Summary report on the course of traditional painting techniques

A straight line, or line, refers to a figure formed by the arbitrary movement of a point in geometry, which can be divided into two types: straight line and curve. So, in short, a straight line is an extension of a point, its direction extension is a straight line, and its direction extension is a curve. In two-dimensional space, a straight line is the boundary line of a surface; In the three-dimensional space, the line is the external contour line of the form and the structural line representing the internal structure of the form. Therefore, lines play an important role in modeling. Line is a visual morphological element that exists in real life or works of art. Because they often coexist with visual influences such as shape, body, color and light, lines in modeling concepts are often associated with visual generalization and abstraction.

Line drawing is the main modeling method of China's traditional Chinese painting. It is an element that constitutes the national style of Chinese painting. Line drawing is a method to express the volume, shape, texture, sense of quantity and movement of an object with different brushwork, such as light and heavy, shade, thickness, Fiona Fang, turning, frustration, reality, length, dryness and wetness, rigidity and softness, and speed. It has no color, and sometimes it can be slightly rendered with some light ink. It has a unique form of expression and modeling rules, full of charm. The change of lines should be closely related to the formal beauty of modeling. Its lines are vigorous, graceful, light and dignified, and it has a very rich feeling because of the changeable pen. The characteristics of line drawing modeling are clear, concise and decorative, which can perfectly depict various phenomena and show the new life of ever-changing objects.

Chinese painting completely uses lines to express objects, which is called "line drawing". China's sketches use simple lines as modeling means. Whether it is meticulous or freehand brushwork, whether it is flowers and birds or figures, it is composed of lines. The vivid application and organic combination of line thickness, length, straightness, Fiona Fang, priority, density, frustration, softness and hardness, dry and wet shades in modeling shows the texture, volume, dynamics and sense of space of the body, which is the basis for in-depth understanding of natural objects. Therefore, line drawing can not only exist independently, but also be the basis of Chinese painting. The relationship between shape, spirit, light, color, body and quality of an object depends on lines. In a sense, it is more difficult to master than other painting methods. Chinese painting has a long history of line modeling. Through the long-term practice and continuous creation of painters of past dynasties, we have accumulated a lot of extremely rich experience in line drawing techniques. There are only "eighteen strokes" in the description of people's clothes pleats, which are: Gao Gu You Si Miao, string painting, iron line painting, flowing water painting, horse locust painting, nail-headed mouse tail painting, mixed painting, nail-headed painting, grass painting and reed-folded painting. Sketch can use one color of ink, or two or more colors of ink according to different objects. For example, people paint their skin with light ink, their hair with dark ink and their clothes with different colors.

Special attention should be paid to the characteristics of "simplicity and clarity" and "clear generalization". The choice of composition should be simple, and the arrangement of reality and density should be stronger. The level should be clear, and the lines should be decorative and melodious to prevent fragmentary, rigid and loose defects.

Every mature art will form its own procedure in the development of history. After more than a thousand years of development, China's white painting has become one of our traditional Chinese paintings. The general situation and schools of China's traditional sketches have different styles and origins, which contain the essence of national culture, the accumulation of history and the embodiment of national spirit. Our study and reference of ancient sketches and our constant understanding of the true meaning of national culture and the mysteries of traditional art will undoubtedly become the starting point for contemporary Chinese paintings to become brilliant. In the long history of thousands of years, artists of all ages have worked hard for line drawing, created brilliant line drawing art, and left countless excellent line drawing works, which attracted worldwide attention and were unique in the world art field, with extremely high aesthetic value, which could not be replaced by other paintings.

China's earliest paintings appeared in the stone age murals and daily necessities, mainly with lines as the expression language. The themes of the paintings are mainly scenes of sacrifice, dance, hunting and tribal wars in daily life, and the shapes are simple and simple, such as the fish-faced basin on Banpo, the painted pottery basin with dance patterns unearthed in Sunjiazhai, Datong, Qinghai, and the rock paintings in Yinshan, Inner Mongolia, which can be understood as the embryonic form of Chinese painting.

