What is the difference between Chinese painting and Western painting?

The differences between classical Chinese painting and traditional Western painting are mainly manifested in the following four aspects:

1. Differences in Painting Tools and Materials

Chinese paintings are often painted with Chinese special brushes, inks or pigments on rice paper or silk. Chinese paintings use different techniques of brushes such as hooking, strangling, and dotting, which are used to express the infinite variations of line interest; and the use of ink instead of color, which produces rich and subtle chromatic variations of the ink, that is, the "five colors of ink".

Traditional European oil painting is painted with oil pigments on canvas, wood or thick cardboard, which is characterized by rich, bright colors, strong coverage, and can fully express the texture of the object, making the painting object appear realistic and credible, with a strong artistic expression.

2. Difference in modeling language

Chinese painting is modeled by lines, which are full of movement and rhythmic beauty. Focus on the ink in the spatial treatment of different time, different angles of observation of the object to obtain the image characteristics of the organic combination. While the European traditional oil painting to dark and light color as a means of modeling, three-dimensional sense, strong sense of light, strong texture. Oil painting objectivity, observation of detailed table accurate, give a person a strong sense of really.

The West is a fixed-point sketching according to the focal point perspective method of depiction of the object seen, favoring the portrayal of the object and the construction of the picture of the body. Its use of color changes, contrast between light and dark, near big and far small focus perspective, in two-dimensional space to produce three-dimensional real illusion.

3. Different tendencies of aesthetic value

In terms of aesthetic tendency, classical Chinese painting pays more attention to the inner spirit of the object and the expression of the author's subjective emotion. Chinese paintings emphasize the meaning, expression and emotion. Classical Chinese paintings are rooted in the basic philosophy of the Chinese nation, i.e. the cosmology of the I Ching. The "unity of heaven and mankind" is the highest state of its pursuit. Gu Kaizhi's "Theory of Transmitting the Divine" has made Chinese painting centered on "God" from the very beginning, while "form" is a means to express "God". Form was used as a means to express "God". It is not easy to say that "to convey God by form" has become the key to Chinese painting.

In European traditional oil painting, more importance is attached to the realistic reproduction of the shape of the object. European traditional oil painting is still shape, European traditional oil painting in the reproduction, heavy rationality. European traditional oil painting is rooted in the "imitation of nature" in the "harmony of the form" of the concept of art, its mood is based on the ancient Greek sculpture and architecture. Its cosmic point of view is still "man and object", "mind in the realm" of the opposing views. In short, the two paintings are dominated by two ideas.

4. Different strokes and rhythms of light and shadow

Chinese paintings pay attention to the "exquisite ink", the pen requires deep, penetrating the paper, pay attention to the "bone method of the pen"; the ink advocates the ink as the main color, pay attention to the "ink in five colors", and the color of the ink. "Ink is divided into five colors. The so-called "ink in five colors" is to regulate the ink color with water, the ink color of the intensity of dry and wet, burnt, thick, heavy, light, clear ink color changes are very rich, although not colorful, but extremely elegant and stable.

Chinese painting advocates the use of ink as a mainstay and color as a supplement, but it is not contemptuous of color. Chinese painting is known as "Danqing". Especially in the Tang and Song dynasties, the brushwork and heavy color painting, colorful, colorful but not vulgar, reflecting the very high color skills. However, since the Song and Yuan dynasties, with the prosperity of literati painting, ink painting gradually jumped to the forefront, becoming the mainstream, literati painters advocate ink in five colors, in the black and white of the dense changes in the expression of the chest and the sky and the earth in line with the atmosphere of pallor.

Western painting attaches importance to the use of color, the rhythm of light and shadow for its formal beauty characteristics, the pursuit of realism, three-dimensionality, rhythm, darkness and light. The specificity of light is color, and color is not only the most important means of modeling, but also the most important means of expression. Western painting is rich in color, and the picture effect is strong and eye-catching.

Western painters focus on the grasp of color knowledge, through the inherent color, light color, environmental color, contrast color, neighboring color processing, as well as changes in shades of color on the screen, to express the convex and convex effect of the object to increase the volume of the picture, the sense of light and the sense of space, so as to make the object embodies a sense of thickness and texture.