The primary subjects of his paintings are birds and flowers. Among is works is Five-Colored Parakeet on Blossoming Apricot Tree. He also recopied Zhang Xuan's painting Court Ladies Preparing Newly-Woven Silk, and Emperor Huizong's reproduction is the only copy of that painting that survives today. He invented the "Slender Gold" style of calligraphy. The name "Slender Gold" came from the fact that Huizong's writing resembled gold filament, twisted and turned.

Huizong is known in Chinese history as an emperor who was also an artist, who loved art, calligraphy, and rituals more than politics

During Huizong’s reign (1100 to 1125) as the last emperor of the Northern Song dynasty, the empire suffered foreign invasion and was forced to accept humiliating political compromises. Huizong's response to this declining power and prestige of the empire was to focus on artistic projects in an attempt to create a visual illusion of ruiying ("auspicious responses") to his reign and to symbolically refer to himself as an "enlightened ruler of [heaven's] son" (Sturman 34). These ruiying paintings are usually highly realistic in style and yet are also highly ideological in content. Huizong decreed numerous public festivals intended to promote an illusion of joy and social harmony, and commissioned thousands of paintings of auspicious signs to assert that heaven’s favor was upon him (Sturman 36). Huizong’s own painting, Cranes Above Kaifeng [above] is an example of such a painting.