Dong Qichang of the Ming Dynasty wrote in "Essays on Painting Zen Room": "The wonder of a painter is all in the smoke and clouds. "Some Chinese painters refer to themselves as cultivators, using the term "cloud smoke" as a synonym for landscape painting. This point is mentioned in the "Records of Lying in Streams and Mountains" made by Sheng Dashi in the Qing Dynasty: "The ancients called the landscape with the word smoke and clouds, and originally used a hook and a point to have their own smoke clouds. ”
Composition.Guo Xi, a painter of the Northern Song Dynasty, wrote in "The Elegance of Forests and Springs": "The mountain is high, but the exhaustion is not high, and the smoke and haze lock its waist is high." If the water is far away, it will not be far away, and if it is not far away, it will be far away. In other words, if a painter wants to show the height of the mountain in the picture, he does not draw the whole mountain on the picture, so he cannot reflect the height of the mountain. The best way to do this is to draw clouds on the mountainside to block part of the mountain, so that the height of the mountain can be naturally expressed. If a painter wants to express the boundlessness of water in a limited canvas, it is impossible to achieve the effect of boundless water by blindly painting the picture full of water lines, and using clouds or other scenery to cover part of the flowing water can give the viewer infinite reverie, and the water is endless and the meaning is endless.
Ma Yuan's "Water Map" is an excellent example of this. "Clouds Rise to the Sea" depicts the waves at high tide, the back waves push the front waves, the upper left to the right side of the picture is depicted using the cloud dyeing method, and the waves can be faintly seen in the upper right corner. "Yunshu Wave Roll" depicts a different scene. In "Yunshu Wave Roll", Ma Yuan's wave in the middle of the picture seems to be about to rise into the air, which shows that the water is turbulent. At the top of the picture, the clouds are painted with the cloud dyeing method, and the waves loom under the obscuration of the clouds, arousing the infinite associations of the viewer.
Artistic conception.If the mountain in the painting is not surrounded by clouds, we can only see one mountain, and the element of change is missing from the picture. With clouds, the mountains have multiple faces, and the shape of the clouds is uncertain as the wind blows. The misty mountains are like a fairyland. The clouds add a lot of mysterious colors to the mountains, and also make the landscape painting more meaningful.
Mr. Zhu Liangzhi, Director of the Center for Aesthetics and Aesthetic Education at Peking University, said in The Spirit of Life in Chinese Art: "In order to make this kind of business interesting, painters often use 'living things' with 'dead things' in their business positionsThe stone cannot be moved, and its sides are folded by flowing water; The dead wood could not be moved, and it was lightly wrapped over it. ”
Southern Song Dynasty Mi Youren's "Wonders of Xiaoxiang" clouds shuttle in the mountains.
The clouds in the Song Dynasty painter Mi Youren's "Wonders of Xiaoxiang" are extremely dynamic, and the mountains are even more tranquil against the backdrop of flowing clouds. This work depicts a scene of white clouds floating after a rain, with a pagoda on the top of the mountain, a stream flowing slowly beside the mountain, a small bridge at the point where the mountains meet, and houses on the bank. Most of the brushwork of the whole painting is smudged with light ink and dotted, and heavy ink is used to dye the mountain cols, tree trunks, roof ridges and other places, reflecting the sense of space in the picture. In this painting, the painting method of clouds adopts the big hook cloud method and the cloud dyeing method, and Mi Youren's brush is very natural and smooth, and the whole picture seems to be completed in one go, giving the viewer a hearty feeling.
In Chinese landscape painting, there is a method of painting clouds called the empty cloud method, which is to represent clouds by leaving blank space in the picture. Of course, not all the white space in the picture represents clouds, and the use of white space in the picture to indicate the location of clouds depends on the specific picture to determine whether it is clouds or not. For example, if a painter paints a group of mountains, he only draws a general outline of the top of the mountain, and the empty part below the mountain may be clouds.
It is said that the Song Dynasty painter Ma Yuan's painting of "Mountain Tower Coming to the Phoenix" uses a lot of blank space to represent the sky and clouds. On the right side of the picture are pine trees growing on the cliff wall, and below the pine trees are two literati walking together, followed by a qin boy holding a guqin.
In the use of brush and ink, most of the mountain stones are split with large axes, and the thin and hard texture of pine trees is perfectly presented in front of the viewer with strong and dignified brush and ink. The clouds between the mountains and buildings on the left side of the picture are dyed with clouds, and the clouds in the distant mountains in the upper part of the picture are made with the empty cloud method, and the outer outline of the mountains can be faintly seen under the obscuration of the clouds. In the upper left part of the picture, a phoenix bird flies to the right, which counteracts the momentum of the pine branch hanging upside down in the upper right corner of the phoenix, which gives the whole picture a sense of balance. The scenery in the distance is obscured by the clouds, giving people unlimited imagination.
Southern Song Dynasty Ma Yuan (biography) "Mountain Tower to the Phoenix Picture" is surrounded by clouds and mist between some buildings.
Breath.As mentioned earlier, ancient Chinese landscape painters used the word "cloud smoke" to refer to landscapes, but in fact, landscape painters did not pay attention to the specific form of clouds and smoke, but to the charm. "Vividness" refers to the desire to vividly express the spirit of the depicted objects. When the painter paints the clouds in landscape paintings, he should not only depict the appearance of the clouds, but also show the spirit of the clouds.
Mountains are stationary, but if clouds and mist are shrouded and wandering, the mountains are still and moving. The painting of Dong Yuan, the originator of the Southern School of landscape painting, is known as "can make the mountain qi move", and the mountain qi here refers to the clouds and mist in the mountains. This is a vivid expression of the charm of Dong Yuan's landscape paintings, and under Dong Yuan's brush, the original indescribable charm has become an image that can be seen and felt by the viewer.
The highest level of Chinese landscape painting is to present a vibrant scene on a still picture, to bring the scene to life, so that the viewer has a sense of immersion. If you want to make the scenery in the picture full of life, painting clouds in the picture is one of the best ways to express it. The mountains, rocks, and trees in landscape paintings are static, and the clouds travel between the mountains under the blowing of the wind, and the clouds can create a dynamic beauty in the picture. Although the clouds give people an illusory and ethereal feeling, they can make the whole picture vivid.
The Northern Song Dynasty court painter Wang Ximeng's "Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" created at the age of 18 is a typical green landscape painting, in which the clouds in the painting are painted using the empty cloud method, and there is no stroke on the bottom of the mountain, leaving a blank space to represent the clouds floating on the mountainside. The mountains above the clouds seem to float in the air, and the whole picture is like a fairyland. There is an inscription poem of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty on the picture, one of which is "the rivers and mountains are boundless, and the vitality is dripping with gods", and the word "vitality" refers to the origin of all things in the universe, which shows that in the view of Emperor Qianlong, the scenery in this "Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" was "lived" by Wang Ximeng's painting, and the "vitality" of the landscape in the painting is no different from the "vitality" of all things in the real world. The reason why this painting can achieve this effect is inseparable from the clouds shuttling between the mountains in the painting, and the movement of the clouds brings out the tranquility of the mountains in the painting, which makes the atmosphere of the whole picture more vivid.