2. Techniques.
gourd carving is based on the previous carving techniques of other materials, combined with the characteristics and technological requirements of its own materials, and can be mainly summarized into three forms: round carving, relief carving and line carving. In addition, there are some carving techniques that comprehensively use various forms of expression, such as micro-engraving and engraving.
(1) Round sculpture:
The so-called round sculpture refers to a completely three-dimensional sculpture suitable for multi-angle appreciation. The round sculpture also includes a semi-round sculpture, that is, the main part that needs to be expressed is carved, and the secondary part is discarded, so that half of it is a round sculpture, while the other half is hidden as the original object, and some are carved with other patterns, scenes, planes and other different means as the substrate.
In fact, whether round or semi-round, they are three-dimensional, multi-angle and independent individuals. As a gourd sculpture, most of them are based on works of art, which do not have practical functions, or are not based on practical functions. Therefore, round-carved gourds are rarely seen in gourd carving. Although some individual gourd patterns are only seen from a single pattern, they have the shadow of round-carved gourds, but when viewed from the whole gourd, because they are not independent "individuals", the patterns are attached to the gourd. Therefore, this kind of carving can only be regarded as a semi-round carving.
To make a round carving, we must first have an accurate design scheme and make full use of all parts of the gourd. The design should be reasonable, and some of them can break away from convention. For example, in the use of colors, we can understand nature according to our own understanding, without considering that branches and leaves should be decorated with green. In the use of color in sculpture, no one will accuse improper use of color. Circular carving is a difficult carving technique, which needs to be constantly studied, summarized and improved in long-term artistic practice. You should also read more maps and various gourd works to expand your own ideas.
To make a sculpture, it needs to go through several processes, such as design, gourd selection, shaping, fine carving, polishing and waxing. To carve a gourd, we must first determine the layout of the scene to be carved according to the color and design, draw the outline with ink lines, then use a digging or carving machine to remove the gourd, arrange it into the prototype of the designed scene, and then carve it carefully with a flat chisel. Attention should be paid to proper force and accurate knife use. The correct posture is to hold the arbor with the thumb, forefinger and middle finger of the right hand, the ring finger against the carving, and the thumb of the left hand against the knife collar to keep the stability of the knife collar and prevent the knife from running away and scratching other parts. When carving fine hollowed-out carvings, the external ornamentation should be carved first, then the interior should be drilled through with a carving machine or a hand drill, and finally trimmed with a flat chisel. The special tools needed for hollowed-out parts should be made according to the situation, so as to adapt to hollowed-out carving.
(2) Relief: According to the carving depth, it can be divided into three types: high relief, shallow relief and thin meaning.
high relief: also known as three-sided view. Generally, gourds are used as carving materials, and it is more appropriate if there is a layer of gourds with clear color contrast in the front part. Carve the scenery with the color of the gourd in front, and use the color behind as a support. This carving method can maximize the bright contrast and is also the most commonly used design method. The carving of various scenes with high relief should adopt the technique of circular carving as far as possible, so that the proportion of carved objects is appropriate, the composition is full, and the proportion of side and front is reasonable. Beginners often only pay attention to the front composition carving, ignoring the proportion of the side picture, which should be avoided.
The production of high relief is often seen in flowers, figures and animals. High relief is the transition stage from relief to round carving, and it is one of the techniques often used in gourd carving. In the process of learning sculpture, we should first learn to conceive the design, and take care of it from front to back, from left to right, step by step, and we can't be too quick, and a large number of gourds are eliminated, so that some scenery can't be arranged at last and we have to change the original design. The following steps should be adopted: first draw a picture on the gourd, outline it with a flat chisel along the line, and remove the gourd in the blank place with a knife. After a small stage of elimination, when the ink line is unclear, we should stop work and examine it, make up the unclear ink line, and then continue, while eliminating the gourd and deepening the design. After reaching the predetermined depth, the background is shaped, and then the foreground is carved. We should take care of both before and after, not just one side. When carving, we should pay attention to the overall design and leave enough space to prevent the design from being damaged by sudden defects. After the carving is completed, a sculpture is finished after wax sealing.
