mogu

…and colour is known as mogu, or “boneless.”

…to maturity the technique of mogu hua (“boneless painting”), in which he applied light colours with delicate skill, hiding the intentionally pale underdrawing and seeming thereby to dispense with the usually dominant element of a strong brush outline. His great rival, Xu Xi, working for Li Houzhu in Nanjing, first…

…usually in a “boneless” (mogu) manner that emphasizes washes instead of lines. Yun earned the respect of both his contemporaries and later generations as an appropriate representative of the school of “literati painting” (wenrenhua).