Computational Approaches for Traditional Chinese Painting:
From the "Six Principles of Painting" Perspective
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Publication

JCST
Digital humanities

Computational Approaches for Traditional Chinese Painting: From the "Six Principles of Painting" Perspective

Wei Zhang, Jianwei Zhang, Wong Kam-Kwai, Yifang Wang, Yingchaojie Feng, Luwei Wang, and Wei Chen

Journal of Computer Science and Technology, To appear, 2023

Arxiv

About

Traditional Chinese Painting (TCP) is an invaluable cultural heritage resource and a unique visual art style. In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on the digitalization of TCP for the purpose of cultural preservation and revitalization. The resulting digital copies have enabled the advancement of computational methods for structured and systematic understanding of TCP. To explore this topic, we conducted an in-depth analysis of 94 pieces of literature. We examined the current use of computer technologies on TCP from three perspectives, based on numerous conversations with specialists. First, in light of the “Six Principles of Painting” theory, we categorized the articles according to their research focus on artistic elements. Second, we created a four-stage framework to illustrate the purposes of TCP applications. Third, we summarized the popular computational techniques applied to TCP. This work also provides insights into potential applications and future prospects, with professional opinion.

Corpus

We constructed a literature corpus based on keyword- and relation-search methods. We focused on TCP-related keywords (e.g., “Chinese landscape painting”, “Chinese ink wash painting”, and “Chinese brush painting”), resulting in 94 papers. we have been working closely with two experts to strengthen our understanding of the specialized and unique domain of TCP. Through iterative discussions with experts, we have analyzed the corpus from three perspectives: the “Six Principles of Painting” (research scope in TCP), Analytical Framework (specifically targeted problem), and Computational Technique (the use of computer-based methods).

Overview

  The Six Principles of Painting   were proposed in the sixth century to serve as the grading standards of TCP. They have remained influential to this day in some of the most important considerations for drawing and appreciating TCP. Due to their extreme importance, we were inspired to employ the Six Principles as a coding scheme to examine the focused topics of recent literature. We selected the translations collected in to clarify these principles in the following sections.

  Computational Techniques   We discussed computational techniques applied to TCPs. Compared with natural images, TCPs are similar in the modality of pictures yet different in technique details for understanding and creation. We organize the techniques from three perspectives as follows: What tasks are the computational techniques used for? How does the model extract features for these tasks? How does the model render the newly generated paintings?

  Analytical Framework   We proposed a framework of applying computational techniques in TCPs based on the state-of-the-art and domain experts. The framework involves four typical stages, from the digitalization and interpretation of existing paintings, to the creation of new artworks. These three stages will also serve the purpose of exhibition. We discussed computational techniques applied to TCPs. Compared with natural images, TCPs are similar in the modality of pictures yet different in technique details for understanding and creation. We organize the techniques from three perspectives as follows: What tasks are the computational techniques used for？ How does the model extract features for these tasks? How does the model render the newly generated paintings?