Methods for Mastering Pictorial Meaning and Pictorial Principle in Painting Creation

The "beautiful as a painting" characteristic: "The scene imitates the Yinghu, naturally like a painting."

The interconnection of gardens and painting, and the incorporation of painting into gardens, is one of the characteristics of classical Chinese gardens. In "The Craft of Gardens," Ji Cheng put forward the garden-making idea of "the scene imitates the Yinghu, naturally like a painting," advocating that garden-making should strive to make the scenery like a painting; that the piling of mountains and arrangement of water should imitate "profound pictorial compositions"; that the piling of steep cliff mountains should "use stone as painting"; and that the layout of mountain rocks should imitate the composition of mountain rocks and plants in paintings, with the texture and contours of small rock scenes imitating the lines and cunfa (texture strokes) of landscape painting. The dry landscape scenery in the Suzhou Museum highly summarizes and distills classical Chinese elements, forming a simple architecture dominated by black, white, and gray tones. In its landscape treatment, it integrates the mountain-and-water style of Japanese dry landscape: a continuous group of stones placed on gravel, combined with white slice walls, letting one seemingly find the form of dry landscape; the texture, color, and vein patterns of the stones evoke the rolling continuity of "great rivers," as if it were a landscape painting of beautiful artistic conception. Although this scenery is situated within a museum, it can also be said to be a very good bonsai work, not only achieving artistic beauty but also realizing the beauty of artistic conception (as shown in Figure 2).

Creation and Pictorial Meaning

Meaning precedes the brush. Both gardens and bonsai express profound, elegant, and novel artistic conception through constructing gardens and creating scenery, and through composing pictures and shaping forms. They stress emulating natural beauty while also surpassing it. Gardens have the wonder of "winding paths leading to secluded spots," and bonsai has the excellence of "posture and momentum mutually fitting." In terms of conceiving meaning, one should carefully observe and study external objects, take them as the object to be reflected and the target to be emulated, and then carry out conception and conceptualization, using this as the guiding ideology for modeling throughout the entire creative process. In the creative process, the main scenery is required to be set off by secondary scenery, while the secondary scenery relies on the main scenery for support. The two are both contradictory and unified, forming a natural and organic whole and realizing the artistic ideal of "as if naturally created by heaven." For example, bonsai should take the main peak or main tree stump as the principal body, first determining its position, then considering guest mountains or secondary scenery rocks. The height of the secondary scenery should be lower than the main scenery, its momentum relatively level, and its form, size, and color should all coordinate with the main scenery. In creation, one uses the freehand technique of seeing the large in the small, using the few to defeat the many, using a part to symbolize the whole, and using the finite to contain the infinite, leaving the viewer broad space for aftertaste and re-creation according to their own aesthetic ideas and feelings. Bonsai creation uses the basic rules of pictorial composition, rationally arranging scenery and organizing space, either shifting heaven and shrinking earth, creating mountains and forests within a foot, or using a patch of mountain and a spoonful of water to symbolize the vastness of nature, achieving the profound artistic conception that "within a foot one can gaze upon the distance of ten thousand li, and within a square inch one can discern the excellence of a thousand fathoms."

Creation and Pictorial Principle

Many garden-making techniques in "The Craft of Gardens" apply the artistic principles of combining emptiness and solidity, revealing only after concealing, and unity in diversity. The matching and combination of elements such as garden mountains and waters, plants, and architecture should highlight the main body, with proper density, mutual generation of emptiness and solidity, and concealment within revelation, surpassing the limited scope of the garden's physical entity and creating a wonderful and profound landscape.

A good bonsai is a three-dimensional painting, and it also stresses the suitability of emptiness and solidity and meaning beyond the brush, leaving the viewer infinite space for imagination. "If water is to appear distant, veiling and cutting off its source will make it distant." By using the technique of revealing only after concealing, one handles the relationship between the main scenery and secondary scenery, displaying an artistic conception in which there is scenery beyond scenery and emotion within scenery, creating a wonderful landscape with diverse structures and rich layers. In short, water should wind and turn, trees should be graceful and varied, paths should appear and disappear from time to time, winding without end, and the mountain-foot line should be flexible and changeable. By flexibly applying these artistic expressive techniques, one can reach the degree of skill that comes from practice.

In bonsai artistic creation, although one cannot take the external environment and use it for oneself as in garden-making, one can borrow the texture, color, and form of creative materials, "applying techniques according to the material," and add innovation to create works with rich connotations and novel naturalness. Of course, one must not, in pursuit of innovation, violate the basic principles of bonsai artistic creation and natural laws, or break the physiological characteristics of landscaping materials. Otherwise, not only will it fail to give spiritual comfort to viewers longing to return to nature, but it will instead distort the world's interpretation of art.