Shallow relief: This is relatively high relief, and the carved scenery is generally shallow. The designed picture should have the decorative effect of China nationality, and the composition should be full. Common patterns include dragons and phoenixes, landscapes, flowers and historical stories. The carving method is as follows: according to the specific situation of gourd, determine the theme and composition of the work. In the design, as far as possible, the defects are designed into cliffs, strange rocks and other scenery according to the situation. As far as possible, through ingenious design, these defects can not be found on the finished carvings, or they are not obvious.
after the design is completed, draw a detailed sketch on the gourd with a pencil. The lines should be accurate, and the places that are turned and folded should be clearly explained. After the design is finalized, outline the line with the side tip of the flat chisel, and the blade should be slightly inclined to one side of the line in order to ensure the integrity of the line. After the outline is finished, the blank part between the lines is chiseled with Xiaoping. This work is called "clearing the bottom". When clearing the bottom, we should take care of the overall situation and make the base of the whole picture have the same depth. After the bottom cleaning work is completed, each line will be carved according to the design intent. We should pay special attention to the hierarchical relationship and try our best to make it clear. Although the bas-relief is a thin-layer sculpture, it requires a sense of subjectivity in structure. Beginners always leave many knife marks at the contact part between the line and the basic plane, which is called "unclean roots" in the industry. This kind of situation can be eliminated as long as it is scraped carefully and patiently along the line with a side arc smoothing knife.
High relief and shallow relief are the basic techniques and common forms of expression in gourd carving. Therefore, beginners should first master these two techniques in order to make a transition to a more difficult round carving. If there is no gradual process from shallow relief to high relief to round carving, it is difficult to grasp the proportional relationship and accurate layout of the carved scenery, and it is impossible to understand the feeling of carving various scenery well. Therefore, a beginner should learn from the basic skills, pay attention to observing all kinds of flowers, insects and animals, especially pay attention to observing the good carved products, copy them first, and then change them by himself. Observing animals should pay attention to their demeanor, because it is most important to be vivid when carving animals, and other parts of the body may also be deformed. As long as their spiritual temperament is expressed, the works may be vivid and become good works.
thin meaning: thin meaning is an extremely thin relief, because its application rarely damages the gourd, and it is full of poetic meaning, so it is often used in some gourds with good texture, high transparency and relatively small materials.
Bo Yi is widely used, including historical figures, landscapes, flowers and birds and even calligraphy handwriting, and themes with auspicious meanings are often used. The main process of making thin meaning is like bas-relief, but the raised part is generally less than .5 mm. When taking care of the cover of gourd defects. We should pay attention to the layout of the whole picture, carve with the concave and convex shape of the gourd, and melt the technique of using a knife with the poetic meaning of the picture in one furnace. In the process of carving, we should carve with our heart, show our feelings deeply in our works, show the composition and painting principle of Chinese painting in the thin carving, and let the square world carved with thin meaning be included in the infinite beautiful scenery of famous mountains and rivers, so as to achieve the artistic conception. The gaps between thin lines should be carefully rooted, which requires great patience to complete. After that, the details should be decorated, cut, cut or embellished.
(3) line engraving: as the name implies, line engraving is like a white drawing in Chinese painting, which uses a single line to express objects.
In the gourd carving, line carving is mainly represented by negative line carving. The line carving method is simple and clear, and some of them can play a good decorative effect by combining bas-relief carving. Line engraving is a single form of expression, which is generally not used alone in the gourd that is played at close range. In most cases, it is used to describe the details of relief.
Among all kinds of carving, line carving is the most labor-saving, but it is not an easy task to really carve beautifully and make screen design elegant. Line engraving requires the producer to have strong painting ability. First, outline it with a pencil, and then carve it with a flat chisel or a special carving knife. In fact, it can be said that you write a picture on the gourd with an iron pen. When the painting is finished, add a little ink color with Chushi, evenly paint the carved picture, and after drying, wipe off the floating color with a wet towel, and the work is finished. Pay attention to the layout of the picture must be organized, and refer to some picture books, such as mustard garden paintings.
(4) Micro-engraving: tiny calligraphy is written on the gourd, each character is about 1 mm in size, and there are also smaller characters, which are vivid in form. The concrete production is as follows: a magnifying glass is clamped by a bracket to make an observation mirror, two small iron clips are clamped at both ends of the hair, placed on the gourd as a scribing line, engraved through the observation mirror, and then painted with white water. When the production is skilled, it can be engraved without observation mirror. This process requires the producer to have a good calligraphy foundation, and then practice it, so that he can master micro-engraving. Pay attention to the smooth surface of the gourd, and it is best to use a darker gourd first.
