Introduction to Chinese Paintings

Chinese paintings, despite being as artistic as western paintings, have a unique character of their own. Usual Chinese painting rarely follows the principles of realistic portrayal or focus on the fundamental perception. This allows the painter the freedom of artistic perception, and allows him to adopt a way of expression that expresses his personal feeling in a better manner. Chinese painting has captivated the finest forms of various arts including poetry, seal engraving and calligraphy.

It is quite habitual for Chinese to regard an excellent painting as a fine poem and vice versa. That's how the term 'poetry in painting and painting in poetry ' has evolved. It is not surprising to learn that, at one time, lots of great poets were great artists and calligraphers too. Apart from helping us to appreciate the painter's emotions and thoughts, the writings on the paintings also add a decorative value to the paintings.

Depending on their format, Chinese paintings may be classified in four categories: scrolls, screens, murals and albums plus fans. Moreover, they often have a superb background that enhances their visual effect.

When talking of techniques, Chinese paintings can mainly be classified among two categories: paintings that use freehand brushwork, and those carried out minutely in a pragmatic style.

When classifying these according to the subject matter, we can divide these paintings into landscapes, figures, flowers, buildings, animals, birds, fish and insects. The brush techniques that are highlighted in these paintings incorporate the dotted method, line and texture and the use of color.

It may be too difficult to understand and value Chinese paintings in the absence of a thorough understanding of the characteristic styles prevalent during the historically different periods.

For example, economic progress during the rule of Tang family from 618 to 907 AD led to paintings in an elegant style. Subsequently, during the rule of the Song family from 960 to 1279 AD, painters preferred painting in an abstract style, implying meanings instead of direct expressions. Painting skills developed significantly in that time.

It was during the rule of the Ming and Qing, lasting till 1911, that painters started using their art as a means of giving expression to their thoughts and feelings. The paintings of that era display a spirited boldness with little consideration for thoroughness. Paintings of that time reached artistic perfection, and this art form remained alive for a long time, leading to near stagnation.

During the early part of the last century, many painters from Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Hangzhou started challenging the traditional Chinese style of painting and introduced novel art ideas from western countries, and established art schools to train artists. Fortunately, their efforts bore fruit. Subsequently, many of these painters formed the backbone of Chinese Art of Painting. Some of them are active even now.

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'Writing Is the Painting of the Voice' - Quote From Voltaire

In this article, I'll look at the idea from two points of view, as both painter and writer and show why beginners need not let it discourage them from learning how to become fine art professionals.

Painting can be as simple a job as protecting the walls of a room with a coating of house paint. Painting can be as complex as decorating a cupboard with folk-art designs. For artists, painting is the expression of our innermost thoughts that we wish to share with others.
Painting is harder than it looks.

When an elderly relative lived in our house, she was happy to be allowed into the studio, to watch while I worked, on condition she kept silent until I took a break. One day she told me how surprised she was to see how much goes into making a painting. She shared a belief she thought most people hold about artists. "Artists just pick up a brush, swirl it in their paints and start painting until they finish." It was my turn to be astonished.
To describe a character in a novel, you can write words that evoke the reader's own imagination. However, to make a convincing depiction of a person in paint, you first need to study and practise in at least 3 major areas. These include:
1. Anatomical Drawing.

No matter how beautiful your colours, you won't convince the viewer if your figures are out of proportion. Everyone knows how a man, a woman or a child looks. Same goes for a cat, bird, horse or any other animal. People know if your drawing is wrong, even if they don't know why.
2. Rendering of textures.

It's only by practice that you can produce believable skin and hair tones, heavy woollen or shimmering silk fabrics. In any Representational style of painting, you'll need expertise in reproducing these textures and many others, such as bird's feathers and animals' fur or scales.
3. Chemistry of paints, plus the qualities of supports.

Watercolour, Acrylic and Oil paints require different mediums and solvents, different tools and different supports, such as papers, canvas or panels.
Beginners can be misled by popular misconceptions about how a painting is made. When they discover it's not so easy in practice as it seems in imagination, many are so discouraged they drop out before giving themselves time enough to develop their talents. "Writing is the painting of the voice."

Painting with words is a lot easier than painting with paint, despite the famous quote suggesting otherwise. If you have the true artist's burning desire to give your best work, don't let the popular perception that painting should be as easy as seeing it 'in the mind's eye' prevent you from learning how to do it well.
May you achieve success by whatever standard means the most to you.

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Even Beginner Painters Can See Indoor Rainbows

On the table sits a crystal vase, always filled with flowers from our garden. This vase is shaped with three bulging curves down each side.

