How many ways to compose a picture?

There are Western paintings and Chinese paintings. The way they frame their shots is different.

Eastern and Western cultures are fundamentally different. Therefore, the expression of art is also different. Probably, Eastern art emphasizes subjectivity, while Western art emphasizes objectivity. Eastern art is poetic, Western art is dramatic. Therefore, in painting, Chinese painting emphasizes charm, while Western painting emphasizes similarity. Comparing the two, there are the following five differences:

(1) Chinese paintings use a lot of lines, while Western paintings do not have obvious lines. Most of the lines are not original to the object, but are used by the painter to represent the realm of the two objects. For example, in Chinese paintings, an egg-shaped line is drawn to represent a person's face. In fact, there is no such line around the human face. This line is the boundary between the face and the background. Another example is drawing a ruler-shaped line to represent the tip of a person's nose. In fact, there is no such line on the tip of the nose. This line is the boundary between the nose and the face. Another example is landscapes, flowers, etc. There are no lines in real objects, but painters use lines. The lines in the landscape are specially named "皴法(皴法: one of the Chinese painting techniques, used to express the texture of rocks and tree bark.)". The lines in the figure are specially named "folds". It’s all hard work of research. This is not the case in Western paintings. There are only boundaries between objects, and no lines are drawn on the boundaries. Therefore, Western paintings are very similar to real objects, while Chinese paintings are not like real objects. You can tell that they are paintings at a glance. Chinese calligraphy and painting have the same origin. Painting is like writing, free and expressive, revealing your heart. At the end of the 19th century, Westerners saw the flying lines in Chinese paintings and admired them very much, so they imitated them and became "Post-Impressionism" (for details, see this book Chapter "A Brief History of Western Painting"). But in Western paintings before Post-Impressionism, lines were not obvious.

(2) Chinese painting does not pay attention to perspective, while Western painting attaches great importance to perspective. Perspective is the representation of three-dimensional objects on a flat surface. Western paintings strive to resemble the real thing, so they pay great attention to perspective. Take a look at the streets, houses, furniture, utensils, etc. in Western paintings. The shapes are all correct and they are exactly the same as the real thing. If you describe the scenery of the corridor, you can express the distance of several feet in a few inches. If you describe the railway from the front (looking from the center of the railway), you can express the distance of several miles in a few inches. This is not the case with Chinese paintings. They don't like to paint streets, houses, furniture, utensils and other things with obvious three-dimensional features, but they like to paint clouds, mountains, trees, waterfalls and other things that look like natural flat objects from a distance. Occasionally depicting houses and utensils, and not paying attention to perspective, but expressing them arbitrarily. For example, when painting a deep scene in a courtyard, the curved corridors of the bridal chamber are expressed in every line, as if they were seen when flying in mid-air; and it is not seen at once, but it is flying around, flying up and down, several times. what is seen. Therefore, the hand scrolls of Chinese paintings, with mountains and rivers stretching for several feet, look like what you would see on a train. The vertical Chinese painting has overlapping mountains and rivers, just like what you see from an airplane. Because Chinese people paint just like they write poetry. They paint wherever they think and they cannot be bound by perspective. Therefore, perspective is sometimes wrong in Chinese paintings. But it doesn't matter if you get it wrong. We cannot use the rules of Western painting to criticize Chinese painting.

(3) Eastern figure paintings do not pay attention to anatomy, while Western figure paintings attach great importance to anatomy. Anatomy is the study of the shapes of human bones and muscles. When Westerners paint figures, they must first study anatomy. The famous name of this anatomy is anatomy for art students, that is, anatomy for art. The reason why it is different from physiological anatomy is that physiological anatomy talks about the structure and function of various parts of the human body, while artistic anatomy specializes in expressing shapes. But it is also necessary to memorize the names of bones and muscles, as well as the various variations in their shapes, which is a difficult knowledge. But Western painters must learn. Because Western paintings focus on realism, they must depict the human body as if it were a real human body. But Chinese figure painters have never needed this kind of knowledge. When Chinese people paint figures, they only aim to express the characteristics of the figure's posture, but do not pay attention to the size and proportion of the various parts of the figure. Therefore, the men in Chinese paintings have a strange appearance and a disproportionate head and body. Women have slender eyebrows and slender lips, with slender shoulders and narrow waists. If you took off the clothes of these figures, they would look terrible. But this is not a problem, it is a benefit of Chinese painting. Chinese painting has a strong desire for impression, so it expands the characteristics of the characters, making men more majestic and women more slender and beautiful, and fully expressing their characters. Therefore, instead of using the realistic method, use the symbolic method. Don’t seek resemblance in appearance, but resemblance in spirit.

(4) Chinese painting does not emphasize background, while Western painting attaches great importance to background. Chinese paintings do not focus on the background. For example, when writing plum blossoms, one hanging in the air is surrounded by white paper. When writing about characters, a person hangs in the air as if riding on a cloud. Therefore, the paper used for Chinese painting leaves a lot of blank space. A very long piece of paper, with a vegetable or a stone traced at the bottom, becomes a standing banner. This is not the case in Western paintings. Everything must have a background. For example, for fruit, the background is a table. Characters, their backgrounds are indoors or outdoors. Therefore, the entire screen is filled in, leaving no blank space. The difference between Chinese painting and Western painting is also due to the difference between realism and expressiveness. Western paintings emphasize realism, so the background must be depicted. Chinese paintings emphasize conveying the spirit, so they must delete trivial matters and focus on the subject in order to make a strong impression.

(5) The main themes of Eastern paintings are nature, while the main themes of Western paintings are human figures. Before the Han Dynasty, Chinese paintings also used figures as the main subject matter. But by the Tang Dynasty, landscape painting became independent. To this day, landscapes have always been the main form of Chinese painting. Since the Greek times, figures have been the main theme in Western art. Most of the religious paintings in the Middle Ages took the masses as their subjects. For example, "The Last Judgment", "The Triumph of Death", etc., there are countless characters in one painting. It was not until the 19th century that there were independent landscape paintings.

After the independence of landscape painting, figure painting did not give way. Nude painting is still the main subject of Western painting today.

The above five points are the differences between Chinese painting and Western painting. From this we can see that Chinese painting has a lofty taste, while Western painting has a simple taste. Therefore, for artistic research, Western painting is not as sophisticated as Chinese painting. For public appreciation, Chinese paintings are not as common as Western paintings.