(5) Carving and chain carving: Carving and chain carving are relatively independent carving techniques in round carving, which are often combined with round carving or other techniques to make the carved works more expressive. Carving is also called hollowing out, that is, hollowing out the part of the gourd that does not show the object image and leaving the part that can show the object image. For example, when carving dragons in ancient times, while hollowing out the dragon's mouth, a "bead" should be kept in the mouth. This "bead" is a part of raw materials. The sculptor carefully cut a "bead" through the "dragon mouth" with a thin knife. After peeling off the original stone, this "bead" can not only roll freely, but also can not roll out of the "dragon mouth".
carving is very difficult, so it is different from ordinary carving techniques in gourd selection, work layout, tool equipment and carving procedures. Carved gourds must be fine and pure, especially the hollowed-out part, and there should be no cracks and high-density pubic skin, otherwise it is easy to break. The tools used for carving include not only general carving tools, but also special tools such as long-arm chisel, scraping knife, bottom shovel knife, hook knife and small saw thorn. Because of the great limitation of the space used for carving the internal scenery, we can only rely on expanding the direction of cutting to overcome the operational difficulties, so the design requirements of carving the scenery are best to be multi-faceted. Generally speaking, the more directions there are, the denser the holes are, the easier it is to carve and the better the effect will be. The process of carving is "outside first, then inside", and carving can only be carried out after all the blank-making and blank-chiseling processes of the outer scenery and other background scenery are finished.
Chain carving is a method of carving a whole movable stone chain by hollowing out a gourd. This method originated from jade carving, but it is more difficult than jade carving, because the gourd is not tougher than jade, and a little carelessness will cause the chain to break.
The chain carving of gourd originated in the early Qing Dynasty. Since the founding of New China, the expression techniques of chain carving have been improved day by day, and sometimes there are hundreds of links in a work. The number of chains and the fineness of links are unprecedented and amazing. Chain carving also has high requirements for gourds, which must be strictly selected and identified. Under normal circumstances, a fine, firm, pure and unqualified gourd is more suitable. When the gourd is conceived, it should also be particularly meticulous. First of all, we should arrange the position of the chain so that the chain can avoid the defects skillfully. When carving, the chain can be blank with other scenery at the same time, but it can't be rushed to pierce and take off the ring. It must wait until the work is finished, and then take off the ring slowly. Detaching is a very delicate work, which is extremely difficult. First, carefully drill holes side by side along the inner contour of each ring with a small drilling tool, leaving a little distance between each hole, and then use a special small chain knife or needle drill to carefully remove the rings one by one. In order to prevent the broken link from being damaged, after each link is completed, it should be fixed with "recoverable proofing paste". After the whole link is carved, the glued part will be soaked in warm water and slowly fall off.
3. Decorative forms
Carved gourds have various decorative forms and means such as printing, engraving, polishing and so on.
the impression belongs to the scope of printing. When the gourd grows and is printed with patterns to form relief, it is generally designed in the whole body of the gourd, surrounded by patterns, eight diagrams, Five Blessingg holding longevity, Yunlong, Taishi Shaobao, Sanyang Kaitai, Hehe Ruyi, flowers in four seasons, character stories and so on. Printing technology is mostly used for gourds, because its length is convenient for impression, and there are fewer black worms and Admiralty printing gourds.
Carving, which uses horns or agates to carve utensils, depicts the gourd round body according to the situation, with fluent lines and concise shapes, and mostly tells stories of flowers, fish and opera characters. After autumn, many farmers in Liaocheng and other places in Shandong Province brought their own flat round gourds to Tianjin for sale. They are cheap and good, and they are mostly used for feeding slugs in late autumn.
Calendula, Calendula is a special production process of Muhu, which was created in Beijing. During the light years of the Qing dynasty, Xu was unique in his art in Beijing, and his work was natural. In modern Tianjin, there was an old artist from Chen Jintang, who was a master of floral decoration. His ideas were elegant, his layout was dense, and his techniques were fine. Every work was like a relief Chinese painting, with landscapes, flowers and birds, etc., and some used the manuscript of painter Liu Kuiling, which was even more wonderful and precious. The method of making the flowers is to soften the hard skin on the surface of the gourd slightly, and then use agate grains from different angles as tools to make points, lines and surfaces on the finalized gourd body, which are convex to the plane. If the force is light, the grains will not protrude, while if the force is heavy, the surface lines will be cut, and the creation will be made entirely by hand feeling.
Hot, hot noodles are also called fire pens. In the old method, self-made fire incense was used to make incense as thick as fingers, and a steel needle was inserted in the center as a pen tip. After being ignited, the heat was conducted to a copper needle for hot stamping patterns. Modern electric soldering iron is used instead, but the dyeing effect is far less than that of the old method. Chen Jintang is good at this kind of art, and the descendants of Yunlong are incomparable. In modern times, there are landscapes and figures burned by Cao and Wang Dianhua, and they are also treasured by collectors.
lacquer, the old Tianjin lacquer gourd, is crimson in color, glittering and translucent and lovely. After being painted, it is firm and durable. It is also the same as an ancient musical instrument, and it will also play a good role in beautifying timbre. It is also rare to have carving and gold painting techniques.