Beauty of Hua Niao Hua (花鸟画)

Hua Niao Hua (花鸟画) or Flowers and Birds Paintings are one of the three big categories of Chinese Paintings. The other two are Shan Sui Hua (山水画) or Landscape Paintings and Ren Wu Hua (人物画) or Figure Paintings. The objects of Chinese Flowers and Birds Paintings are usually flowers and quite often with birds as well as many other things, usually together with flowers but sometimes independently, including small trees or a part of tree - branches and leaves, small four-leg animals, insects, fish, fruits, vegetables, even not living things like small rocks and stones (which are quite often used) and artificial things like flower bases, dishes, tea cups, tea pots, baskets, candles, lanterns, toys, etc, etc, etc. Flowers and Birds Paintings show a relatively small and almost 2D (two dimension) world while Landscape Paintings handle a large world and 3D (three dimension) space. You do not have to think much about perspective technique in Flowers and Birds Paintings so they are in a way simpler and easier than Landscape Paintings. Landscape Paintings require some spiritual elevation created by a whole atmosphere of a painting besides beauty or beauty may not be the prime thing. Flowers and Birds Paintings, on the other hand, beauty is very important. Chinese people have set up many rules and techniques in Flowers and Birds Paintings how to make your painting look beautiful as well as how to avoid failure to make your paintings look ugly. Although there are many rules and techniques the key to be successful in making a beautiful painting is Contrast. Many contrasts you can use or you must use:

Shapes of objects
small - big
short - long
straight - curved lines
cut - continuous line
thick - thin,
bold - fine
square - triangle - round
open - closed

Locations of objects
side - center - corner
right - left
upper - middle - lower
gathered together - scattered around
horizontal - vertical

Indicting a movement
small change - big change (derivative or changing-ratio difference)
up - down - diagonal (in direction)

Colors
red- green-yellow-blue, etc etc. etc
bright - dark
etc, etc, etc.

If you are successful in handing these contrasts, your painting looks beautiful, elegant and attractive. If failed, you want to throw your painting away. Not a easy job as you must consider and actually make many contrasts at every moment you draw a line and apply a color ink.


Notes

1) Because of the above requirement of many Contrasts for beauty you can find no symmetrical beauty and little rhythmic beauty in Chinese Flowers and Birds Paintings.

2) What is the source of beauty created by many Contrasts in one painting? The answer will be harmony. Harmony cannot be attained by a collection of the same things and only can be created by combination of different things - arranged carefully with some effort. Harmony is not a simple addition of different things. If one thing contrasts well to the other thing the two things create more than 1 + 1 or a different thing than the original two things simply combined. This different thing or some kind of beauty created by the two well contrasted things may differ from one person to another and often subtle. This is like you can have different and better taste when you eat meat and vegetable together than you eat meat only or vegetable only.


Gradation technique

Most Chinese brushes are good for making gradation in one stroke, which renders nice effect with relative ease even for beginners.


AGG