Light penetrates the crystal, passes through the water it holds and exits from the other side, emitting a stream of photons onto the air.

Every morning, my pent-up breath releases in a burst of delight and awe.

I witness, once again, the glory of a rainbow right there, inside my ordinary dining room.
As it leaves through the central bulge in that vase, the light starts to coruscate in a shimmering star-burst display of pure colours that change with every slight movement of my head. In an instant, Red changes into Blue, then Purple. Yellow melds with Blue to become Green. An Orange flashes, followed by an intense Turquoise. I sit, enthralled, until the Sun's angle increases and the colours fade away as fast as they appeared.

As a painter, my eye is always alert to colour. Colour led me to a layman's interest in physics. Colour is a property of the visible spectrum of light and light is what painting is all about. Light reflected by an object is what we perceive as colour and the effect of light falling on an object causes the shadowing we perceive as form. So, what we really draw and paint is the effect of light.

Discovering the Colour Wheel was the Eureka Moment of my life as a beginner in Art. The Wheel is the tool that allows me to be sure of my colour compositions before I even start a painting. Using it, I can decide on a dominant hue to suit the emotional tone I want a new painting to convey. Once I settle that, choosing the complementary and the discordant hues is simple.
Through the years since I was a child, I've always noticed indoor rainbows bouncing from the bevelled edge of a wall mirror, from the edge of a fine wine glass, from a dewdrop on a leaf. Nowadays, I can enjoy the rainbows in a water tumbler lit by halogen spots in the kitchen. It can't be any accident that jewellers showcase their displays of diamond rings with overhead track-lighting of halogen lamps.

Yet, when I point them out - those everyday wonders of beauty - many folk exclaim with surprise and say they never noticed such effects before. Many people see only what they expect.
Beginner artists can develop the habit of seeing what really is, even before we gain enough scientific knowledge to explain it. Our other purpose, I think, is to express that wondrous reality, in paint or words or music, so others can see and feel it.

May you achieve success by whatever standard means the most to you.

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7 Truthful Tips to Help You Decide on Your Own Painting Style

This debate takes up where calls to ditch Traditional for Abstract styles left off. What's changed is the advent of newer technology for digital painters.

Your concern, at the start of your career, is whether to join the fashion.

So, let me tell you a story - a true story - showing what can happen to an artist when the fashionable tide turns.

• He developed a new style making him the richest, most famous artist since Picasso. His enormous paintings on shattered pieces of ceramic dishes caused a sensation. Their prices broke records after his 1978 exhibition sold out before it opened.


• Only nine years later, New York art critics savaged his work, calling it merely 'fashionable.' A television newscast showed patrons at an auction booing as his paintings failed to sell and were passed in.

By now, you may know I'm talking about Julian Schnabel, the American infamous for his 'Plate Paintings.'

• Schnabel gave up painting after his career collapsed. He went on to become an award-winning film director. He was fortunate in having another talent to turn to but you can imagine the devastation he felt when the Art world bit him.

That heartache need never happen to you, if you bear in mind 7 simple truths.

1. Art fashions are as fleeting as those seen on the catwalk.

Without art historians, few alive today would know about the brief fads for Dadaism or Fauvism in 19th century Paris, but Impressionism - developed in the same period - remains popular around the world.

2. The idea in your mind matters, not your tools.

However, until your art exists as a real object, something people can see, it means nothing to anyone but you.

3. Free yourself from worrying about being 'up to date.'

When you do that, you release all your energy for making art that satisfies you and you'll enjoy your studio time.

4. The simple fact of your uniqueness as a person ensures unique style.

Your art already has its own style. Looking back on the work you've done to date, you'll see a pattern. Pull everything out, spread it over your studio floor and look. Look as if you'd never seen it before.

5. Your natural way of expressing your ideas reveals itself.

The choices you make in each piece are distinctive. In subject matter, in colour schemes, in a loose approach or detailed rendering - a pattern emerges.

You may be too close to it, like a parent blind to the faults or talents of their own children. You can always ask for responses from friends.

6. Follow the direction already showing in your finished paintings.

This helps you focus on the ideas you want to impart and the emotional responses you want to evoke in your audience.

These are the factors that motivate people to part with their hard-earned cash to hang your paintings in their homes.

7. If your manner of working fits with current fashion isn't important.

Time alone judges which Art survives. In the meantime, in your own lifetime, you need to satisfy your own vision.

If it doesn't sell, you have the choice to keep your 'day job,' as true artists have done down the centuries.

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