Brush and ink are only servants of thoughts and emotion. They should follow your emotion and change with the emotion.
Art is like a kite. You have to pull the string hard in order to stretch it to its limit, but you don't want to pull it so hard that you break the thread, because the thread connects you to the land and its peoples.
If a painting contains no abstraction nor impressionistic elements, it is a kite that will never fly. But if the painting completely breaks the connection between human feeling and the object portrayed, the kite string has been broken. I try to keep the line unbroken.
If you plagiarize others' techniques, you steal their emotions and tell your spectators a lie with your work. Works as such equal zero.
There is no standard way of using painting techniques.
Chinese architecture has a complete organic structure; it contains both sensibility and purpose.