Learn the tools, brushwork, and composition skills to create expressive Chinese ink landscape paintings.
Introduction to Chinese Landscape Painting
What you’ll learn
- Understand the basic tools and materials of ink painting.
- Practice line work, texture strokes (cunfa), and ink tone gradations..
- Learn how to depict mountains, rocks, trees, clouds, and water..
- Explore spatial arrangement, contrast between fullness and emptiness, and the use of negative space..
- Apply learned techniques and creativity to finish your own ink landscape artwork..
Course Content
- 介紹 –> 6 lectures • 2hr 4min.
Requirements
Introduction to Chinese Landscape Painting
Introduction to Chinese Landscape Painting is a course specifically designed for beginners with no prior experience, guiding you step-by-step into the world of ink wash painting. Even if you’ve never held a brush before, this course will enable you to establish a solid foundation.
The curriculum is divided into five progressive core units:
- Foundation and Ink Control: First, you’ll become familiar with the characteristics of the brush, ink, paper, and inkstone, mastering the control of ink tonality and layering.
- Composition and Intent: Next, you’ll learn the unique compositional rules of landscape painting, understanding how to create a serene and ethereal atmosphere through the arrangement of mountains, rocks, trees, flowing water, and negative space (留白).
- Mastering Texture Strokes: You’ll then specialize in the essence of “Cun Fa” (皴法 – texture strokes), using varied brushwork to depict the texture and three-dimensionality of mountains and rocks.
- Detailing and Atmosphere: Following that, you’ll delve into depicting the morphological changes of tree branches and leaves, and practice the rendering techniques for mist, clouds, and flowing water, appreciating the poetic expression of ink’s diffusive quality.
- Final Creation: Finally, you will integrate everything you’ve learned to independently complete a full landscape painting.
Beyond technique instruction, the course emphasizes guiding you in the creative philosophy of “Emulating nature externally, achieving realization internally” (外师造化，中得心源). We stress that while observing the external appearance of nature, one must also explore one’s own authentic inner feelings.
By the end of the course, you will not only have mastered the basic techniques of landscape painting but also gained a profound appreciation for the cultural heritage and the contemplative, aesthetic experience embodied by this ancient art form, successfully launching your journey into traditional Chinese art.