Part 15 Color Representation of Illusionary Painting

Traditional Chinese painting stands tall among the world's painting arts with its unique freehand brushwork and ink colors. Compared to tradition, illusion painting has broken through the constraints of traditional ink color concepts in terms of color expression, presenting a colorful situation.

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Western painting was introduced to China during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. Western missionaries hung "painted holy images" in small churches in coastal cities for worshippers, marking the beginning of the introduction of Western painting to China. By the Qing Dynasty, with the use of Western missionary painters by Chinese emperors, Western painting gained recognition from the court aristocracy to folk religion.

In the second half of the 17th century, Western painting underwent a scientific revolution in color research. Newton used a prism to decompose sunlight into a seven color spectrum, opening the door to scientific understanding of color and gradually revealing the mysteries of color science. Afterwards, various color theories gradually formed and gradually improved, providing important theoretical guidance for the color expression of modern Western painting. Especially in the early 19th century, Impressionist painters' further in-depth research and practice of color theory pushed the color expression of Western painting to a new height.

Before and after the Xinhai Revolution, a large number of art talents in China went abroad to study and actively accepted Western painting concepts, becoming pioneers in mastering Western painting techniques. After returning to China, they became pioneers in modern art education in China. Introduce Western realistic painting modeling methods and scientific color concepts into the subject education of Chinese art colleges, allowing students to fully accept the concepts and techniques of Western painting. We have prepared a talent pool for the innovation of color in modern Chinese painting.

After Western painting was introduced to China, painters saw the excellence of Western painting with keen insight, and then absorbed and borrowed from it in terms of color to develop and improve their own painting art.

Yun Shouping, a painter from the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, was famous for his colorful "boneless" flowers and birds, reaching the pinnacle of his technique. During Yun Shouping's youth, he had the opportunity to understand and come into contact with various coloring techniques of Western painting, laying a solid foundation for his future innovation in painting coloring. In his works, the depiction of flowers and leaves clearly carries light and dark shadows and layers, similar to the way they are portrayed in Western painting. From the perspective of visual effects, the coloring and dyeing methods used in his paintings are similar to those used in Western watercolor painting. The Western painting elements in Yun Shouping's paintings express the creative sentiment of some literati and painters who have broken through traditional barriers and are determined to express the colorful world with ink and color. Yun Shouping's use of techniques such as color mixing and rendering in Western painting indicates that the color perspective of Western painting had a certain impact on Qing dynasty painters.

During the late Qing Dynasty, Ren Bonian, a "Shanghai style" painter, applied Western painting techniques to his traditional Chinese painting. His works use the changes in color depth, brightness, and darkness to express the spatial relationship of character clothing. The use of green and green color gradients in the picture indicates that the spatial perspective effect of color gradients in Western painting has been preliminarily presented in Chinese painting. In order to adapt to the aesthetic needs of commercial culture, cater to fashion concepts, and boldly break through the constraints of the traditional concept of "ink and water first", various "Shanghai style" schools of thought successfully integrated the treatment of color and ink in their paintings, creating a new painting style that is both refined and popular.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Western painting color concepts and techniques continuously entered the vision of Chinese painters, and color styles presented a situation of a hundred flowers blooming. Zhang Daqian's large green freehand brushwork of mountains and waters breaks through the coloring method of "coloring according to categories", integrating Chinese and Western elements, with a strong sense of modernity. In the creative process, he adopted the traditional "ink breaking" technique, laying the foundation with a large amount of thick, light, and deep ink colors, combined with the vivid and bright rendering of stone green and blue, showcasing the visual characteristics of simplicity, elegance, and deep artistic conception. The visual effect may seem arbitrary and arbitrary, but in reality, the method is rigorous and the style is elegant, without any sense of astringency or turbidity. Lin Fengmian uses a unique style of painting that involves mixing colors in ink, mixing colors in ink, pressing colors on ink, thick coating with gouache, or using heavy colors on the back of the paper. He is known as the "Lin Fengmian style".

After the reform and opening up, the creation of Chinese painting has also presented a diversified pattern with a more open attitude, bringing new aesthetic taste in color. Huang Yongyu's "Lotus Series" works, based on freehand brushwork, use ink strokes of different shades as the background, with blue, white, or red strokes interspersed vertically and horizontally. These colorful and ink compositions achieve the effect of blending ink and color. In the process of creating Chinese painting, Yuan Yunfu used different techniques and materials to repeatedly practice between gouache, acrylic heavy color, colored ink, and ink, especially in color expression, striving to achieve perfect results. The rich ink layers in the picture showed a high degree of integration. The artistic language of these contemporary painters is not limited by natural reality, thus greatly expanding the artistic expression range of pen, ink, and color.

