryness and wetness of the ink. The style of ink painting is simple and abstract, is rich in suggestive features. Also known as monochrome painting, it is a "sketch" that uses lines of ink to express. This painting technique was introduced to Japan from China in ancient times. In the Five Dynasties, ink painting took a leap forward, and began to use chapping to show the effect, and then slightly add a little bit of blue and ochre pigment to make the rocks more majestic and magnificent. By the Ming Dynasty, Xu Wei's ink-splashing capitalism spilled ink on paper, again developing the technique of ink painting. Ink painting is a traditional Chinese painting that stands on its own in the world of painting and is the representative painting family of Chinese painting.

Heavy color painting mainly applies the characteristics of striking colors in modern western painting, and is a painting style closer to western painting. It combines Chinese and Western painting techniques into one, with a strong sense of perspective. Most of the contents are landscapes, ethnic customs and history and culture. The heavy in heavy color means thick, not thick color. So it is not the more colorful the painting is, the more it meets the needs of heavy color. Especially in brush painting, the probability of using white is still relatively high. The thick effect of color forms a very vivid color hue, and sometimes several colors are superimposed and flowery, making it impossible to see the exact composition of the colors at a glance, creating a unique effect. Many scholars of heavy-color painting use pigments in the traditional Chinese way of creation, do not like to carefully mix the colors, and always feel that color mixing is something for Western painting.

The method of Chinese painting that uses lines exclusively to represent an object is called white drawing or line drawing. There are two kinds of white drawing: single hook and double hook. A work drawn with lines at one time is called a single hook. The single hook is made with one color of ink, or with two colors of ink depending on the situation, e.g. light ink for flowers and thick ink for leaves. Repeat hook is first completely hooked with light ink, and then according to the specific circumstances to decide to repeat part or all of the hook. The re-hooked line should not overlap with the original line. The purpose of re-hooking is to increase the texture of the painting and the changes in thickness, so that the work appears more charming. In short, white drawing is the use of ink line thickness, thickness, solidity, lightness, rigidity, flexibility, curvature and straightness of the expressive techniques to paint. Li Gonglin of the Song Dynasty created the technique of white drawing. Qian Xuan of the Yuan Dynasty and Chen Hongshou of the Ming Dynasty also specialized in white drawing.

The creation of Chinese painting requires the study of the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity, inheritance and innovation, and content and form, and at the same time, there are many special problems to be solved in the development of Chinese painting, such as the pursuit of mood, the form of ink and color, and the rules of brushwork. Also, the different characteristics of each subject of Chinese painting and the creative process of different methods deserve our in-depth understanding and painstaking study.