On the Space-depiction Techniques of Chinese Traditional Architectural Drawings

摘要

Ruled-line painting is the best foundation of research on ancient Chinese buildings. From existing ruled-line painting works, it can be figured out that ruled-line paintings of the Northern Song Dynasty have had a great breakthrough based on predecessors in the respect of manifestation with regard to sense of space. A group of experienced painters of ruled-line painting at that time such as Zhang Zeduan, Guo Zhongshu, Yan Wengui and the like know a lot about "subtle principles" of "Same Proportion as Material Objects" and "Hundreds of Diagonals Gathered to One Point", whose works' sense of volume, sense of space and sense of stability are universally superior to those of predecessors. Therefore, a form or framework of ancient architectural drawings basically took shape at that time. In this paper, analyses on space-depiction techniques of Chinese traditional architectural drawings before the introduction of Western perspective theory are done through studying ruled-line paintings of Song Dynasty.