Throughout the development history of Chinese painting, the expression of color has been influenced by various factors such as politics, economy, and culture. Traditional painting, also known as Danqing, shows that in the early stages of Chinese painting, great emphasis was placed on the expression of color. From the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States period to the Western Han Dynasty, colorful silk paintings and murals had already appeared; During the Sui and Tang dynasties, Chinese painting was mostly meticulous and heavily colored, with lines drawn first and then filled with colors. The color lines were tightly combined, creating a clear and elegant atmosphere; By the Song and Yuan dynasties, due to cultural factors, color began to develop towards ink and wash, using ink to separate five colors to reveal the volume of objects. Ink and wash painting became the mainstream of Chinese painting, and the color language gradually faded out of the picture. During the Yuan Dynasty, literati painting became the mainstream and dominated the Chinese painting world during the Ming and Qing dynasties, with ink painting becoming a synonym for Chinese painting. To this day, color has once again risen in Chinese painting, and the ever-changing color effects in the painting demonstrate a unique Chinese style color sense and charm. This also indicates that the aesthetic needs of contemporary people are stronger than those expressed in any historical period, so rich colors should be used to meet the spiritual needs of the public.

The development of Chinese painting has proven that the emphasis on color is often at the peak of national prosperity, such as the magnificent murals, colorful silk paintings, and colorful lacquer paintings during the Qin and Han dynasties. After the development of these creative practices to the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Xie He made a theoretical summary in his "Record of Ancient Paintings" and proposed the basic principle of Chinese painting coloring - "coloring according to categories". During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the country was strong and the culture was prosperous. People loved elegant, noble, magnificent, and magnificent artistic works. Painters also tend to be magnificent in their aesthetic orientation and style, and at this time, colored works in painting were the mainstream. After the establishment of New China, the national spirit was in a period of vigorous development. The strong colors of Western painting triggered the release of people's love for color, greatly stimulating the creative passion of painters and catering to people's aesthetic needs for color. The power of color reflects the spirit of the nation and the aesthetic emotions of the masses. Over the past thirty years of reform and opening up, painters' minds have been greatly liberated, their personalities have been fully promoted, and Chinese painting has achieved the best development period in history. The emergence of illusion painting can be said to be another new level of color application in modern art.

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In the language of illusion painting, color has great expressive power in expressing the artist's psychological feelings and expressing inner emotions. So, why did traditional Chinese painting abandon color expression as an important form of artistic expression and instead focus on ink and wash monochrome? Since the Song and Yuan dynasties, the color concept of Chinese painting has undergone a transformation, transforming it from "coloring according to categories" to "water halo ink seal". The painter Wang Wei's argument that "ink and wash are the most important among all painting methods" is highly praised and has become the mainstream of painting concepts. The formation of the concept of black and white color in literati painting has two reasons, subjective and objective. On the subjective side, most literati painters are not successful in their official career, their political prospects are setbacks, and coupled with social unrest, they have a state of cynicism. In their eyes, the colorful world has become dim. In order to express their accumulated depression, they use painting to express their noble sentiments and life ideals, The gorgeous colors in the painting are simplified into black and white relationships. Objectively speaking, most literati painters are amateur painters who have not received specialized technical training, making it difficult to grasp the techniques of painting colors. In addition, most of them are proficient in calligraphy brushes and familiar with the performance of ink and rice paper. Therefore, they use the advantages of brush techniques and ink to fill in the weaknesses of color rendering.

From the unique perspective of ink color in literati painting, it can be said that it is a painting color concept formed in a specific historical period and cultural background. In long-term painting practice, painters have become proficient in the unique ink and wash techniques of Chinese painting, gradually improving and developing to the pinnacle, creating the unique color characteristics and artistic style of Chinese painting. Throughout this practice, there is a judgment on the value of using ink and color: "When ink is used and the five colors are present, it is considered proud; if the intention is to use the five colors, the object is obedient. (Zhang Yanyuan's "Records of Famous Paintings of All Dynasties")

Modern Chinese painters have fully realized that color can not only become a means of enriching the painting, but also have the function of expressing emotions and expressing spiritual consciousness. Therefore, modern painters break free from the shackles of traditional color concepts and boldly use color as an important means of expression in their paintings, fully demonstrating human liberation and freedom of thought. This can be said to be the result of social development and the needs of the times, as well as the return of human love for color.