The sketch works in Qin and Han Dynasties have well-proportioned images, solemn manners and smooth lines. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, line drawing developed greatly, showing a rich and colorful appearance, and a number of professional painters appeared. Compared with the Qin and Han Dynasties, works of art are independent as artistic creation. In the process of diversification of themes, the works show interest in contemporary life. Portrait is valued, composition skills are improved and styles are diversified. The techniques include the meticulous brushwork of Gu Kaizhi and Lu Tanwei, and the "pen is only one or two, which seems to do something" by Zhang Monk. Before and after the development of figure painting in China to the Eastern Jin Dynasty, scroll painting appeared, which marked the beginning of the maturity of China painting. At present, the earliest scroll paintings that can be seen in China, The Ode to Luoshen and The Picture of Women's History, were handed down by Gu Kaizhi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. The line drawing used in these two paintings has developed from rough and simple in the past to round and graceful brushwork. The tight and continuous lines of "floating in the air" and "flowing water" have been stylized and are known as "spring silkworms spinning". Theoretically, Gu Kaizhi put forward the following propositions: "Attention should be paid to painting before writing", "Imagination should be wonderful" and "God writes metaphysically". His theory of "vivid expression" and Zong Bing's theory of "releasing spirit" in the Southern Song Dynasty represented the aesthetic thought at that time. It can be said that the painting and theory of the Eastern Jin Dynasty laid the foundation for the overall peak of painting in the Sui, Five Dynasties and Song Dynasties. Tang Dynasty is the prosperous and heyday of China's sketch, which tends to face reality in painting themes, while Buddhist painting also pays attention to secularization and pursues originality in techniques. This period is not only outstanding, but also the technology of line drawing characters has been fully developed. Yan originated in Gu Kaizhi, and melted into a vigorous and broad bearing. In the Map of Emperors in Past Dynasties, he appropriately and truly portrayed a number of portraits of feudal emperors' personality characteristics, such as self-restraint, arrogance, greed, arrogance and so on. Natalie and his works vividly reproduce the typical image of women in the Tang Dynasty who are "rich and graceful" by using vigorous and slender iron wire paintings, calling them "figures leaning on Luo", and creating a new style of neat and gorgeous heavy color painting. Wu Daozi, the "painting sage" in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, created many works in his life, dabbling in many subjects, mainly religious subjects. He said, "Taoism takes Buddhism and Taoism as the first priority." Its technical characteristics are "poor brushwork in early years, upright brushwork in middle age, profligacy like water shield strips, and people's eight-sided business activities", "coloring in burnt ink marks, slightly dyeing, naturally surpassing silk rope." (illustration), its thread is "like a copper wire wound around a disk" and its color is heavier. Although the characters are small, they are "magnificent and indulgent." Road flyover pen vigorous, center round, full of thickness changes. This emphasis on the frustration, turning and indulgence of the pen shows that clothes are flying and drifting in the wind. The painted characters are vivid, colorful and unique, and are called "Wu Family". The work pays more attention to the unity of the picture atmosphere and the performance with a sense of movement, which has the effect of "turning the earth upside down and standing on the wall", which is called "the wind in the five generations" in later generations. This kind of expression method is different from variety. Later, Su Dongpo praised it as "innovation lies in statutes, and mystery lies outside the uninhibited". He himself once said, "Everyone wants to be like an image, but I am divorced from its customs." . It is precisely because of this that he has his own unique artistic style. The artistic achievements of line drawing in Tang dynasty are also reflected in the mural creation with folk painters as the main force; Mural creation is large in scale and rich in techniques. It is still preserved in Dunhuang murals, silk paintings of Tibetan scriptures caves and murals of Tang tombs, which makes us amazed and becomes an important heritage of ancient Chinese painting. Painting in Song Dynasty has a wide range of themes, except landscapes, flowers and birds, ladies, sages and monks. Tian Jia, fishermen, herders, dolls and historical stories are also among them. Pay attention to the depth of "writing the mind" and pay more attention to the subtle changes in grasping the image structure. Make the expressive force of line drawing more accurate and vivid; In Chinese painting techniques, it has always been advocated to describe rich content with simple pen and ink-highlighting the theme and highly summarizing the expression method, making line drawing an independent painting with high aesthetic value in this period. Due to the deepening of ethnic contradictions and class contradictions in the Yuan Dynasty, literati paintings were inherited in landscape and flower-and-bird paintings and developed rapidly. Due to the ruling class's admiration for Taoist culture, a large number of murals with Taoist themes have appeared, with exaggerated and romantic images, bold and powerful line drawing, and the formal beauty of line drawing has been developed to the greatest extent, so line drawing has become an independent painting art in the true sense. The representative work is the mural of Yongle Palace. Due to social factors, literati painting developed relatively in the Ming Dynasty, and line drawing mainly inherited the tradition of the previous generation, either sketching, meticulous painting, ink painting or simple line application. In the Qing Dynasty, sketch painting declined once, the theme was not expanded but contracted, and there was no new progress in techniques and styles. Many paintings are divorced from reality and replaced by stiff and delicate styles.

