An artlist who has developed a school of his own in the art and handicraft circle in china, Wei Jingxian entered the art faculty of Nanjing Art Institute in 1957 and was taught by great contemporary artists Liu Haishu and Chen Zhifo. After graduation, he taught in Wenzhou Research Institute of Art and Handicraft and Wenzhou Techers College. Now he is a senior handicraftsman and a vice professor.

Wei jingxian uses knowledge in painting to assist his study of embroidery and oncentrates on the area of" how embroidery work depicts modern people." On top of traditional eedlework techniques, he utilizes painting theories like devices for producing stereoscopic effects and showing contrast of brightness and colors and does the drawing and embroidery all by himself.For more than 20 years, he has been using various needlework to embroider 100-plus masterpieces of ortraits of ancient and modern celebrities,which are exhibited several times locally and overseas. His works bring an entirely new impression of embroidery to people and are renowned by local and overseas press as" rare treasures".

In 1985, Wei's color portrait of Princess Diana of Wales was presented to Her Highness as a state gift and received a comment from Her Highness" It is realy exquisite and closely resembles me!" In 1983, Wei used the stereoscopic techniques of sketching to make an embroidery portrait," The Elderly Baishi" of the famous Chinese painter Qi Baishi. This portrait was awarded the" Excellent Creation Grand Prize" of the One Hundred Flower Award of Chinese Handicrafts the same year. Wei's embroidery works have been treasured up by people in U.K., the U.S., Canada and Japan, Etc.

In general, photos or pictures will be used as the blueprints of the meticulously hand-made potrait embroidery. By employing a few drozen different needlework, four major types of portrait embroidery are turned out, namely: color embroidery, stereoscopic sketch embroidery, sketch embroidery and hair embroidery.

The work of a piece of color embroidery is based on a color photo. At first, it is necessary to arrange the needlework to be used according to different textures and different degree of complexity of the face, clothes, hair style and background. People of different sex and different age will have different facial textures, they may wear clothes made of different fabrics like silk, wool and ramie. Using exquisite workmanship and different needlework, the appearance of the person will be lively depicted.

For stereoscopic sketching embroiderf, threads of the same color with different shades are used. According to the features of the face, compact and sparse stitches, thick and thin stitches, long and short stitches, etc. are used to form a stereoscopic appearance of the person. Such techniques are also the fruit of Wei's efforts to utilize his knowledge of painting in embroidery. Since the 60s, Wei has been experimenting the making of sketch embroidery imitating the effect of copperplate etching. His first such work is a portrait of the great scientist Einstein. In this work, he uses a needlework which is neither the traditional" fine stitch" nor the new"mixed stitch" but combines the advantages of these two stitches and utilizes painting theories to vividly depict the appearance of the person while maintaining the characteristics of embroidery. One characteristic of this kind of needlework is that the stitch pattern changes smoothly from compact to scattered. Besides flexibility in the use of needlework, the most difficult thing is to use sereoscopic embroidery which requires a smaller number of stitches to produce a better effect. At the brightest part of the portrait, no stitch will be applied. With sagacious application of stitches, every stitch used will help to constitute a lively description and to increase or decrease a single stitch will have a great bearing on the quality of the embroidery.

Sketch embroidery may be regarded as a unique creation of Wei. Using the techniques of embroidery, a person's appearance is lively depicted compendiously by simple lines. Sometimes, Wei makes a sketch of the person before he embroiders. When circumstances allow, he will embroiders the portrait directly with the presence of the person. The latter case requires superb observation power and epitomizing power and canot be achieved by onewithout supreme craftsmanship. Inrecent years, Wei has gained significant success in using hair as threads to make sketch embroidery of modern people. Hair embroidery has a long history in China but the motifs are mainly chambers, pavilions and ancient people. Wei's attempt to use their embroidery to depict modern people is unprecedented. His hair embroidery of" Doctor Sun Yet Sen"," Queen Elizabeth II" and the 2.05m high and 1.15m wide big hair embroidery of " Mao Zedong and Jiang Zhongzheng at Negotiation at Chongqing" are praised by local and overseas press as" the world's number one" hair embroidery works. This explains why customers from HongKong and Macao rush to collect his works.

Back to the ancient time, to embroidery portraits has always been most difficult. Besides, it is more difficult to embroider modern prople than to embroider ancient peole than to embroider ancient people. Itis because for portrait of ancient people, there is not a real person to be based on as a guide for the appearance of the appearances of the portrait. Therefore, the appearances of the people look more or less the same and simple needlework can be used. For portraits of modern people, it will be different. Techniques in painting for producing 3-dimen-sional effect( stereoscopic effect) have to be used. Besides, special attention have to be paid to the alterations in brightness, colors, textures and mood of the portrait. An error the breath of single hair can affect greatly the quality of the portrait.

For more than 20 years.Wei Jingxian has gained significant achievements in combining painting and embroidery techniques. Many lifelike portrait embroidery works which can be kept for a long time have been turned out by Wei. People are paying more and more attention to his embroidery art.

As a brand new species of artistic products and with unique style, portrait embroidery is entering the world market.