Talk about creating your own New Year pictures.

Weifang Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures flourished in the early Ming Dynasty and in the Ganjia period of Qing Dynasty, with a history of more than 600 years. Yangjiabu New Year Pictures are as famous as Tianjin Yangliuqing New Year Pictures and Suzhou Taohuawu New Year Pictures, ranking among the three largest woodblock New Year Pictures in China.

Yangjiabu is a village in Hanting District of Weifang City. Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures were born in this village. After hundreds of years of continuous inheritance and innovation, woodblock New Year pictures have become a beautiful cultural card in Hanting District and Weifang City.

brief introduction

Yang Luoshu, 1927, from Yangjiabu, Hanting District, Weifang, Shandong. In 2002, UNESCO awarded "Master of Folk Craft" as the inheritor of national intangible cultural heritage representative projects.

Born in Yangjiabu, Weifang, Shandong Province, Yang Luoshu is a descendant of 19 generations from the local centennial painting shop and Shunde. Born in a family of New Year pictures, Yang Luoshu has been fascinated by New Year pictures since childhood. He began to contact carving knives at the age of 7, studied printing New Year pictures with his father at the age of 65,438+04, and became a workshop apprentice at the age of 65,438+07. His father saw that he was brilliant, open-minded and liked New Year pictures. At the age of 20, he began to teach him lettering. Yang Luoshu, 25, has mastered the whole process of making Yangjiabu woodcut New Year pictures, especially seal cutting. He created the carving formula of "head with eyes and flexible knuckles", and his works are amazing. At the age of 30, Yang Luoshu took over the painting shop in Shunde.

Yang Luo's book summarizes the artistic characteristics of Yangjiabu New Year pictures, which are bright red, green and colorful.

The production process of Yangjiabu New Year pictures is divided into several parts. The first process is sampling, sampling; The second process is to carve wood blocks, all of which are pear wood. After a series of processes such as sawing, planing and shoveling, it is carved with a meat cutter. The third process is hand printing. Yangjiabu usually prints New Year pictures with rice paper and wool paper.

(1) once glory and decline.

92-year-old Yang Luoshu, as the19th generation descendant of Yangjiabu woodblock New Year Pictures, witnessed the prosperous period of Yangjiabu New Year Pictures. At that time, there were more than 300 households in Yangjiabu, and almost every household printed New Year pictures. Every year, merchants from all directions gather in Yangjiabu, and the demand for New Year pictures such as Door God, Kitchen King and God of Wealth is in short supply.

But then machine printing appeared in Yangjiabu. The output of machine printing is high, although the quality is not as good as manual printing, but there is a certain market, which has brought a big impact to manual New Year pictures. Many New Year artists make a living by selling their woodcuts.

Yang Luoshu adheres to the principle of inheritance and protection. He also bought many old editions from others. Now he has collected more than 2000 sets of woodcuts, some of which have become orphans.

⑵ Launch the woodblock New Year Calendar.

After the reform and opening up, Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures began to recover, and traditional New Year pictures became the object of nostalgia and collection, attracting the attention of many domestic art lovers. As the most senior New Year picture artist in Yangjiabu, Yang Luoshu began to get busy.

He carefully produced Water Margin, The Journey to the West, A Dream of Red Mansions, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and four albums of classical novels. He wants to carve all the Liangshan "108 generals" with "The Water Margin" as a breakthrough.

However, Liangshan's "One Hundred and Eight Generals" has no original picture, which combines the characteristics of Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures "big head and small body". How to design the aesthetic image of modern characters? These are all places that need his consideration.

① Field trip

So, he made a big decision, that is, to make a field trip to Liangshan site, because Yang Luoshu was very old at that time, and his eyes were struggling to see things. He thought of a way to draw a square on the picture, and then drew a picture on the picture with a magnifying glass. Besides, I try to figure out the original work every day and collect a lot of valuable information. He also spent 25,000 yuan on a truckload of pears, trying to create "108 General" at one time.

(1) Completion of the New Year picture "Water Margin"

Printing a New Year picture usually requires five editions, including 1 line edition and four-color edition, and "Hundred Single Eight Generals" requires 540 editions. ? After more than a year's hard work, during which several drawings were changed, Yang Luoshu finally completed this large-scale work. "108 Generals" came out on the eve of Hong Kong's return, which became a gift to welcome Hong Kong's return and realized his long-cherished wish.

(2) Break down from overwork

After decades of hard work, three of Yang Luo's five fingers can't be straightened, and they are fixed in the state of holding the knife all the year round. His knuckles are always swollen, and all three fingers are swollen.