The object of Chinese painting is based on line, and the object itself does not exist, so it is decided that Chinese painting is not "reproduction", but "expression" as its specialty. This determines that Chinese painting will inevitably move from realism to freehand brushwork. As an important part of China culture, China's paintings are rooted in the soil of national culture. Traditional Chinese painting does not pay attention to perspective, nor does it emphasize the change of light and color of natural objects. It is not limited to appearance, but emphasizes the similarity of appearance, but the expression of the author's subjective feelings. China's paintings and calligraphy pay attention to "expressive form" and pursue the feeling that "beauty lies between similarity and dissimilarity" (Qi Baishi), and "absolute similarity is by no means the truth of similarity" (Xu Beihong). It takes brush, ink and rice paper as special materials, constructs a unique perspective theory, boldly breaks the time and space restrictions, has a high degree of generalization and imagination, emphasizes the expression of subjective feelings, shows leisure and interest, advocates "learning from nature" and "respecting the origin of mind", and emphasizes the unity of figure painting, which makes China traditional.

As an important category of Chinese painting, line drawing has a * * * feature of Chinese painting, that is, freehand brushwork, whether it is "only a few strokes, or a subtle body." Freehand brushwork is not only a simple expression method, but also a * * * feature of Chinese painting. Chinese painting pays attention to "vivid with form" and pursues "between similarity and non-similarity". The sketch of Chinese painting, regardless of density, is not a depiction of real art in creation, but a feeling of soul and life, which is different from the west in modeling law. Generally speaking, western modeling is figurative modeling. The modeling of Chinese painting is based on the scientific and systematic perspective, anatomy and colorimetry, and pursues the "proud" modeling of "beauty between similarity and dissimilarity", which is also commonly referred to as the image modeling of Chinese painting, that is, freehand brushwork.

The so-called freehand brushwork, first of all, literally speaking, from the font structure of the word "write", the word "write" in ancient traditional Chinese characters is "fu" and "fu". A crane in a deep room is no different from a cage. It naturally wants to go out, and then soon. This is the original meaning of writing obtained from glyph analysis. "Xiaoya" said, "My heart is writing." Is to express what he means in his heart. It is also said in the poem that "it is not difficult to cover the shape, but it is difficult to write the heart". It is not difficult for Li Feng to express a body, and it is the most difficult to express people's inner feelings and emotions, so it is necessary to vent, pour out and express it in words. This kind of writing extends from birds in the house to venting, expressing and pouring out. The earliest discussion on the word "meaning" appeared in Zong Bingde's Painting Theory in the Southern Song Dynasty, saying that "those who are above the Middle Ages can seek meaning for thousands of years". As a way of learning Chinese painting, meaning has been discussed in various dynasties and generations. "Meaning comes first" and "painting meaning" were regarded as the operating standards of painting as early as the Tang Dynasty, "Sincerity in the chest, passionate essays" and. "With a micro pen, everything comes from the heart" refers to the painter's subjective feelings. Painting is based on conception, thinking in the heart, getting the truth, and emphasizing the leading role of aesthetic consciousness. Chinese painting is the generation of its inner feelings, which is absolutely related to "meaning" and is still interesting, ambitious and interesting in brushwork. It means that emotion, reason and emotion are integrated into one, which is the blending and understanding of natural life. The painter's personality, mind, temperament, self-cultivation and emotion all show his taste for "meaning", which is the unity of emotion, thought and intuition. Wang Fuzhi's Preface to the Evening Hall in the Qing Dynasty said that "Yi Shang Shuai, without a handsome soldier, is a family", which shows the important position of "Yi" in his creation.

