The Practice And Thinking Of Tibetan Freehand Paintings

As a member of the great family of minorities in China, Tibetans are well known as a nation with a long cultural history. The Tibetan freehand figure painting as one of the cultural expressions, has made significant contribution to the development of Tibetan culture and offered an accessible way for the public to have better understanding of this nation. Meanwhile, a great number of outstanding artists emerged whose artworks described the life and style of Tibetans in different times, which reveals the diligence, courageous as well as simplicity of this nation. However, there are quite a few issues existing in these works that cannot be ignored. For instance, some works put much emphasize on the cultural symbol while ignored the spiritual world of the Tibetan people, some did not take full advantage of sketching to depict the figure, and some others were created on the base of pictures rather than true experience of Tibetans’life style. Moreover, due to the lack of deep understanding of Tibetan freehand figure paintings, some works still tend to present the style of Tibetans in an old-fashioned way. This paper firstly introduced the research background in regard to Tibetan freehand paintings, and then mainly discussed people’s understanding and thinking of Tibetan freehand paintings. A field study was conducted in Gannan Tibetan area during the research. As "Tibetan freehand brushwork figure painting" was taken as a key point in this study, the author mainly discussed the attributes of Tibetan freehand figure paintings in the current era from his own perspective. In the remaining chapters the author illustrated his own opinion and understanding of Tibetan freehand paintings on the basis of the field study as well as the author’s creation practice.