Serial pictures give old art form a new lease of life

Like many of his peers born in the 1960s, Li Chen was a fan of Chinese picture books in his childhood.

"I think all Chinese people of our generation were nourished by picture books," says Li, who clearly remembers exchanging picture books with his friends and borrowing books from stands for a few cents when he was a child.

However, unlike most adults who eventually abandoned picture books, Li chose to become an illustrator, telling Chinese stories with a pencil and paper.

His debut serial pictures work, Premier Zhou Enlai at Meiyuan New Village, was shown at an exhibition of arts in his hometown city, Yingkou, Liaoning province, when he was still in high school.

In 1979, when he was 16, Li joined the army and mainly served as a projectionist. After leaving the army, he went to study in the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, and graduated in 1983. Then he was assigned to work in several institutions, including the National Police University of China and Liaoning Administrators College of Police and Justice.

"I kept painting through those years," says Li.

Now a professor at the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts and deputy director of Chinese Serial-Picture Art Council, Li is an advocate of serial pictures on an easel.

"Picture books are just one form of serial pictures. Serial pictures can also be displayed at the easel and in exhibitions. Compared with picture books, easel serial pictures are richer in representation and more delicate," Li explains at the 4th Easel Serial Pictures Art Exhibition, which was launched in Dalian in November and toured Beijing in December.

He was the curator of the exhibition.

In 2008, Li brought up the idea of easel serial pictures. He thinks that as digital media changes people's reading habits, traditional Chinese picture books are falling behind. Easel serial pictures, however, can be enjoyed at exhibitions, just like other types of painting.

Unlike Li's childhood favorites, including Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Railroad Guerrilla, easel serial pictures today use more academic skills, like sketching and coloring. Easel serial pictures use a fine-painting language and literary aesthetics, which are deeply rooted in Li's works. A famous series of pictures is his Border Town, adapted from a novel of the same name by Chinese writer Shen Congwen (1902-88).

For Li, the best part of serial painting lies in the creation process.

For example, when he was drawing stories about the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), in order to draw Japanese airplanes, he had to dig historical records on the type of airplanes and eventually bought an airplane model from an overseas website.

It took Li three years and seven visits to Xiangxi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture in western Hunan province to draw serial pictures for Border Town. Once, he saw a funeral wreath carried by a motorcycle, and that happened to be for the funeral of an ethnic Miao man. Renting a farm tricycle without headlights, Li went to visit the Miao village on twisty mountain road with a flashlight at night. He was able to illustrate the whole process of burial in this way.

Li believes in the future of Chinese serial pictures and illustrations, as this is "a good time" when the country is eager to promote its culture.

He also believes in his students at the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts, who are born in the age of cartoons and comics.

"Serial pictures not only explain literature, but they go beyond the text. It's a smart kind of painting," says Li.

Wu Yue contributed to the story.