Chinese Landscape Ink Paintings

Post date: Apr 20, 2014 3:35:06 PM

In an attempt to teach atmospheric perspective I do ink paintings with my Design 2 students. It's a pretty challenging assignment given the considerable amount of skill it takes to paint or draw with the cheap floppy animal hair brushes that are traditional for this type of painting but aren't the best quality. We do not use rice paper either so the surface isn't really ideal. That aside, some students do get it and produce some interesting results. Just watching them I kind of know what it will take to get them to produce more impressive results. It truly is an art-form unto itself and requires years of practice for even the most basic strokes.

The examples below just show a simple mastery of the basics of atmospheric perspective, which is what I stress with this assignment. Students are asked to water their ink down and paint less details as objects like mountains recede into the background. Most are able to do this but don't catch on to the standard conventions of Chinese composition. I guess I'm just blind for thinking I can show them a composition and they'll catch on. To me it's so simple, the way the mountains stagger just so, how the organic rocky crags form and the natural way everything appears.

Most of my students revert to what I can only call "primitive westernized" conceptions of landscapes. It's like they're all in grade school again painting or drawing their family in front of their house. I see suns, no attempt to stagger forms, rigid flatness, straight lines in natural forms, and a whole mess of other contrary forms. It is literally the difference between a straight and slightly jagged line. I've shown them countless times, and every example I provide is in the Chinese style yet some will revert to old habits. I think I need to break it down, like break it all down, and just have them practice each basic form once or several times in kind of a worksheet setup. For the past two times I've taught this they've had free reign in their practice so I think I need to rigidly apply the rules, then set them loose. Or maybe just figured out western versions of each subject and just focus on the atmospheric qualities. Either way I sacrifice time or culture.