The theory of freehand brushwork sprouted in Tang and Song Dynasties and matured in Yuan Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Yanyuan pointed out that "meaning comes first", "emotion comes from it" and "pen is not comprehensive but meaningful", which is a pioneer of freehand brushwork. In the Song Dynasty, Su Shi, Mi Fei and others further advocated the spirit of "copying without details and being the same as the poet". In Chen Qufei's poem, he said: "Meaning is not necessarily like color, and predecessors are like nine palaces and horses", which means "not being specialized in form, but gaining from the outside". In the Qing Dynasty, Fang Xun wrote "On Painting in a Quiet Residence in a Mountain". Here, he also emphasized the relationship between conception and painting. He said: "To paint, we must first conceive and put it in a correct position, meaning strange, high, far, deep and ancient." It is these theories that laid the theoretical foundation of Chinese painting.

The sketch of Chinese painting does not take realism, but attaches great importance to verve and verve. It is a great creation of Chinese painting, which is like an image rather than an image, taking god from the image; Simple but not thin, complex but not chaotic; There is no fixed method, but there is a fixed model; There is no definite pen, only a foregone conclusion; There are layers, folds, shadows and hides. Line drawing in traditional Chinese painting is definitely different from line drawing in specimen painting. It not only defines the outline of the object, but also expresses the painter's own feelings and attitudes through different strokes and ever-changing changes, such as rigidity or softness, slowness or illness, lightness or heaviness, and at the same time depicts the morphological characteristics of the object with lines. The lines drawn by a painter, like the timbre of a singer's voice, never tell you what words he is singing, but more importantly, express touching expressions through phonology, which makes people get carried away. This is the so-called "iconicity rather than iconicity" and "taking images", which is the purpose and characteristic of Chinese painting.

Line drawing in Chinese painting, with special emphasis on calligraphy, is also the same principle followed by the whole painting in China, that is, the so-called "painting and calligraphy are of the same origin", which is another feature of line drawing, that is, the calligraphy of line drawing. Just like calligraphy, the sketch of Chinese painting was born in China's ancient paintings and pattern works, and has formed its own system through continuous development. In their respective development and changes, influenced by China's ancient philosophy and influenced by China's traditional culture, they formed two wonderful flowers in China's traditional art with different forms and complementary. Mr. Li Kuchan once said, "Painting from books is the highest realm, and painting from books is the highest criterion". Regarding the relationship between calligraphy and painting, first of all, as we all know, the original characters used by China are traditional Chinese characters. In traditional Chinese characters, both "book" and "painting" are written with the word "Yu". The pronunciation of the word "Yu" is different in ancient and modern times. Yan is called "Fu" and Chu is called "Fu". It means pen. From the traditional writing of the word "book" and "painting", we can find that calligraphy and painting are the same in using tools, that is, the brush we use. Traditional painting and calligraphy use brush, ink, paper, inkstone and other tools, plus traditional aesthetics, that is, the preference for pen and ink lines, which makes traditional painting and traditional calligraphy have the same effect.

Regarding the relationship between calligraphy and painting, the most famous one is the theory of "painting with books" put forward by Zhao Ziang in Yuan Dynasty. Zhao Ziang said, "The stone head is as white as a fly, and the wood head is as white as a brush. To write bamboo, you must be proficient in eight ways. If someone can understand this, they know that calligraphy and painting are the same. " For the first time, the elements of calligraphy were directly and vividly moved to painting. This tendency to use calligraphy lines, that is, pen and ink, independently of painting has changed the concept of painting and embarked on a road of "winning more with less", "seeing the big with small" and "illuminating the infinite with limited holes"

Calligraphy pays attention to the beauty of momentum, attitude and rhythm, which can be said to be a real abstract art. China's paintings make full use of the abstract means of calligraphy. The abstraction of calligraphy, the image language of calligraphy is brushwork, and it is also the language of Chinese painting modeling. Without the pen of calligraphy, it is hard to say Chinese painting. In addition, the refinement of calligraphy affects China's paintings all the time. Calligraphers' feelings directly affect painters, and calligraphy theory is the basic textbook for painters to use pens. It can be seen that Chinese painting itself has a strong interest in calligraphy, and the lines and Mo Yun of Chinese painting reveal abstract beauty everywhere, which has independent aesthetic value. In other words, even if you leave the object and enjoy every piece alone, it will make people feel happy and ecstatic.

