Lucia’s Life:Creation Practice Of Ink And Wash Figure Paintings

Over the past100years, Chinese fine art has been developing in a way of inheriting and renovating our national traditional arts while introducing and using western literature thought as reference. With the opening up to world decades ago, the form of constitution of western arts and the Expressionism was introduced to China, bringing scientific methods and ideology of western arts to the old ink and wash portrait paintings. This art tradition has since been becoming animate in a variety of art forms. The modern Chinese ink and wash portrait paintings possess characteristics and exuberant implication of traditional Chinese paintings, starting to focus on social reality and development with the character of an integrating of merits of Chinese and western arts.This thesis is mainly formed of three parts. In the first part, the evolution of Chinese ink and wash portraits and the current situation are discussed, followed by interpreting the image (Yixiang), the most important concept of Chinese classic aesthetic ideology. In the second part, after summarizing my recent years practice of live paintings of ink and wash portrait, from the viewpoint and based upon my understanding of Chinese traditional paintings, I analyzed the creation philosophy, subject, constitution and techniques employed in ink and wash painting works to research a new expressive way of ink and wash works. While producing the series paintings of Lucia’s happy life, I examined new expression methods to integrate and merge the spirit and form of the paintings, enriching the modern ink and wash portrait painting works by both the subject and form. In the last part of the thesis, I summarized the experience and thinking on my painting practice and made a general conclusion of the subject and techniques of the modern ink and wash painting works.Numerous successful examples tell us that when choosing a subject, we should have a true discovery of life and exploit our own unique observation viewpoint. I have thus chosen the moments of my life as the research window, truly re-producing the life in painting.I studied the techniques used in these paintings from three aspects.In the first aspect, I researched the stroke, constitution and colors of ink and wash paintings. In the second aspect, I focused on the relationship between constitution and form of the works.In the Last aspect, the imagery impression of ink and wash paintings was explored. All these parts are important for the portrait production, that helps me to improve my ability of creating images and expanding expression, and to eventually develop a personal style to express internal feeling by a picturesque painting language.