Chinese Brush Painting

Try your hands at these historically and culturally important methods, and create some beautiful paintings of your own. Chinese painting is an ancient art that has evolved and become refined over many centuries. Artists brush ink and color pigments onto silk or paper using a variety of techniques, with two main approaches: gongbi a traditional and realistic style based on line drawing, and xieyi style, a freehand method that uses fewer strokes to suggest objects in a less literal way. Painting themes generally fall into three categories: figure, landscaping, and bird-and-flower. Chinese brush painting is mainly presented in lines, shades and white space to express the feelings about nature, social phenomena, and the very essence of the universe. The framework for this expression is often traditional: certain subjects carry cultural connotations that are well-known and imbue the painting with a layer of meaning beyond face value of objects