Chinese landscape painting (which is also called ‘Mountains-and-streams’, 山水, in the academic discourse of Chinese art) is a genre more than the landscape painting in Western art. Chinese landscapists were supportive of the use of brush and ink (用筆用墨). There are two parts to learn Chinese landscape painting traditionally: 1) Study of varied landscape motifs based on the methods derived from ancient painting materials; and 2) Life drawing based on the observation of nature.  

This course primarily focuses on the first part, which is to study five main landscape motifs: tree, rock, cloud, waters and building/transporting vehicle based on the Muster Seed Garden Manual (芥子園畫譜) and the old masters. The artistic configuration of the landscape motifs for revealing one’s thought and inner vision is of paramount importance in this part. The second part relies on the observation of actual scene(s): Students will go out and study nature directly. The life drawings should be an integration of students’ empirical study of nature and their cognitive enhancement of the traditional landscape motifs.  

The majority of the course is dedicated to skill-based training, but the course project also requires students to execute their ideas through integrating different techniques based on a well-planned creative strategy.  

The course is designed in coalition with another level 2 course entitled ‘VART2437 Chinese Painting: Xieyi', which is also the prerequisite of this course.