Why was Chinese painting called "Danqing" in ancient times?

Anciently, there was a single pigment, and vermilion and stone green were the most representative colors among several natural pigments, so the ancients used danqing to refer to Chinese painting, which has been used until today. When it comes to Chinese painting, I also learned calligraphy and Chinese painting for a long time in my childhood because of my parents' request. At that time, I didn't have much concept of Chinese painting, and I bought a lot of colors, but I actually used ink and wash the most.

The colors of Chinese painting are also closely related to ancient pigment extraction techniques. Ancient productivity and technology are very backward, and we know that the three primary colors away, all the colors after mixing can get close to the black color, and ore raw materials to the cinnabar can get red, andrographis can get yellow, there are also a number of pigments are also extracted from flowers and plants. Due to technical limitations, the ancients got the color is also partial gray, "Danqing" as the name suggests is also black and red, these two colors can almost sum up the characteristics of Chinese painting, more ink, and then applied to Danqing embellishment.

"Danqing" is not only a synonym for Chinese painting, but also established the style of Chinese painting. As we all know, the works of the Western Renaissance were rich in color, such as "Starry Night", "Sunflowers" and other works, especially the abstract style of oil painting. This has a lot to do with the painting supplies at that time. Western oil paintings mostly use vegetable oil to mix colors, which is good for preserving colors and luster. And our country is with a brush dipped in water, ink and color on paper painting, because of the method, the color extraction of low saturation, and water blending, but also not conducive to the preservation of color, so China's national painting style is also biased towards writing, the picture of the color saturation is low, because it can not be truthfully depicted color, the style is also mostly biased towards writing.

In addition to this, the content of Chinese painting is also mostly figures, birds and flowers, landscapes and these aspects, like Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong and other painters works, interested friends can go to learn more about it, to feel the charm of China's national painting.