Magical Brush: A Symbol-Based Modern Chinese Painting System for Novices

Modern Chinese painting is a new type of painting inherited from ancient Chinese painting. Drawing modern Chinese painting is time-consuming and laborious, which is difficult for novices to start. Symbols are fundamental components of Chinese cultural works both materially and mentally. We introduce a symbol-based modern Chinese painting system termed Magical Brush. Magical Brush combines symbolic cultural factors with AI generative models, with the attempt to help novices create a complete modern Chinese painting, learn basic ideas of Chinese paintings and obtain co-creation engagement. In user study, we compare Magical Brush to other AI and non-AI digital painting tools. Results indicate that by combining cultural factors, Magical Brush can help novices easily create modern Chinese paintings and experience the cultural connotations in the process.