Painting: Proportion, Depicting Wind, and Plant Branching
Precepts on proportioning the parts of a figure, rendering wind, and the angles of ramification
A page of painting precepts with no diagrams. The first note requires every part of a figure to be proportioned to the whole, applied equally to men, animals and plants. The second explains how to depict wind through bent branches, overturned leaves and clouds of fine dust in the turbid air. The third observes that the angles at which a tree's branches divide grow more obtuse toward the older, lower trunk and more acute in the younger parts.
On this page
Proportion every part to its whole
Each member of a figure should match the character of the whole: a thick, short man should have short thick arms, broad hands and short thick fingers. The same rule of diminishing or enlarging thicknesses applies to all animals and plants.
Depicting the wind
To paint wind, besides bending the branches and turning the leaves toward the direction from which the wind comes, one should show the swirling of fine dust mixed with the clouded air.
The branching angles of plants
Widely spreading plants have the angles that separate their branches more obtuse the lower and older the point of origin, nearer the thick trunk. In the younger part of the tree the angles of its ramifications are more acute.