The Art of Chinese Painting

By Bl Weizi
As one of the world's oldest and most enduring artistic expressions is Chinese painting, orGuohua, which translates to "national painting" or "native painting" in Chinese, andrepresents traditional Chinese painting as opposed to Western art forms. Traditional Chinesepainting usually uses a brush dipped in black ink or colored pigments instead of artist's oilpaint, and essentially follows the same process as calligraphy. Similar to calligraphy, paperand silk are the most common surfaces used for paintings. The completed piece can bepresented on scrolls, such as hand scrolls or hanging scrolls, album pages, walls, lacquerware.folding screens, and other media.

Gongbi and Shuimo are the two primary painting techniques used in Chinese painting. Theword "gongbi" (meaning "meticulous") refers to the use of extremely fine brushwork andprecise detail. It typically features narrative or figural elements and is frequently quitecolorful. Artists who worked for the royal court or in private workshops frequently engagedin it.
Ink and wash painting, called Shuimo in Chinese, also loosely termed watercolor or brushpainting, was one of the "four arts" ofthe Chinese Scholar-official class. Though the careersof prominent artists of this genre may have benefited them materially, in theory Shuimo wasan art technique practised by gentlemen, a distinction that began in the Song dynasty worksof art. Another name for this technique is freehand style.
Chinese painting is generally divided into three categories based on subject matter -- figures.flowers and birds, and landscapes, which summarizes the three aspects of the universe andlife: figure painting expresses human society and the relationship between people; flower andbird painting expresses the various lives of nature and lives in harmony with people; andlandscape painting expresses the relationship between people and nature. The combination ofthe three constitutes the whole of the universe, complementing each other, and is the trueineaning of art as art.

Source: Global Innovation