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The composition of color is an important foundation of modern plastic arts, and color has an unparalleled super strong effect on the expression of things. Illusionist painting, due to the use of multiple techniques and languages for comprehensive expression, the consciousness of color composition is particularly important. The composition of color, that is, the interaction of colors, starts from people's perception and psychological effects of color. By using scientific analysis methods, complex color phenomena are reduced to basic elements, and the interlacing and distribution of color blocks are used to improve the language of the screen. We only need to master the principles of color composition, familiarize ourselves with the interrelationships of colors in the picture, express the emotions, styles, rhythms, and rhythms of colors, and use them to create our own new image of color.

Firstly, one should learn to subjectively design colors. In painting, the subjective design of colors is very important. Mattis once said, "Everything, even colors, is creation. This tells us to learn to subjectively design the colors of the screen. How to use colors correctly in the picture, how to design and arrange the contrast and unified relationship between various color blocks, how to combine colors in structure and expression, and how to convey the artistic conception and specific emotional significance of the picture. Therefore, we must attach importance to the design of color language, have a clear visual understanding of the overall color application, combine our professional knowledge of color, and start from the relationship between the language and spirit of the screen, highlighting the perfect combination of color self-discipline and the expression of images.

Secondly, it is important to pay attention to the time ratio and harmony of the screen colors. Illusionist painting is creating a new color system, which strengthens color awareness, pays attention to the aesthetic potential of color, and reflects modern color aesthetic concepts and personalized color language. Due to the characteristics of the materials used in heavy color paintings, they present a dazzling and rich artistic effect in color. To give colors a vivid visual experience, it is necessary to pay attention to the comparative beauty of colors in artistic creation. I have rich experience in the application of color contrast, such as being good at using neutral colors such as black, white, gold, and silver to coordinate color contrast, so that they complement and constrain each other with various bright colors, forming a harmonious beauty.

Phantom painting inherits traditional color application and greatly expands the use of materials. If metal materials are used, gold, silver, aluminum, and copper are used for painting, while modern chemical heating is introduced. The color changing techniques such as vulcanization and corrosion make the screen rich in expression, colorful, and visually stunning. When using these gold and silver materials, color is not only limited to fixed colored objects, but also applies metal materials as a color, a means of expression to the background color, either as color, or as texture, to achieve the unity of contrast and harmony between the objects and the background. No object exists in isolation in this world and is always subject to constant changes due to the influence of the surrounding environment. The same applies to the field of color, where a color forms a mutual relationship with other colors around it. When this relationship changes, colors also change accordingly. So, in the creation process, it is necessary to handle the contrast between cold and warm colors, complementary contrast, light and dark contrast, and area contrast of the screen, so as to create a mutually reinforcing and coordinated relationship between various colors, so as to give the screen an overall color beauty.

In illusion painting, due to the use of comprehensive materials and techniques, many unique texture effects appear in the picture. The harmonious use of texture endows the screen with more vitality. Color texture generally refers to flat color blocks with bumps and texture changes made from various materials on the screen. Due to different surface structures, different materials have different states of absorption and reflection of light. Therefore, the same color may have some differences due to different materials. For example, using different material properties such as Korean paper, leather paper, or canvas, after kneading, folding, pressing, stacking, scanning, and dyeing, different forms of beauty can be formed, such as thickness changes, light and dark changes, cold and warm changes, and dry and wet changes. These aesthetic sensations are created by the accumulation of colors. For example, in order to enhance the contrast effect of color texture, a combination of thin and thick painting methods is used to make the material language more readable. Using metal materials to create a mottled texture, the color is shining gold and silver, rich and vibrant, with strong visual impact.

In illusion paintings, one can feel the beauty of contrasting textures. Liu Youju usually uses a thin painting method to depict the background, which is moist and freehand. Each color block in the picture has a different visual experience, with some areas covered with coarse particles and fine particle colors, or directly repeated thin paintings with fine particles. The question of color blocks echoes each other, creating a jumping musical feeling in the picture.

It is precisely because of the visual contrast and echo of this color texture that the language charm of various materials themselves becomes stronger, thus making the color relationships of illusion paintings rich and vivid.