Artist Yu Bo 俞波油画 (yubo9191): Oil Landscapes and Lessons in Looking
A sheet of board is brushed all over in ultramarine darkened with black. A real leaf, freshly cut, is dipped in pale blue paint and pressed flat onto it, then peeled away; its veins stay behind, printed in light. Another leaf, then another, until the dark ground is a thicket. Then the painter picks up the cut end of a Chinese cabbage, dips it in pink, and presses it down twice: two roses bloom among the leaves.
The Artist
俞波 — Yu Bo — is an oil painter and teacher based in Hubei who runs his own gallery, the Yu Bo Gallery in Wuchang District, Wuhan. He describes himself as a 国家一级美术师, a National First-Class Artist — one of China’s official professional grades for artists — and sums up what he does in eight characters: 以画会友，授艺传心 — make friends through painting, pass on the craft from the heart. He paints to commission and takes students.
His subject is the landscape: woodland streams, lamplit cabins, lakeside cottages, canal towns, autumn forests, snowy peaks at sunset, a lotus pond, the sea. Much of it is taught as he goes, under a line that runs through his lessons — 零基础学画画, learn to paint from zero.
Painting With a Cabbage
The leaf-print lesson shows his teaching at its most playful. He says so at the start: today I’m painting with leaves and a cabbage. The method uses no drawing at all. A dark ground of ultramarine and black is brushed on first, and allowed to set. Then cut leaves become stamps — painted on their underside, laid down, pressed flat with the palm and lifted off, so each one leaves a pale print of its own shape and veins. The base of a Chinese cabbage, cut straight across, has a rose-like spiral of leaf bases; dipped in pink and pressed down, it prints a flower. A few dabs of white and the picture is finished.
For a beginner, it removes the biggest fear in painting: the blank surface and the question of how to draw. Nature does the drawing. All the student has to decide is color and placement. Then he sends them off: go and cut some leaves.
A Gourd and a Poem
At the other end of his range is a single green gourd hanging from its vine, painted with great care. The gourd’s skin is built up in soft greens, darker at the edges and pale where it turns toward the light, with fine white bloom. Beads of dew sit on its surface, each with its own highlight and shadow. Thin tendrils curl around it, and a dried flower hangs from the base. He paired it with a short verse about the gourd that holds heaven and earth inside it, small as it is.
A Canal Town in Thick Paint
The canal-town painting shows a different hand. A narrow waterway runs between white-walled houses toward a stone arched bridge, with a tree leaning over the water and red lanterns hanging under the eaves. The walls aren’t brushed, they’re built: thick, rough layers of white and gray laid on with a palette knife, so the paint stands up in ridges like old plaster. The water is painted the opposite way, smooth and glassy, with the reflections of the walls and the sky pulled straight down in long strokes.
That contrast — rough walls, smooth water — is the whole picture. The knife makes the buildings feel old and solid; the brush makes the water feel still.
The Woodland Stream
His woodland streams are where most of his teaching happens. A cottage sits among tall trees beside a shallow stream, a thread of smoke rising from its chimney. Pale pebbles show through clear water in the foreground. The trees are lit gold on one side and blue-green in shade on the other, and the far woods fade into a pale lilac mist. Each painting is finished with a few final touches of light: the glint on the water, a bright leaf, the edge of the smoke.
Water Over Stones
Two paintings show how he handles water. In one, an autumn wood stands over still water dotted with lily pads, its reflection lying in long vertical strokes of gold, orange and brown, broken by the flat pale shapes of the leaves. In the other, a forest stream runs over a bed of rocks: dark, mossy boulders on the bank, and pale, smooth pebbles visible beneath the clear water, with small white cascades between them.
Clear water is painted mostly as what lies under it and what lies above it. The stones are painted first, then softened and cooled where the water covers them, and then a few strokes of white or pale blue are added on top for the moving surface. The water itself is barely painted at all.
Painted for a Room
Many of his landscapes are made for someone’s wall. He shows them finished, then placed in a room — above a sofa, at the end of a corridor, in a gallery space — so a buyer can see how a painting of a stream or a cottage will sit in a home. That is the other half of his practice: 订画, paintings to order. Someone who wants a particular place, or a particular mood, can have it painted by hand.
The paintings he shows this way are the same kinds he teaches. A sunlit meadow with sheep grazing, a cabin, a path winding down to a small pond, tall trees in morning mist. A lakeside cottage with a wooden jetty, a moored boat and a dog on the path. Teaching and commissions are two answers to one wish: someone wants a painting of a peaceful place, and he will either show them how to make it or make it for them.
“No Need to Hurry”
One line of his sums up his teaching: 不必急于完成一幅画，如同花期各有早晚，享受落笔的过程就很好 — there’s no need to hurry to finish a painting; just as flowers bloom early or late, it’s enough to enjoy each stroke as you make it. For beginners, that is the most useful advice in oil painting. Oil dries slowly, and the paintings go wrong when people rush, putting wet paint into wet paint until the colors turn to mud.
Lotus and Sea
Beyond the woods and cottages, his range extends to flowers and the sea. A pink lotus stands among broad leaves, with drops of water on them and a seed head beside it. A seascape catches waves breaking, with spray and sparkling light painted in thick touches of white. Of a painting of lilies he wrote: 愿如百合，干净自在 — may you be like the lily, clean and at ease.
Making Friends Through Painting
Yu Bo’s practice rests on two things: a gallery and a classroom. The gallery sells paintings of quiet places. The classroom teaches people with no training at all how to make one for themselves. His motto puts it simply — make friends through painting, pass on the craft from the heart.
Picture the end of a lesson: a dark board printed with pale leaves, two pink cabbage roses among them, and a student who has never painted before holding up something that looks finished.
See his work on Douyin: 俞波油画 (yubo9191) · leaf and cabbage prints · green gourd · canal town · forest stream. All artwork and video © 俞波, shown with credit.