Abstract: The problems for non-photorealistic rendering with current sketch rendering methods are the coincident rendering degree and lack of hierarchical physical appearance of paintings. The paper presents an automatic method for simulating sketch paintings via significance map technology. Firstly, a significance map is built up in a weighted gradient and saliency of input image, yet guides sketch artistic rendering. Secondly, anisotropic filter technique is used to smooth tensor field, and integral convolution method is adopted to generate sketch paintings along the local curve direction of this tensor field. Finally, to highlight artistic appeal of sketch under different lighting condition, the painting is rendered by the improved Phong illumination model, which can enhance hierarchical physical appearance of sketch artistic works. Experimental results show that the proposed method can be used efficiently to produce special paintings with hierarchical appearance, and this method can carry out different level of sketch to the local region while preserves feature of the local details.