My Top Five Chinese Painting Artists To Draw Inspiration
My art style is mainly Chinese painting. It has a rich history and traditionally, it’s done on rice paper or thin silk, using a variety of brushes, combining different proportions of water with Chinese ink and dye. Chinese painting covers a variety of subjects: portrait, landscape, flowers, birds, animals, and insects.
Traditional Chinese painting is known as “guo hua (国画)”. There are two main techniques in Chinese painting:
“xie yi (写意)” or freehand, referring mainly to super impressionistic and expressive styles, and
“Gong-bi (工笔)” or meticulous attention to detail and depict objects realistically.
The artist style I am particularly attracted to is “xie yi (写意)”, which is very freeform. It captures the essence, the spirit of the target. While the perfection of each stroke is not important, each brush stroke is unique and it’s almost like the ink blobs are poured onto the paper.
In this post, I am going to talk about the top five artists who I draw inspirations from. They are more ancient artists, but their principles and artistic philosophy I really admire.
Xu Wei
Xu Wei is listed as the first influential impressionistic Chinese art style not only because Xu was a Ming dynasty Chinese painter, poet, writer and dramatist famous for his artistic expressiveness. He also influenced the other four artists listed in this list. Revolutionary for its time, his painting style was very different from the Gongbi style. Xu’s paintings are mostly in black and white, with super bold and expressive strokes. Xu Wei can be considered as the founder of modern painting in China.
Today, Xu Wei is identified as one of the earliest Chinese painters to be “closest in spirit and technique” with the method now known as “splattered ink utilizes considerable quantities of ink that are practically poured onto the painting surface” . I love how his paintings are so simple that allows the focus to be on the essence of each items portrayed.
Qi Baishi
“Qi Baishi’s paintings are influenced by Xu Wei’s style, however he added his own understanding and interpretations to the works. He was taught that every aspect of painting mattered, from the subject matter to the way the paint was applied to the paper. His art features a whole range of subjects including botanicals, animals, insects and also landscape. He is most famous for shrimp paintings, there’s a youtube video of him studying how shrimp moves in water. It is no wonder that each of the shrimp look as if it’s alive in his paintings. Qi’s art stand out because of his mastery in using contrasts to give attention to the focal point of his paintings.
Baishi was popular for his variety of works ranging from plant to animal life; because of his natural style, collectors both “artistic and political” purchased his work. According to the article, Qi Baishi [Ch’i Pai-shih; zi Huang; hao Baishi Laoren, Baishi Shanqeng]: “Baishi’s works were based on his life and his character. After the fall of the Qing dynasty Qi Baishi was known for not letting all the political issues affect his work and keeping his own values and ideas through the harsh times. According to Confucian standards, starting off as nothing and creating a name for yourself, as Baishi did, was very honorable.
Qi Baishi managed to master many different techniques including calligraphy and seal-carving. After establishing himself in Hunan as a painter and artist, it wasn’t until his forties that he began traveling and looking for more inspiration. Baishi came upon the Shanghai School, which was very popular at the time, and met Wu Changshuo who then became another mentor to him and inspired a lot of Baishi’s works. Another influence of Baishi didn’t come until about fifteen years later who was Chen Shizeng who he became close to when he was living in Beijing. Baishi was becoming more and more well-known and sought after. During World War II, many traditional art works and culture were no longer considered valuable and were thus destroyed. But Baishi was still respected and was “elected to the National People’s Congress and made honorary Chairman of the National Artist’s’ Association, he represented a continuing commitment to traditional cultural values in revolutionary China”.
Xu Beihong
Xu Beihong was a master of both oils and Chinese ink. Most of his works, however, were in the Chinese traditional style. In his efforts to create a new form of national art, he combined Chinese brush and ink techniques with Western perspective and methods of composition. He integrated firm and bold brush strokes with the precise delineation of form. As an art teacher, he advocated the subordination of technique to artistic conception and emphasizes the importance of the artist’s experiences in life. Of all of the Painters of the modern era, it can be safely said that Xu is the one painter most responsible for the direction taken in the modern Chinese Art world.
Xu is mostly well know for his horse paintings. They capture the gestures and charging spirit of horses really well. Each horse is so energetic as if they could leap out of the painting. And yet, there are only a few definitive brush strokes needed to depict such realistic renderings of these creatures.
Fu Baoshi
Fu had strong feelings towards the land of China. During his travel to many places, he recorded the splendors of the rivers and mountains, drawing inspiration from nature and becoming the representative landscape painter of his time.
As well as painting landscapes, Fu Baoshi was also an accomplished painter of figures. His paintings of ancient Chinese figures from the 3rd and 4th centuries BC are particularly acclaimed.
Li Keran
Li innovated Chinese landscape painting by integrating native and western techniques, inasmuch as he was inspired by Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro. He advocates the practice of sketching or painting from nature on-site. Li is also noted for the enlivened water buffaloes in his paintings. His calligraphy is deemed to be distinctive, and he is also a competent huqin player.
