Chinese painting is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world.

Painting in the traditional style is known today, meaning 'national' or 'native painting', as opposed to Western styles of art which became popular in China in the 20th century. Traditional painting involves essentially the same techniques as calligraphy and is done with a brush dipped in black or colored ink; oils are not used. As with calligraphy, the most popular materials on which paintings are made of are paper and silk. The finished work can be mounted on scrolls, such ashanging scrolls or handscrolls. Traditional painting can also be done on album sheets, walls, lacquerware, folding screens, and other media.

Chinese painting and calligraphy distinguishes themselves from other cultures' arts by their emphasis on motion, and change with dynamic life. The practice is traditionally first learned by rote. The master showing the 'right way' to draw items, which the apprentice has to copy strictly, continuously, until the movements become instinctive. In contemporary times, debate emerged on the limits of this copyist tradition within the modern art scenes, where innovation is the rule, while changing lifestyles, tools, and colors are also influencing new waves of masters.

My project

In the beginning of my project, I do research the history and the difference between Chinese painting and western painting. Chinese paintings always have their own image and content in comparison to other ropes of paintings like western paintings. Unique appearance of Chinese painting owes much to the use of the chinese writing brush and the chinese paper. There are four essential elements used in the creation of chinese painting, the brush, ink, paper, and the ink stone. The most important factors for chinese painting are the special pedagogy, the close relationship with the painter's personality and the unique chinese philosophy. They are trained not only to convey the objects but also express the mood and the spirit of the subject. The Chinese also believe that the painting is the expression of the painter's knowledge and temperament. In this way, Chinese painting becomes something much more than art. I looked at different country in Asia like Japan, Korea and China and each country I choose few of the most famous landmarks to be my first idea of the project. And experiment using different material to see which is the best way to present my works and I decided to use watercolour for my landscape painting because watercolours are usually transparent and unlike oil or acrylic painting, where the paints essentially stay where they are put and dry more or less in the form they are applied. But the difficulty in watercolour painting is almost entirely in learning how to anticipate and leverage the behaviour of water rather than attempting to control or dominate it. Moreover, i do research on japanese artist and chinese artist. Wang Ximeng, he was a prodigy artist working in China during the Northern Song Dynasty during the the early twelfth century. He painted his masterpiece, 'A Thousand Li of River', a long landscape scroll painting, when he was only eighteen years old in the year III3 CE. According to one legend, Emperor huizong of Song taught the young artist how to paint. 

The landscape scroll is the only work of art by Wang Ximeng that survives and it is considered to be one of the greatest Chinese paintings of all time. In a general sense, the natural harmony in A Thousand Li of River is symbolic of the well being of the state; however, there is a bit more to it than that. The long landscape painting, created mostly with bright blues and greens on a dark ochre background, depicts mountains and lakes, villages, bridges, ships, and people. It takes time to take it all in and it’s hard for western audiences to know where to begin. Chinese landscape paintings are “read,” meaning they are viewed, from right to left. Ideally, a viewer unrolls a section of the landscape at a time to experience the landscape in real time. Also apart from artists, I do research on landscape photographer, Ansel Adams the most popular and arguably the most influential photographer in American history. I have been to his exhibition at National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. He is best known for his rugged landscapes but the "maritime" theme is evoked with the movement of water, the capturing of moments beyond the reach of the painter. Waterfalls, geysers, rapids, ponds, seascapes he pointed his camera wherever water worked, perhaps inspired by the view of the San Francisco bay from his childhood home. His journey, through his life and captured in this exhibition, showed he was in the forefront of the Modernist movement - taking photos that were hard, uncompromised, sharp and uncontrived. One of his quote impressed me, "A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels in the deepest sense about what is being photographed." This exhibition is the fullest expression of Ansel Adams, a restless life in search of moments, of beauty and order in a reckless landscape.