As an important category of Chinese painting, stick figure has absorbed a lot of nutrition from calligraphy in brushwork. Although the ancient sages of our country classified the stick figure as "eighteen strokes", there were only two methods of expression: meticulous brushwork and freehand brushwork. Both fine brushwork lines and freehand brushwork lines are influenced by calligraphy, and this influence is most obvious in brushwork. Meticulous brushwork lines are generally neat, there are two main types. One is iron line painting, such as gossamer, line drawing, running water painting, etc. The strokes of this line are mainly in parallel movement, which requires a round, straight and backbone pen. The pen used in the center is simple and powerful, such as "falling rocks" and "things chopped by axes". Another meticulous line is the orchid leaf painting, which mainly absorbs the requirements of official script. This pen moves in parallel, which strengthens the up-and-down pulling action. Compared with the iron line drawing pen, the center has ups and downs, emphasizing the back of the pen, forming a "silkworm-headed swallow tail" of official script. The formation of official calligraphy pen is the vitality of Chinese painting lines, which enriches the expressive force of Chinese painting pens, such as orchid painting. "Simple but not detailed, complicated but not chaotic"; There is no fixed method, but there is a fixed model; There is no definitive pen, but it is a foregone conclusion. This is precisely a pen that absorbs the running script and cursive script of calligraphy, with coherent brushwork and great momentum, and pays more attention to the aesthetic feeling of form, such as dead wood tracing and reduced pen tracing.

The sketch of Chinese painting is based on lines, through which the outline, texture and volume are drawn. But it doesn't mean that the sketch of Chinese painting is only used to draw outline texture and volume. As an independent painting language, sketch itself has a strong decorative effect. The lines of Chinese painting have huge images and rich forms of expression, and have independent aesthetic value. For example, Mrs. Wei said in the "Pen Map": "Like a thousand miles of clouds, it is tangible"; "If the stone falls on the peak, it will collapse"; The ground-breaking rhinoceros elephant is very vivid, vivid and full of vitality. Another example is the "eighteen strokes" of traditional line drawing (Gao Gu You Si Miao, iron line drawing, line drawing ...), which vividly depicts the abstract texture of different lines with various concrete objects and has independent aesthetic value. This determines that this line should not only be expressive, but also "meaningful". In western painting, lines are generally used to outline the outline of objects, mainly focusing on the external characteristics of objects and the objective accuracy of line drawing, and less considering the aesthetics of lines themselves. The lines of Chinese painting should not only complete the task of using lines in western painting, but also reflect the shape and structure of objects with artistic changes of lines themselves. Lines with different attributes should be used to express the texture, tolerance and charm of different things, and the author's emotions should be integrated into them to express "things to understand" rather than "things to see". Therefore, the lines of Chinese painting reflect the author's emotions, temperament, self-cultivation, skills and so on, which is a spiritual and image expression. Chinese painters use lines to create images, which makes Chinese paintings have to bring strong subjective images. In line drawing, different languages reflect different faces, and the thickness of iron line drawing is consistent, round and smooth. Orchid leaf painting, evolved from iron line painting, is vigorous and elegant, shaped like orchid leaf, with thick and light pen and full of movement. Line drawing in Chinese painting is very particular about the use of lines. The organization, interpenetration, opening and closing, echo, density and vertical and horizontal of lines, and the suppression, promotion, stagnation, turning, folding, lifting and pressing of line drawing have strong decorative effects.

Because of its simple line modeling, line drawing only vividly and organically combines thickness, length, straightness and Fiona Fang, priority, density of reality and reality, frustration and softness, and dry and wet shades in modeling, showing texture, volume, movement and sense of space, which requires high performance skills. If you want to draw a good line drawing, you must have a better understanding of the brushwork of line drawing.

In a simple sense, brushwork refers to the pen method. The brushwork plays a very important role in the whole line drawing and even the whole Chinese painting. In the Record of Ancient Paintings by Sheikh in the Southern Qi Dynasty, the second sentence says that "the pen is the bone method". In the Record of Calligraphy, Hao Jing, a painter of the Five Dynasties, mentioned the six essentials of painting: "Qi, rhyme, thinking, scenery, pen and ink". Zhang Yanyuan in the Tang Dynasty.

