Xu Yongxiang

Author: Xu Yongxiang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: As soon as students enter the oil painting major in an art college, their mentors immediately teach them how to sketch. This includes still-life sketching, (plaster) model sketching, and figure modeling. This is almost a standard in the basic teaching of modern art academies. To achieve a solid (plasticity) foundation in the non-academic style, students must follow the rules and adapt, leaving little room for free expression. Sometimes, this can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction. There is also landscape sketching, where students step outside the campus, and they have more freedom. Although teachers may supervise and check, this is limited. Landscape sketching relies on students' self-discipline and consciousness. For this reason, landscape sketching truly reflects a student's overall quality and learning. The richness and complexity of nature sometimes make artists feel overwhelmed and unsure where to start, but this is just a matter of experience. Overall, nature is orderly. The heavens, rivers, trees, rocks, buildings, as well as the diverse forms and colors, follow strict structural rules. Of course, blindly copying without understanding will not yield good results. When facing a landscape, how to observe, select, omit, and express it depends on the artist's entire cultivation. The different preferences, styles, and techniques of artists make landscape sketching always appear diverse and lively. In sketches, artists' personalities are often expressed more genuinely and vividly than in their creations. In landscape sketching, there is an unspoken common point: they all strive to seek and depict the artistic conception ().