Summarizing the long-term artistic experience, I believe that freehand painters must do three things:

1. Cultivation of the mind: Art is the crystallization of spiritual perception of the mutual integration of people and the world. magnificent. The level, elegance, change, form, etc. of the artistic works are all reflections of the painter's spirit and mentality. "Painting is a painting from the heart." Freehand painting is an art of self-expression for the painter. As soon as the painter puts pen to paper, his self is in it. What kind of paintings you have will be what you have, so it is crucial to cleanse your soul and strengthen your self-cultivation. Generally speaking, an artist should have an independent and bright personality and a certain degree of super-utilitarian and free mentality in order to draw extraordinary works of art.

2. Study: Painters must have profound cultural accomplishment. The so-called traveling thousands of miles is not difficult today, but it requires reading thousands of books, which is something contemporary painters lack. Browsing various ancient and modern Chinese and foreign documents and inheriting traditions are ways to improve cultural accomplishment and are also compulsory subjects for cultivating spiritual realm. To a certain extent, it can be said that it was his comprehensive and rich academic training that made Xu Wei an outstanding painter and a model scholar-artist in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. Zhang Dai, a great scholar in the Song Dynasty, once said, "Establish a mind for the heaven and earth, establish a destiny for the people, inherit the unique knowledge for the saints, and create peace for all generations." This is not only the spiritual realm that Chinese intellectuals should cultivate, but also the broad mind that freehand painters should have.

3. Cultivation: Painters must practice skillful and exquisite techniques. Without a certain level of skill, the work will not reach the level it should be. This is a very common truth. The basic skills of Chinese freehand painting include many contents, among which the skill of calligraphy is the most important. Chinese freehand painting requires a concise summary of the relationship between points, lines and surfaces, and the answer can be found in calligraphy brushes. The lines of calligraphy are not simple lines. There are many changes in the strokes of center, side, round pen, square pen, folding pen, turning pen and so on. Freehand painting pays attention to the power of the brush, the gesture of the brush and the charm of the brush and ink. The painter's emotions are vividly expressed through the varied pen and ink reflections. Calligraphy is the lifeline of freehand painting, so the creative process of freehand painting is not called "painting" but "writing".

Today, there are many painters who can really "make", but there are fewer and fewer painters who can "write". The times are advancing, but the writing brush is deteriorating. "Biography and brushwork" are indifferent to contemporary painters, who instead emphasize graphical decoration and the effect of texture production, which have become the mainstream phenomenon of today's Chinese painting. There are very few freehand painters in the true sense, and the Chinese nation has a strong and abundant soul. It is difficult to find traces of Qi in today's traditional Chinese paintings.

The importance of calligraphy in Chinese freehand paintings must be promoted. Chinese characters are the most general and abstract paintings, and they have important guiding significance for the selection and refining of objects in freehand paintings. The development history of Chinese freehand painting also fully proves this point. Wu Changshuo spent decades writing stone drum inscriptions and incorporated the round, solemn and majestic lines of seal script into his paintings, which reversed the weak trend of flower-and-bird painting in the late Qing Dynasty. In his later years, Huang Binhong lost sight of the brush and transformed all the shapes into calligraphy lines. He completely forgot about things and himself, and became a state of being, which gave guidance to the development trend of freehand painting.

There are two different viewpoints in the creation of contemporary freehand paintings: one is the idea of ??"tradition creates newness"; the other is the idea of ??"fusion of Chinese and Western". I think these two lines of thought are objective realities and there is no need to integrate or confront them. It is no longer advisable to stick to tradition. For example, on busy and intersecting overpasses, there is no way out for sticking to the backward walking method of pulling a rickshaw. The art of painting in the new era is a colorful era. Just imagine that classical Chinese has moved towards vernacular, poetry has also moved from rhythm to free verse, and opera has combined Chinese and Western elements into pop rock. Chinese painting must also face similar challenges of the times.

The new era of diversity is a symbol of China's transformation from traditional farming culture to modern industrial information civilization. Therefore, it is impossible for Chinese freehand paintings not to have new changes. China is an ancient civilization with deep roots and a long history. Chinese culture has an extremely tolerant stomach to digest the immersion of Western culture. As long as we remember the uprightness and irreplaceability of the Chinese nation, no matter whether we hold the idea of ??"tradition creates newness" or the idea of ??"integration of Chinese and Western things", every idea is our way out. The fundamental spirit of Chinese freehand painting is : Use simple modeling language and changeable relationship between pen and ink to express one's true feelings and express one's feelings of wandering between heaven and earth.

Brush and ink are crucial in freehand painting, but it is by no means an unspeakable secret skill, nor is it a mysterious and lonely soul of national culture. It should become a skill that can be accepted by people all over the world. The value of pen and ink is not reduced to zero by those who worship foreigners. It has an extremely important position in the soul of the Chinese nation. The relationship between pen and ink and artistic conception seems to be an inseparable organic relationship between body and soul, similar to the overall dialectical relationship of traditional Chinese medicine, rather than the partial anatomy of Western medicine. Western philosophy often analyzes content and form, spirit and body, purpose and method in dual terms. This way of thinking has greatly influenced Chinese artists and critics in recent decades, causing endless disputes in the painting community. If the Chinese way of talking about Zen and Taoism is in vain, then the Western way of talking about things is easy to stick to the surface. The spiritual core of Chinese culture is compromise and harmony to avoid paranoia.