Abstract
Watercolour painting was introduced to China over a hundred years ago, and in the last two decades, it has developed rapidly, presenting a situation of diversified development. While Western-style watercolour painting has been adopted by Chinese painters, they have also expanded on it with their own aesthetic awareness and cognitive styles. As a result, Chinese watercolour painting has developed a set of expressive techniques that highlight the cultural characteristics of the nation in terms of aesthetics, concepts and techniques, resulting in a painting style with a distinctive national personality at present. Although Chinese watercolour painting has taken on a variety of styles with the intervention of modern and contemporary art, realistic watercolour painting is still the mainstream. However, there are obvious differences between the "realism" of Chinese watercolour painting and the "realism" of Western watercolour painting in terms of expression. The most distinctive feature is the "imagery" language of expression, which is closely linked to the cultural heritage of Chinese tradition and is of great value for research. I interpret the aesthetics, composition, colour and brushwork of Chinese realistic watercolour painting from the perspective of traditional Chinese aesthetics in order to deepen the understanding of Chinese realistic watercolour painting and to provide a reference for the further development of the art of Chinese realistic watercolour painting.