Lin Po-ting thinks that the portrayal of descriptive reality was just not enough for the Sung painters. Realism was no longer of paramount importance; it was rather the essential life of the subject that had to be brought out. Lin Po-ting takes the Northern Sung artist Tsui Pai's Double Happiness as an example of art of both superseding appearances and catching the tone of the myriad things of nature.
林柏亭在「寫生在畫史上之轉變」文中就指出，今人常用的美術詞彙「寫生」，總被誤解為就是面對實景描繪作畫，清末以來，傳統繪畫受西洋衝擊，許多企圖有所作為者提倡畫家應拿起畫筆重新面對自然，或現實的事物，寫生遂屢被提起。