Painting the Figure in Pastel with ✨ Li Xiaolin ✨

Born in Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province in 1961, Li Xiaolin graduated from the Department of Printmaking, CAFA in 1990. He is currently the professor of the Department of Printmaking, CAFA, Deputy Director of the Watercolor Art Committee at the China Artists Association.
Li Xiaolin has cleared the “trap” of the academy as an artist receiving outstanding achievements in the field of drawing and printmaking, his sketching shows freedom from the laws of art, and retains freedom from the laws; with a distinct personality, his drawings reveal his sincere and wise character; calmly and carefully following the principle “Regarding Nature as One’s Teacher Outside and Thinking Spirit as One’s Origin from Inside”, adhering to sketching, carefully and modestly observing and analyzing the objective object, to arouse the enthusiasm, in the curving ups and downs of lines with a transition and change of light and shadow, segmentation and composition of blocks, in the inevitable and accidental, in expected and unexpected effects, heartily expressing his own subjective feeling and pouring out of his own inner emotions (Abstracted from “The Sincere and Wise - On Li Xiaolin’s Sketch” by Shao Dazhen).
We also need to avoid the understanding of the binary opposition of “realism” and “freehand”, to realize the real profound “realistic” painting is essentially “freehand”…Just like Li Xiaolin’s “The Miner”, he no longer expresses the miner from a social role, social morality or moral in the narrative sense, and he considers “the body covered by coal” as “the body covered by black”, changing the noun “coal” to the aesthetic language of “black”, so his understanding and performance of miners no longer stays with the cognition of social identity. Obviously, the so-called “realism” has been very clearly injected with many subjective feelings of the artist (Wang Jian: Imagery of the Reality - Interpretation of Li Xiaolin’s Drawing).
Li Xiaolin’s work showcases people’s problems and difficulties in the real world and his performance is real, concrete and perceptible, therefore it is widely accepted by the audience and society (Liu Chun: Focusing on the Perspective of Living Situation)
I heartily like realistic painting and I don’t believe that this form is outdated. I have always believed only when realistic painting gets rid of reality on the surface, can it achieve the reality of the performance. I try to find and provide a possibility to perform the depth of human nature and the expressive depth of drawing. I always remind myself that to feel things is more important than the novelty on the surface (Li Xiaolin: My View of Painting).
In my opinion, if you want to make a difference to the times, you must have faith and perseverance which ordinary people do not have, and simplicity is the most powerful, while art is ultimately a metaphysical thing, related to the soul, in need of the support of faith and spirit, instead of the walking dead (Li Xiaolin Talks about Teaching and the Creation of Sketch).
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Watercolor Portrait#shading # portrait drawing #portrait