Danqing
In Chinese painting, danqing (Chinese: 丹青; pinyin: dān qīng) refers to paintings on silk and Xuan paper. Danqing is painted with an ink brush, color ink, or Chinese pigments using natural plant, mineral, and both metal pigments and pigment blends. Danqing literally means "red and blue-green" in Chinese, or more academically, "vermillion and cyan"; they are two of the most used colors in ancient Chinese painting.
| Danqing | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A section of Wang Ximeng's "A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains" on silk, 1113 AD | |||||||||
| Chinese | 丹青 | ||||||||
| Literal meaning | "red and blue-green", or "red and blue" | ||||||||
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Danqing is typically colorful and vibrant, and uses different colors to depict vivid landscapes, scenery, figures, portraits, plants, and animals. Some of the fundamental colors used in danqing are white, yellow, red, blue-green, and black.
The origin of the word danqing comes from the combination of the Chinese characters dan (丹) and qing (青). Dan (丹) refers to dansha (丹砂, lit. cinnabar), a red or vermillion mineral pigment, and qing (青) refers to qingyu (青雘), a cyan or blue-green mineral pigment. Because ancient Chinese paintings often used these two colors, danqing became a synonym for painting in the Chinese language.
Throughout its history, danqing has taken on multiple meanings, and may refer to:
- The minerals dansha (丹砂; cinnabar) and qingyu (青雘; azurite);
- colorful mineral and metal pigments in general;
- the colors vermillion and cyan;
- colors or all vibrant colors in general;
- a specific Chinese painting, and/or Chinese paintings in general;
- the art or process of Chinese painting;
- painter(s)/Chinese painter(s), artists who mastered the art of Chinese painting; or
- historical records
Danqing has a longer storage time than regular plant pigments, and generally does not fade easily. It is often used as a metaphor for faithfulness, such as "danqing is unswerving (丹青不渝)."