Duo make a splash with traditional works

In the 1960s, artists such as Lui Shou-kwan initiated the "New Ink" movement in Hong Kong. The unconventional approach to its teaching and learning, which stresses individualism rather than imitation, gave the ancient art of Chinese ink painting a new lease of life.

Today, a new generation of Hong Kong artists is trying to capture the essence of traditional Chinese art with relevance to our times, and some of their artworks will go under the hammer at the SCMP Charity Art Auction on September 3.

There is Koon Wai-bong's black-and-white Forestscape (2013), donated by the artist and Grotto Fine Art to the cause. The work shows a row of trees growing so close together there is no telling where one ends and another starts. Every leaf - and there are thousands of them - has been drawn using the jiaye method inherited from the Tang and Song dynasties, essentially a couple of light flicks with the tip of the brush.

The baimiao, or line drawing, tradition is also apparent here in the way the trunks and branches are executed and the outlines of the leaves unfilled. And yet, the repetition of a single motif and the disorienting arrangement of the branches give the large ink-on-silk diptych a fresh perspective.

"In my art, the traditional refers to the techniques. Chinese art has strict ways of painting rocks, water, clouds and trees, and I stick to them," Koon, 40, says.

"At the same time, I try to convey something about the society we live in, such as crowdedness, mass production and how a lot of city dwellers live in a tight space but are still introverts."

Chinese art came late to Koon: he was in his second year at Chinese University, where he studied fine art as an undergraduate, when he received his first lesson in traditional Chinese painting.