There are many requirements for using a pen. The ancients summarized it as the five-stroke method, also known as the five-character formula. First, it means that the stress is even, the pen is steady, the head and tail are clear, and the pen is well-written, which is plain and strange. There is an inner beauty of strength between stippling and painting. Second, the circle: the circle refers to the pen in the center, which used to be like a "broken hairpin". It is round and elastic. Don't forget the horn, the pen should be endless, exquisite and powerful. Third, leave: it means that the handwriting can be controlled by the pen, so that the handwriting is even and natural in the movement, the pen should be used slowly, the pen force should be condensed, and it should be done from beginning to end, such as "house leakage marks". Fourth, weight: the pen is powerful and the paper is audible, such as "falling rocks", and it is forbidden to float lightly. The fifth is change: the pen has changed, so it should be flexible and not sluggish, and the turning point is abrupt. "If a bird is thrown into the forest, the snake will be surprised."

In fact, to put it simply, there are no more than three requirements for using a pen, that is:

(1) Powerful: A good thread is like a curled iron wire, "like a coiled copper wire". Good lines not only have tension and weight from the outside, but also have infinite appeal. This kind of appeal is immaterial, and it should be "with bones and muscles", which is a kind of vitality from the heart. Just like the art of Taijiquan, every move and every potential are contained in it, which prevents tension, so it is vigorous. Among the six methods, the pen is called "bone method", and the bone refers to "bone strength" and "bone spirit", which is a supporting force from the inside out. In the tradition of China, it is "flat as a cone to paint sand", "a garden like a broken hairpin", "leaving a room like a leak", "falling like a mountain", "being inside outside the garden" and "being soft inside". Soft lines are often more powerful and contain more, such as "iron line painting", "running water painting" and "four wonderful things in ancient times". Soft outside and fine inside, soft lines, but also reflects the internal strength. The power through the back of the paper refers to the power accumulated in the pen, just as it grows outside the paper.

(2) fluency: it means that the pen must be fluent, coherent and continuous. Pens are not only physically connected, but also the relationship between pens must be paid attention to. In the rhythmic and coherent flowing lines, move the dragon and snake with the pen, expect the posture, and the power of beauty occurs in mutual echo. The thread can't be tied in the process of running now "Do what you want and stop when you want" is a big problem in writing. In the Song Dynasty, Guo said that there are three major defects in writing: "board, engraving and knot". The chessboard is dull, dull, lifeless, and has no rhythm and rhythm. Engraving is revealing, giving birth to false horns, hesitating to write and knotting, which does not reflect the inner strength and vitality. Only smooth lines can reflect the inner moving vitality.

(3) Change: Pan Tianshou said: "A line has a peak", that is, the ups and downs in calligraphy, the lines are different from the square garden, clumsy, graceful and smooth. Different brushwork has different expressive force, so we should always adhere to the unified law of change in artistic creation. Different brushwork will produce different effects in painting, and these changes are mainly manifested in speed, lifting, turning, advancing and retreating, reality and so on. Speed refers to the sudden delay of the left and right forces in the writing process. The difference of speed forms two different beautiful lines, which flow quickly and stay slowly. Fast is light, slow is astringent. Lifting pressure refers to the ups and downs and light and heavy forces in writing, writing and receiving. Lift for lift, press for volt, which is the strength of the weight of the pen. The lift is light, the press is heavy, the lift is empty and the press is real. Turning refers to the difference in the up-and-down force of the pen when the pen tip changes direction (that is, at the corner of a line). That is to say, when the pen tip changes, the lines show different effects according to the strength of lifting or pressing the pen. The layout of lines for line drawing should be based on the combination of reality and reality, and the reality and reality should coexist, set off and remedy each other. In a word, regardless of speed, lifting and pressing, turning around, going forward and backward, virtual and real, they are all important parts of the change of pen rhythm.

China has a long history of 5,000 years and splendid culture and art. As a bright pearl in the treasure house of China's culture and art, line drawing, as an important part of China's traditional painting, should attract enough attention and be inherited and carried forward.