Meticulous painting as an important field of Chinese painting has a long history and is of long standing and well established. It can be said that meticulous painting was the mainstream artistic form of Chinese painting before the emergence of literati's painting, even after the booming of literati's painting in Song dynasty, meticulous painting still had an advantage over other painting forms in accurate shaping and precise drawing, and became the most important sign of the imperial court painting. Being different from literati's painting which was more branded as the spirits of scholar-bureaucrat, meticulous painting is regarded as a generally accepted value and become a world language. In history, a lot of meticulous painting masters were brought to the force and their classic works were handed down from one generation to another. In contemporary art circle, in which the arts have free and different expression and afford a magnificent view, as the traditional meticulous painting shows extraordinary splendor, many new and vigorous artists of strength have come to the force. Among them, Chen Qiming is one of the best.

　　Although the young artist born in Chengdu is just over the age of 40, he has been quite famous in the creation of meticulous painting. It is indeed that early in the end of the 1980s, he had engaged himself in the paintings and investigations of tiger, dog, horse, cattle, and created many meticulous paintings of large animal with highly ornamental value and collection value. In the end of 1990s, He had expanded the themes of meticulous painting to the giant panda, wolf, deer, Tibetan mastiff, etc, which were rare in history。Through long-term observation and study, he was not only familiar with these animals' morphology, but also well aware of their habits, which had laid a solid foundation for his later creations. In the painting techniques, he studied extensively and learned from the mature experience of the traditional meticulous painting, and made full use of the perspective and realistic advantages of Western painting, finally formed his own a set of complete and unique performance methods and special skills of meticulous painting. The main characteristics of his painting are described as shaping with preciseness and science, composition with simplicity and lifelikeness, drawing with carefulness and subtleness, focusing on the quality of performance, paying attention to humanistic concern.

　　Here, I talk more about his unique creation of wolf, Tibetan mastiff and elephant, which have become one of the highlights of his works, and have constituted four major creative theme advantages of his meticulous painting together with the giant panda.

　　Wolf is the only existing animal in long evolutionary process on earth, which is called as "survival of the fittest in natural selection". Although human beings are its natural enemies, wolf in some sense has taught humanity many things such as viability, tolerance, adaptability and mutual care, which of these qualities have always been praised by human. And Tibetan mastiff has attracted increasing attention of mankind due to its own advantages. Tibetan mastiff wins people's favor through its solid physique, excellent and graceful strength as well as its patience and flexibility. Whether standing, walking, or lying on the ground, the first impression Tibetan Mastiff gives to people is its outside temperament characteristic which is fierce, proud and arrogant. In the depiction of Tibetan mastiff, Chen Qiming is apt at grasping its physical and temperamental characteristic, and is able to represent and make sense of these characteristics by means of techniques. Both Wolf and Tibetan mastiff in his paintings have acquired accurate appearance and complete verve simultaneously through brushwork of great delicacy, delicate representation of animal hair, as well as perfect treatment of relationship between the color and ink. It is totally a process of artistic manufacture and summary in which the painting full of texture beauty and complete sublimation seems like more than the animal itself. Not only does this super-realism technique restore the objective images, but also cleverly incorporate the painter's aesthetic consciousness in the objective. As a result, it makes the painting more artistic appeal. He is very particular about the composition of picture to seek perfection. There is a perfect balance between diminishing and simplification of background with subtle and complicated description of primary scene, which shows the artist with a keen artistic ability of observation and unique performance capability. If the painter does not have enough artistic accomplishment, meticulous animal painting will be painted too rigid, almost photographic, lack of vitality, and without artistic appeal as a result. It is the genius and intelligence of Chen Qiming in dealing with the dialectical relationships appropriately between cold and warm, fine and coarse, real and imaginary that enable his paintings of animals such as wolf, Tibetan mastiff, giant panda and so on to be extraordinary expressive and full of artistic appreciation, so we have to admire the painter for his inventive mind and superb skills in painting of animal. The images of wolf and Tibetan mastiff created by Chen Qiming are extremely rare in contemporary art circle. He wins plaudits from people for the delicate and calm style of painting and is known as “the artist putting a new charm into traditional Chinese painting ". His works have been collected by the State Council, The Propaganda Department of CCCPC, Chengdu City Hall and United Nations Headquarters, Europe and the United States and other overseas institutions and individuals.

　　Recently, Chen Qiming has been exploring to a new creative field regarding elephant as the theme. The reason for nobody practicing this theme so far is that the movements of elephant are single and there are certain difficulties in performance of white elephant. The elephant in the Southeast Asian countries is regarded as a symbol of victory and prosperity, especially in Thailand where exists memorial towers of fighting against elephants as well as the elephant festival. Thailand treats the Buddhism as a state religion and the white elephant as its spirit totem, putting the Ivory sculpture together with the Buddha in Sacrificial activities. In the depiction of this theme, Chen Qiming not only pays attention to the elephant appearance, and to the description of its spirit, especially the Pagoda created by his ingenuity in the picture, which fully reflects the inner relationship between white elephant art and religion. Therefore, this theme used by Chen Qiming can be said to fill a creative gap of Chinese meticulous painting, with double breakthrough meaning in the theme development and artistic performance.

　　As time goes by, Chen Qiming's meticulous painting works will acquire more favor from people in a bigger range and higher platform. In this process, he will improve himself constantly and realize self-cultivation to push meticulous animal painting to a new stage.

January, 2012, Beijing

作者：Fu,Changjun