Arts Studies and Criticism

Chinese landscape painting depicts the magnificent mountains and rivers grounded in the vast land of China, carrying the heroic and indomitable spirit of the Chinese nation. During the creative process, painters emphasize the transmission of spiritual charm, focusing on refining and combining the ever-changing elements of nature while drawing from natural mountains and rivers. They integrate these with their own aesthetic concepts and life philosophies to ultimately complete artworks rich in cultural connotations. Painting from life provides painters with continuous inspiration for artistic conception. By being on-site and immersed in the landscape, they can directly perceive the changing atmosphere of the natural environment, thereby evoking deep emotional responses and allowing the work to reveal the inherent laws of nature’s operation. Based on this, this paper explores the creation of Chinese landscape painting based on painting from life. It first briefly explains the concept and connotation of painting from life, analyzes its important role in Chinese landscape painting, and focuses on its application in four aspects: on-site observation in composition and framing, natural transformation in brush and ink techniques, realistic reconstruction in spatial layering, and mood creation in emotional expression.