The Artistic Expression of Shadow

Artistic expressions of shadow puppets:

First of all, as far as the character image is concerned, the characters in shadow puppets are mostly carved out of the face by yang-carving, and the body costumes by yin-carving, thus the face is mostly composed of concise and bright lines, and the decorative part of the body and the head is made up of complicated and luxuriant patterns, and the proportion of the characters' sizes roughly follows the principle of the Five Courts, and the head is exaggerated intentionally, in this way. The contrast between the simplicity of the face and the complexity of the main part constitutes a harmonious visual effect.

At the same time, in the overall performance of the character lines also reflects the contrasting effect of straight and curved lines, the various parts of the character's body is largely geometric division of the modeling way to express, the body, limbs are presented in the form of a long straight line block, and in the details of the face and clothing and added the curve of the beautiful components, breaking the stagnation of the geometric structure, and adding a delicate, delicate decorative aesthetic.

Additionally, the costumes of the shadow characters also show a strong sense of plane decoration. According to different identity characteristics, the characters' costumes are embellished with different floral decorative motifs, such as pine, crane, blessing, longevity and other motifs of officials, warriors, gods and monsters with zigzag armor, fish scale armor, etc., and girls with peonies, mandarin ducks, butterflies and so on, and these motifs are repeated and overlapped in the process of decoration in various parts of the clothes, in order to achieve the decorative purpose of enriching the characters' images and beautifying the costumes.