Landscape painting, as the name suggests, has mountains and water. There are many techniques for painting mountains, and there are more than a dozen of them. As for how to draw water, there are not so many methods. The reason for this is probably because the water is either calm or turbulent, and it contains momentum. The ancients were good at expressing static, and when expressing dynamics, the technique was slightly single.
Roughly summarized, the ancients often used three methods to draw water, namely: outline method, rendering method, and blank method. These three methods, not used alone, often work in tandem with each other to depict different forms of water.
Shi Tao Listen to the spring map
In traditional techniques, "hook" and "le" are two concepts. Hook refers to the outline of things with lines. Le refers to the repeated ticking of the edges of the contour after coloring. Outlining refers to the use of lines and colors to depict the waves of water, showing the scene of water flowing and waves. Ma Yuan, a famous artist of the Southern Song Dynasty, and Sun Kehong, a painter of the Ming Dynasty, were masters of using the outlining method to paint water. Especially Sun Kehong, he painted the waves of the waves, full of movement, as if you can hear the sound of the waves hitting the reef.
In order to enhance the dynamics of the waves, Sun Kehong used the rendering method while using the outline method. Light ink rendering enhances the expressiveness of the waves, which looks surging and imposing. Imagine if Sun Kehong only used one method, he would not achieve such a perfect effect.
Sun Kehong Haimen Chaoxin
You can compare it, and you know how well Sun Kehong painted. The picture below is a part of Zhou Chen's "Beiming Map", which also depicts the turbulent waves, which are extraordinary to look at alone. If you compare it with Sun Kehong's works, it seems a bit inferior. Zhou Chen's status in the painting world is higher than Sun Kehong's, and his artistic achievements are higher than Sun Kehong's, but in terms of painting water, he is not as high as Sun Kehong.
Zhou Chen's painting of water is too "regular" and looks a bit rigid. The water wandering flower lacks the beauty of change, and Zhou Chen summarizes the various changes, thus losing its natural beauty. See, painting water is not simple at all. Even a master may not have a profound attainment in painting water. It is no exaggeration to say that if you compare painting water, Sun Kehong is one of the top two masters in the Ming Dynasty painting world, and can kill a number of master painters in a second.
Zhou Chen Beiming map partial
Some people think that painting water is the simplest, directly use the blank method, and you can paint nothing. In fact, this is not necessarily the case, the position of the blank space, the size of the blank area, represents the painter's aesthetic taste. It seems simple, but it requires a high degree of artistic accomplishment. Of course, the blank painting method needs to be used in conjunction with the sketching method and rendering method. It is difficult to achieve the desired effect with white space alone.
The Ming Dynasty painter Lu Zhi painted a painting of "Mountain Residence Hospitality", which he extended through the stream to express the sense of space of the work. When Lu Zhi painted the water, he mainly left blank space, and sketched lines near the rocks on the slope of the shore. The waterfall in the mountain is slightly rendered with light ink to form a flowing and agitating effect.
Lu Zhi Mountain Residence hospitality
After reading the works of these famous artists, do you think that painting water is not simple at all? Techniques can be overcome, starting from the outline of heavy techniques, learning to render, and finally understanding the magic of leaving blanks. Painting water, to show a vivid sense of beauty, whether it is still water deep flow or tide, you need to observe and speculate, in order to write with spirit.