Meaning of face painting

1. Red face paint: generally expresses loyalty, righteousness and valor, such as Guan Yu, a military general of the Three Kingdoms. Occasionally there are negative characters hooked on the red color, which is a kind of implied irony, such as Liu Jin, the great eunuch of the Ming Dynasty, but there are not many such cases.

2, black face: generally show justice and honesty, such as the Song Dynasty Qing official Bao Zheng.

3, white face: generally show sinister, cunning, the Three Kingdoms traitor Cao Cao.

4. Purple face: generally show majesty and decisiveness, a sense of justice. For example, Lian Po, the famous general of Zhao at the end of the Warring States period

5. Yellow face: generally show toughness and brutality, such as Yuwen Chengdu, the general of Sui Dynasty.

6. Pink face paint: generally shows a more upright old man, such as Su Xian, a famous minister of the Eastern Han Dynasty.

7. Gold and silver face paint: generally showing various gods and monsters, such as the Gods and Buddhas in Journey to the West, all of which are plastered with gold and silver powder.

8, blue face: generally show brave and resourceful, such as the Qing Dynasty good man Duo Er Dun.

9, green face: generally show reckless and violent, such as the Sui and Tang dynasties of Cheng Biaojin.

Expanded Information

The development of the art of face painting is inextricably linked to the development of Chinese opera. Around the 12th and 13th centuries, in the performances of Song Yuanben and Yuan Miscellany Opera, there appeared the clown face with a -large white spot in the center of the face. Jiejiao face is said to be in China before the development of opera, the North and South Dynasties and the Sui and Tang dynasties music and dance programs in the "mask song and dance", this mask is the ancestor of the face. The old book of the Tang Dynasty - music, there is a record of the Qi performance of the King of Lanling wearing a mask to hit the old music and dance.

But with the development of Chinese opera art, wearing a mask is increasingly detrimental to the actor's facial performance, artists will use ink, oil paint, pot smoke directly on the lid hook hoarding, which gradually produced the lid spectrum. At that time, the troupe to open-air performances, the audience far from the stage often can not see the actors' facial expressions, hooked on the face so that the audience can be clear at a distance.

In order to adapt to the open-air performances, the hooked face usually uses only three contrasting colors, black, red and white, emphasizing the parts of the five senses, skin color and facial muscle contours, such as thick eyebrows and big eyes, flipped nostrils, big mouth fork, etc. The original lid spectrum was simple and easy to read. This primitive lid spectrum is simple and rough, with the development of the art of opera gradually decorative.

Toward the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, after the Peking Opera gradually formed a fairly complete artistic style and performance methods, the Peking Opera lid spectra also absorbed the advantages of the facial features of various local styles of opera on the basis of continuous exploration and research by several generations of famous actors and theater artists, processing and improving, innovation and reform, and was fully developed.

Patterns and colors have become more and more colorful, and the distinctions between the personalities of different characters have become more and more distinctive, creating many faces of historical and mythological characters and forming a complete set of make-up spectacles.

Baidu Encyclopedia - Face Painting