Using the folk houses of northern Guangxi as a case study, this article explores how vernacular architecture can inspire contemporary Chinese mountain and water painting. The author first surveys the region’s two main building traditions: the wooden “pole-fence” (ganlan) stilt houses of ethnic minorities such as the Dong, Zhuang, Miao and Yao, with their drum towers and wind-and-rain bridges, and the brick Han houses in the Hunan–Jiangxi style, with horse-head walls and carved decoration. Built from local timber, bamboo and stone and following the terrain, these villages form harmonious landscapes that embody the ideal of the “unity of heaven and humanity”. The article then discusses the difficulties of folk houses as a painting subject: finding a language for “how to draw” a theme with few precedents, balancing brushwork and shape so that brushstrokes serve the image, and developing a personal schema as the mark of an artist’s maturity, as in the styles of Fan Kuan, the Mi family and Ni Zan. Finally, the author argues that folk houses, whose contrasts of wall and roof echo the dense–sparse and solid–void relations of Chinese painting, hold great humanistic value and offer a fruitful path for innovative, sketch-based creation.