Winter Bird Stone Coaster

Winter Bird is painted in traditional Chinese "gongbi" style. Watercolor and ink painted on rice paper. Pair with Summer Bird. In Feng Shui pairs have a fundamental meaning and in Chinese culture, the number two is generally thought to be a good and lucky number. There is a Chinese saying that “good things come in pairs”. Therefore you always hang paintings in related pairs. Here summer and winter bird. The flower-and-bird painting is peculiar to China. All kinds of plants and birds were given various symbolic meanings. Flowers and birds can be compared to almost all thoughts and feelings of a human being. They can symbolise feminine beauty, virtues, political authority, omens, and lucky niceness. And once established, this tradition became popular in every dynasty. Therefore, their symbolic meaning grows increasingly rich and specific. There are lots of means of expressing symbolic meaning. The most common means are homophony and pun, which convey endless meaning whilst reflecting people's yearning for happiness. GongBi is a careful realist technique in Chinese painting, the opposite of the interpretive and freely expressive XieYi style. The technique calls for brushstrokes to “be as detailed as detailed can be”, using highly detailed brushstrokes that delimit details very precisely and without independant or expressive variation. In addition, it tries to strike a balance between artistic expression and vitality, is often highly coloured, and usually depicts figural or narrative subjects. Gongbi requires drawing with fine lines first to represent the exaggerated likenesses of the objects and then adds washes of ink and colour layer by layer to approach the perfection of exquisiteness and fine art.