WHEN, 18 years ago, then 54-year-old Liu Guangrui took home several fallen leaves he had picked up during his morning exercises, he had not expected that he would later become an "artist" making pictures with leaves.

His latest piece is a reproduction of "Qingming Shanghe Tu", or "Riverside Scene at the Qingming Festival", a famous painting in Chinese history, made by Zhang Zeduan of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1279).

This large scroll landscape painting, which depicts a total of 648 human figures, 96 domestic animals and 122 houses, took Liu and his wife more than two years to complete.

Although the reproduction is made of leaves, stems and pieces of bark, it bears a striking similarity to the original.

To some degree it is even more true to life. For example, the trees in Liu's picture have been made of several small pieces of bark. All the different colours seen in the picture come from the natural colours of the leaves. Most haven't even been trimmed before being used.

The picture, which presently serves as a stunning decoration in their sitting room, has just won a top prize at a city-wide exhibition for art by retired workers. The prize and its attendant coverage by some newspapers fascinated by his natural art work has brought Liu a measure of fame in the city.

Simple tools

These days he continually receives calls from old colleagues and friends extending their congratulations. The number of visitors to his small house have also increased, including curious neighbours who want to see the artworks and those who want to buy his pieces.

"The tools we use in making these pictures are very simple - just a pair of forceps, scissors and some glue," Liu said. He took out some leaves which had been dried after being pressed between the pages of magazines for a long time. According to Liu, only dry leaves can be used in making the pictures.

"We tried fresh one before, thinking that they are more beautifully coloured, but they soon withered and attracted a lot of insects," Liu said.

After that experience, he began putting all the leaves he collected into books and magazines to dry them.

The colour of the leaves changes after they have lost the water inside. After 18 years of collecting fallen leaves, Liu now knows clearly what colour a certain leaf will change into after being dried. For example, the leaves of rose bushes turn black when dried, a colour that can be used to depict clothing in his works.

The process of making the leaf picture looks easy when Liu demonstrates it. He first puts the leaves on a piece of white paper. With forceps, Liu slightly bends the stem of a big leaf, causing it to curve. He then pastes various types of small leaves onto the big one. The arrangement of these leaves composes the image of a girl's face.

Such a transformation takes Liu no more than three minutes now, but 18 years ago, it would take him a whole day.

"Many of our works aren't based on copying an original picture. They are simply reflection of what we have seen in our daily lives, augmented by imagination," Liu said.

Retiring artists

When 18 years ago, on the basis of a sudden impulse, he gathered some fallen leaves and brought them home, Liu had not considered making pictures out of them. Even more unimaginable was the idea that his leaf pictures could one day be exhibited at the Shanghai Art Museum, a place really remote to him at that time.

"I just found they were beautiful when I first brought them home," Liu recalled.

"I thought maybe I could use these leaves as bookmarks. But a few days later my wife found that they could be made into nice pictures after some simple arrangement, and that was the start of our leaf-picture making."

At that time, Liu had not yet retired. He spent all his spare time making the pictures together with his wife. At first they just made simple pictures, such as trees or animals.

Although the work was time consuming, the couple took a lot of interest in it. Almost everyday after dinner they would take out their unfinished work, pondering and working on it. Sometimes to make one character more true to life, they would try hundreds of different leaves on one particular spot.

After building up their skills by making these simple pictures, the couple thought of working on something more difficult. It wasn't long before they reached the agreement to work on the "Jinlin shi'er chai", depicting 12 leading women characters from the famous Chinese novel - Dream of the Red Mansion.

To make the characters in their pictures better adapted to what the author depicted in the book, Liu read the novel several times before starting to work on it. In contrast to him, the way his wife chose to familiarize herself with the characters was by watching TV.

"It was quite a co-incidence that when we were working on our leaf picture for these 12 ladies, the TV station was also broadcasting a TV series based on the novel. She would not miss a single episode of that," Liu said.

After several years, the colours of their old works have faded a little, but that just adds a special "ancient" touch to the pictures.

Gathering material

It is hard to imagine how the couple - both are now in their 70s - manage to find so many different types and colours of leaves.

Liu himself couldn't remember even roughly how many leaves he has collected over the past 18 years. Almost every time they go out for a walk or leave Shanghai for a trip, they remember to pick up some leaves with special shapes and colours that they might need for their future pictures.

Their daughter who works as a teacher once told her students about her parents' leaf pictures. Unexpectedly, a few days later, she received lots of leaves of various shapes and colours from her students.

The children's act greatly moved and encouraged Liu.

"In the past 18 years, we have received a lot of help from family relatives and friends," Liu said.

"Many of them would bring back leaves when they travelled to other places. The leaves we used came from many places including Beijing, Xi'an, Guilin and Hangzhou. There are also many collected from abroad, from countries such as Australia, the US, Mexico ... I couldn't even memorize all the place names."