Gong Xianxi uses old and simple brush strokes, calm and steady, and uses both bald pen and sharp pen. Bald pen, taken from rounded and vigorous, hook house, rub, paint trees and dot moss old and powerful.
Gong Xian uses his pen to advocate "want to show and grow old", and to show and grow old is accurate, concise and smooth with changes. The painter Cheng Zhengyun said in the poem given to Gong Xian: "The old pen of the iron dry silver hook is turned, and the power can be from simple to complex", which is a good point to Gong Xian's characteristics and achievements in using the pen. He put forward the four points of brushwork, ink, hills and valleys, and qi rhyme as the four points of a painter, and advocated that painting should use a pen in the center, and it should be ancient, healthy, old, and cang, in order to avoid the disease of carving, knotting, and board, which is quite incisive. Gong Xian's use of ink is known for its layers of accumulated ink, although it does not need to splash ink, it actually has the effect of splashing ink smoke and dripping, which has the characteristics of the Song people's ink.
Its painting of mountain stone trees in the center of the pen, cang jin ancient thick, and with the ink accumulation method as a repeated rubbing and accumulation of dyeing, up to a dozen layers, the ink color is extremely thick, but there are still subtle changes such as shade, light and shade, mountain stone trees are often integrated, only at the edge of the yang or contour to leave some highlights and solid silhouettes, the effect is strong, with a thick, beautiful, somber unique style, successfully expressed the characteristics of jiangnan landscape dense, moist, deep.
Gong Xian painting is the best use of ink, advocating that the ink should be thick and moist, he developed the ink painting method, Gong Xian studied this method to pursue a kind of lush realm, he used dry brush as ink bones, and then with layers of dyeing and moisturizing, so that the mountain trees presented a fresh and thick ink rhyme, so that the picture was wet and thick, this painting method is suitable for expressing the wet landscape of Jiangnan, but also makes Gong Xian's painting have a deep and quiet style.
Gong Xian's painting methods are divided into two categories, known as "Mo Gong" and "White Gong". He makes good use of black and white contrast techniques, the former thick and vast, the latter simple and elegant. He said in "Half a Thousand Lessons on Painting": "Non-black, can not show its white; non-white, there is no black." Another example is the house depicted in the "Pingyuan Xiaojing" picture (album, ink on paper), which is simple and bright, and under the background of the surrounding pen and ink, the white walls of the house seem to shine. Here, the technique of black and white contrast is used.
Gong Xian's landscape paintings attach great importance to composition. His paintings have a wide field of vision and a variety of weather. His "three far" composition principle is fully exerted and fascinating. He often improves the angle of the line of sight, "flat and far" composition, and more take the angle of view, so that the field of vision is wide and the feeling of ethereality is multiplied in the plain.
— In the midst of the scale, the mountains and rivers are endless.
As a "high and far-reaching" composition, the same is true, first looking down, and then looking up, really has the spirit of going down to the deep valley and the upper peak. He pays great attention to the position of the top and bottom. His landscape paintings are generally very "full", but "full" is not stuffed, often using cloud belts and flowing water as blank breathing. From the whole picture, it is very charming.
This is the rhyme of Gong Xian's pen, ink and hills, thus creating landscape paintings with local characteristics. He is the leader of the well-deserved "Jinling Painting School".