Brief introduction of Weifang new year pictures

Yangjiabu Woodblock New Year Pictures in Weifang, Shandong Province

Yangjiabu woodblock New Year Pictures, Yangliuqing in Tianjin and Taohuawu in Suzhou are also called the three major folk woodblock New Year Pictures in China. They began in the Ming Dynasty and flourished in the Qing Dynasty. They are festive, colorful and practical, reflecting ideals, customs and daily life, with complete and symmetrical composition, rigid and simple modeling and simple and smooth lines. According to the actual needs of farmers to decorate their living environment, there are mainly door paintings, door paintings, lanterns for praying, beauty bars, stands, crawlers, moonlight, etc., which have a strong folk flavor, local flavor and festive atmosphere.

Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures have a wide range of themes and rich contents, including idols, door gods, beauties, golden boys, landscapes, flowers and birds, dramatic figures, myths and legends, etc. At the same time, there are also works that reflect folk life and criticize the disadvantages of the times, but the theme of Yangjiabu New Year pictures is jubilation and auspiciousness. Such as good luck, happy new year, congratulations on getting rich, wealth, more than a year, happiness and peace. Like the blessings of relatives and greetings from friends, it constitutes the characteristics of farmers' peace and happiness in the new year, hoping for wealth and peace. The main contents of Yangjiabu New Year pictures include six categories, namely, Chinese New Year, marriage, busy farming, making a fortune every year, and full goldfish. , the door god, the god of wealth, the birthday girl, the kitchen god, etc. Legends and allusions, boxing, busking, promotion, etc.

The production technology of Yangjiabu New Year pictures is also very unique. The painter first painted with wicker charcoal sticks and incense ashes, and named it "rotten manuscript" On the basis of the rotten manuscript, he completed the original manuscript, the tracing manuscript, stuck it on the pear board and carved the line version and the color version respectively. Then after color matching, paper clamping, printing, color running, etc., manual printing. After the New Year pictures are printed, they should be painted with various colors by hand to make them look natural and vivid.

The production of Yangjiabu New Year pictures is divided into painting, carving, printing, mounting and other processes, each of which is extremely precise and accurate. The practice is to hook out the black draft of the painting first, stick it on the planed pear wood or Tang board, and carve the main line version. After the manuscript is printed, it will be engraved in different colors, printed in color, and finally modified and mounted. At the time of prosperity, just in autumn, all kinds of art dealers gathered in Yangjiabu. At night, the streets are decorated with lanterns and New Year pictures. More than 5000 businessmen come to buy paintings every year. At that time, selling paintings and singing short essays, the most popular lyrics were: "Su Dongpo sat in Han Xin and asked Xiao He. This number is not without merit, but it is too verbose now. Credit is like three debts, and asking is like asking Zhuge. "

Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures, which were born and bred, have stepped onto the elegant art hall step by step. 1979, the former Wei county government established Yangjiabu Woodblock New Year Pictures Institute, and wanted to introduce professional artists to excavate, sort out, research and innovate Yangjiabu Woodblock New Year Pictures. One of the most commendable is Mr. Sun Zhonghui, a professional painter who switched from 65438 to 0980. He has successively created Zodiac, Shouxing, Eight Immortals, Water Margin, List of Gods, Dream of Red Mansions, Three Kingdoms, Liaozhai and Eighteen Arhats Fighting Wukong. He was the professional painter who created the most woodcut New Year pictures at that time. At that time, he was also an important member of promoting woodblock New Year pictures to the world. Among them, the woodblock New Year pictures of Water Margin created by Mr. Sun Zhonghui were printed into calendars and distributed in 1984, which was highly praised by Mr. Hua. 1986 printed The Water Margin and The List of Gods as calendars and invited them to exhibit in Hong Kong. In the same year, The Eight Immortals was published in The Artist in Hong Kong. During the period of 1987, some water margin figures were used by foreign languages press as the cover of China Literature quarterly, which was published in English and French all the year round. 1983 Spring Festival, Yangjiabu New Year Pictures were exhibited in China Art Museum. In the same year, Yangjiabu New Year Pictures toured 9 countries in America, Europe and Africa. 1987, Yang Fuyuan, a folk artist, was invited to Singapore to paint, carve and print woodblock New Year pictures. In 1990s, a group of Yangjiabu New Year pictures artists went to Brazil, Japan and other countries to perform live performances, which were well received.