Linear Sketch Portraits Of Teaching Practice And Exploration

Chinese Figure Painting has been at the position of periphery since it reached its peak in Tang Dynasty, while Chinese landscape painting always takes the dominant position. Sick and slender figures and monotonous techniques in Chinese Figure Painting, and the influence of views on literati painting can account for the phenomenon. Figure Painting began to blossom until the beginning of last century. The launch of New Culture Movement, represented by Chen Duxiu, contributes a lot to the development and innovation of Figure Painting. The establishment of "Xu-Jiang System", which is represented by Xu Beihong and Jiang Zhao, lays the foundation for realistic modeling concept in Chinese Figure Painting. Generation after generation, artists are making continuous efforts on drawing on western sketch to improve Chinese painting.After trying light and shadow sketch (All factors sketch), structure sketch and image sketch, Mr. Tang Yongli put forward "linear sketch" fit for teaching of Chinese Figure Painting, based on his experience of teaching and painting in China Academy of Art in 1993. He integrates the line in Chinese Painting with dimension in western sketch so as to demonstrate image in the form of linear anaglyph. With this professional manifestation of Chinese Painting, he brings the aesthetic essence of Chinese Painting, light and shadow sketch and structure sketch into play. This paper elaborates the background, practical advantage and room for development from several perspectives, and can be divided into four chapters. The first chapter introduces the development of Chinese Figure Painting and Figure Painting under the influence of western modeling views in Ming and Qing Dynasty. Two sections in Chapter Two respectively describe the results and problems of bringing in "sketch" in various academies of Arts, and characteristics and theoretical background for the raise of "linear sketch". Chapter Three elaborates the advantage and features of "linear sketch" in teaching, the reference and cultural quality of linear sketch. Chapter Four illustrates the room for development and various possibilities of linear sketch. This paper also chooses representative masterpieces and western sketches in different times as circumstantial evidence for the development and characteristics of linear sketch, and explores other development possibilities through the history of Figure Painting and overall context of Chinese culture.This paper is just exploration to the basic framework of linear sketch and its practice, but not probes into its nationality and other development possibilities profoundly due to the limitation of experience, space and capability. The author would be gratified if this paper can contribute to the teaching of Chinese Figure Painting.