In order to show the spatial sense, overall sense and three-dimensional sense of jade, the carving master will use the thickness compressed to different degrees, use the different images of concave and convex surfaces, the light and dark vision formed after being illuminated, and the changes brought about by various perspectives to express a stronger sense of three-dimensionality and space.

In this way, jade relief is similar to painting in its carved expression. Therefore, relief is a new combination of sculpture art forms between painting and round sculpture.

According to the different depths to which the thickness is compressed, relief can be divided into three types: shallow carving (also known as thin carving), medium carving, and deep carving.

What is deep relief?

The thickness of jadeite's deep relief is the same as or slightly thinner than that of a round sculpture. The carved object has stronger ups and downs due to its own structure. If it weren't for the fact that its back is connected to the background, it could almost be treated as a round sculpture.

In actual application, deep relief is often used in combination with shallow relief or medium relief to fully express the three-dimensional spatial relationship between foreground, middle ground and background.

What is medium relief?

The middle relief of jadeite adopts another form of carving, which mainly uses the subtractive method to make the outline, but the protrusions of the carved object are higher and due to its own structural relationship, it will show higher ups and downs. The distance between its highest point and the horizon is relatively large. Therefore, medium relief is also the most widely used.

What is a bas-relief?

The bas-relief of jade is to remove a layer of equal depth from the blank space outside the designed image outline so that the image can be slightly raised. The carved object will have slight ups and downs due to its own structure.

Because the distance between its highest point and the ground is very small, this method is called bas-relief to indicate its small thickness. Generally speaking, bas-relief is suitable for high-grade jadeite. For example, the patterns and textures on coins are typical bas-reliefs. In fact, the meaning of "bo" is as thin as paper.

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