Sticking blessing words, pasting window flowers, hanging incense bags, people use a variety of ways to express their yearning for a happy life during the Spring Festival, and celebrate the New Year with joy. This year, 54-year-old Feng Xundong, the intangible inheritor of Pei County's "gourd branding painting", created a series of works called "Dragon and Phoenix Chengxiang New Year" with the theme of the zodiac dragon and the creation form of gourd painting.
Branding painting, also known as hot painting, is the use of fire to heat the soldering iron on the object to burn the brand marks to paint. Gourd painting has been recorded in writing since the Ming Dynasty, and the level of gourd painting technology in the Qing Dynasty was very high, and it once became a tribute to the imperial court. With the gourd as the paper and the soldering iron as the pen, Feng Xundong makes the small gourd full of New Year's flavor.
"The creation of the brand painting dragon must be extremely careful and meticulous. Feng Xundong said that branding is different from other creations, and there is no possibility of modification after one stroke, so before creating, you must be confident. In order to create branded dragons, he often searches the Internet for posts, videos, and drawings related to dragons, and observes the dragon's form.
"Drawing a dragon on the gourd means that the golden dragon sends blessings, the dragon travels the world, the dragon soars all over the world, and the dragon and phoenix are auspicious. Feng Xundong told reporters that in addition to brand painting, the expression forms on the gourd include lacquer painting, color painting, carving, etc. Painting on the gourd of different shapes seems simple, but it requires great concentration and delicate techniques, if you want to draw a good gourd, you must be calm and steady, so that the pattern painted on the gourd will not be out of shape.
The subtleties are all about ingenuity. For Feng Xundong, "gourd painting" is not only a hobby, but also a culture. His New Year's wish is also inseparable from the gourd painting in his hand, and it is his greatest wish to be able to pass on this traditional folk art.
Yangtze Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter Zhao Tian
Correspondent: Zhang Jingliang
Proofread by Li Haihui