Study Stone Freehand Bird

The stone, as an important element in the freehand style Chinese flower-and-birdpaintings, has its own rich connotation. However, in the relevant literature home and aboard,not much attention has been paid to the techniques of painting stones in Chineseflower-and-bird paintings. This paper gives a brief historical overview of how stones widelycame into Chinese flower-and-bird paintings, describes the correlation between thetechniques of painting stones and the Chinese traditional culture, summarizes the maintechniques of painting stones in the freehand style flower-and-bird paintings since theSong Dynasty, and analyzes how the techniques of painting stones are affected by thedifferent life backgrounds of the artists. In conjunction with the author’s personalpainting experience, this paper explores the techniques of painting stones in the freehandstyle flower-and-bird paintings from three aspects—steps of creating works, aestheticstandards and personal perception of painting stones, which aims at helping master thetechniques of painting stones and thus improve the skills of freehand style flower-and-birdpainting.