The key difference is Liang Kai used a different technique on those two painting one is Sakyamuni Returning from the Mountains, the other one is the Immortal in Splashed Ink. Sakyamuni Returning from the Mountains depicts an image of Sakyamuni, who failed to attain wisdom, in spite of a long period of ascetic practices, descending from his abode on the mountain. The first one is colored portraiture, the second is black and white, the first one we can see more details, such as the texture of the tree. Its precise and realistic expression is great and It is a masterpiece of Liang Kai's color figure painting. But in the second only a few brushes with no details, are used to describe characters with large brush strokes. The Immortal in Splashed