Chinese Painting

Chinese painting is an important part of the country's cultural heritage. Some of the significant differences from Western painting include the use of Xuan paper (or silk) as the canvas, the Chinese brush, and Chinese ink with mineral and vegetable pigments. Proficiency in Chinese painting is attained through assiduous exercise, a good control of the brush, and a feel and knowledge of the qualities of Xuan paper and Chinese ink.
Chinese painting is classified by theme into six genres: figure painting, landscape painting, flower and bird painting，court painting, scholarly painting, and Dan Qing painting.

Figure painting:
Figure painting includes portraits, story painting, and genre painting with figures as the main subject. Lines are the primary method of portraying the subject             

                                
                
Landscape * painting:
Chinese landscape paintings can be divided into blue-and-green landscape, gold-and-green landscape, light-purple-red landscape and water ink landscape according to the colors used in the painting.     
   

                  
          
Flower and bird painting:
Flowers, rocks and birds are usually the main subject of this type of painting. It is an elaborate free style using ink in different colors.       
        
                       

Court painting:
Court painting refers to work by professional painters employed by the royal court, or imitations* of their works by other painters.

                                  

                      
Scholarly painting:
Scholarly painting generally refers to paintings by intellectuals and officials.  It emphasizes the scholarly execution of brush strokes and the use of different ink colors for expression rather than the painting's likeness to real images.

                             

              
Dan Qing (traditional Chinese painting):
This Chinese water color painting developed early and used contour lines filled-in with colors to represent the subject. "Dan Qing" literally means mineral colors of cinnabar and azurite that were used in early paintings. Therefore this term is used to refer to traditional Chinese painting. The tools used in traditional Chinese painting are a paintbrush, ink, traditional paint, and special paper or silk.