Yang Luoshu said: "Everything is hardwood in peacetime. You have to insert the meat cleaver into the wood and let the meat cleaver walk in the wood. You have to force it with air, otherwise you can't carve. I have worked so hard for more than 70 years, so the bones have been deformed when I painted them. " Painting all the year round brings him endless pain and strain, which makes his waist become rickety and the cervical vertebra oppresses blood vessels.

Once, when he was stiff, he suddenly fainted and was taken to the hospital. When he woke up, the doctor asked him to stop some work. However, once he picks up the meat cleaver, it will fly flexibly in his hand.

(3) form your own unique style.

After decades of painstaking efforts, the New Year pictures made by Yang Luoshu not only inherited the tradition, but also formed their own unique style, full of charm.

Later, Yang Luoshu took his own works to Japan for cultural exchange, and carried out engraving and printing New Year pictures at Yangjiabu Woodblock New Year Pictures Exhibition in China, which was very popular and was called "the king of Chinese New Year pictures" by the local media.

After returning from Japan, Yang Luoshu devoted himself to writing four classic novels. He is carving 88 sets of The Journey to the West New Year pictures, breaking the traditional pattern of Yangjiabu woodcut New Year pictures with a single figure. Each painting has five to eight characters, with mountains, rivers and clouds as the background and a description of 20 -50 words.

Therefore, The Journey to the West carved 440 pieces, 34,000 words and nearly 5,000 small characters on a * * *, which became a treasure in New Year pictures. Later, Yang Luoshu portrayed the figures of the Three Kingdoms, a dream of red mansions and other works. In recent years, he has carved a set of "Full Pictures of Emperors in Past Dynasties", and the adult paintings printed on rice paper can reach more than a foot thick. This painting is unique in the country at present.

Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures were hit hard, many ancient editions were destroyed and most workshops closed down. At that time, he cut a lot of editions, which made his father feel bad, so he secretly hid them. Yang Luoshu risked his life to wrap 150 paintings of Ming and Qing Dynasties, buried them in pigsty and underground, and preserved these old versions.

Yangjiabu now prints pictures of New Year pictures, and two-thirds of them are kept in the hands of Yang Luoshu. His collection of more than 65,438+0,000 pictures became orphans. 1993, Yang Luoshu donated more than 50 paintings of Ming and Qing Dynasties that have been treasured for decades to the National Museum for free. According to experts' research, one of the paintings carved in Hongzhi period of Ming Dynasty is one of the earliest existing woodcut paintings in China.

Yang Luoshu's greatest wish is to collect all the plates of Yangjiabu New Year pictures lost in history in his lifetime, so that the world can know and understand Yangjiabu New Year pictures.

One day, however, when Luo Yung was sorting out his paintings, he found that an old version of The Three Kings of the Kitchen was lost because of its age, so he needed to consider the issue of future preservation.

But Yang Luo's book has its own way, because he keeps a set of colors based on plants, which can be re-carved and colored.

Ye Zi has something to say.

Nowadays, Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures have become beautiful business cards of Hanting District and Weifang City through continuous inheritance, development and innovation. In recent years, relying on the rich cultural resources of Yangjiabu woodcut New Year pictures, Hanting District has actively developed folk cultural tourism, built Yangjiabu folk art grand view garden, set up woodcut workshops, New Year pictures museum and other 36 scenic spots, and received more than 500,000 Chinese and foreign tourists every year. At the same time, Hanting District has also built a characteristic commercial street of kite New Year pictures, relying on Bohai Road on the east side of Yangjiabu folk art Grand View Garden to build a characteristic commercial and cultural street integrating the production, production and sales of kite New Year pictures, and promote the continuous development of kite New Year pictures industry.

In 2002, Yang Luoshu was awarded the title of "Master of Folk Arts and Crafts" by UNESCO, which is the highest honor of Yangjiabu woodcut New Year pictures artists. Yangjiabu woodcut New Year pictures have since gone abroad and become famous overseas. Artists such as Yang Luoshu have made unremitting efforts for the inheritance and development of Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures, and will create them to the end.

From the moment he devoted himself to the study of New Year pictures, Yang Luoshu made up his mind that since he learned and accepted the craftsmanship of the older generation, it would be passed down from generation to generation, and Yangjiabu's woodblock New Year pictures would never disappear. Today, Luo Yung has produced, innovated and passed on the New Year pictures for more than 70 years, which is his lifelong career. Speaking of this, Yang Luoshu proudly said: "I have never been engaged in other occupations in my life, and I am determined to pass on the skill of New Year pictures to the end!"