Category: Birds & Flowers Wall Scrolls & Paintings

Pine Trees and Cranes Greet the New Year Painting

			29¾" (75.5cm)
	30" (76.2cm)

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Pine Trees and Cranes Greet the New Year

This is a traditional painting featuring two Chinese cranes with a background of pine branches

Qin Xia works diligently on all of her paintings to bring out even the finest detail.

The title in Chinese is "Song He Ying Nian".

To Directly translate these words:

Song = Pine Tree

He = Cranes

Ying = Welcome / Greeting

Nian = (new) Year

The appearance of the cranes in this painting is a very traditional way to see cranes in Chinese artwork. If you look at a lot of ancient Asian art in museums, you will see cranes like this that appear as if these three dimensional creatures that were pressed into two dimensions.

Please note that this painting was done on handmade xuan paper. Some bits of fiber or tiny husks may be present in the paper. These artifacts are natural, and proof of the handmade quality of the paper.

Qin Xia works diligently on
all of her paintings to bring
out even the finest detail.

I got a chance to visit the artist's studio in Jinan city recently. I am so impressed by her style and detail in all of the paintings in her collection. I bought as much of her work as I could possibly afford, and I am sure that I will be back for more in a few months.

I also discovered that because she more than a little famous in China, there are a lot of forgeries on the market. I was given a lesson on how to spot forged paintings that are signed with her name. Of course, the best way to avoid that is to get your work directly from the artist and her family, which is why I made the trip to Jinan in the first place.

More about this piece of Asian artwork:

Her finished work
is always beautiful.

The artist, Qin Xia lives in Jinan which is the capital city of Shandong Province in northern China.

The red stamp and the Chinese characters close to the stamp say "Qin Xia" (the artist's signature). The other Chinese characters express the title and year painted (2005) in an ancient method that uses certain Chinese characters instead of numbers to represent the current year.

This is an "elaborate style painting" which has a lot of detail and uses a delicate technique with a very fine brush.
Each stroke is meticulously applied. This technique takes a long time for the artist to complete.

This is painted on special xuan paper (known by most as "rice paper") with Chinese black ink and watercolors. Later, I took this painting to Beijing where our master-scroll-maker handbuilt a wonderful silk scroll for this artwork.