Welcome back to Calligraphy Corner!
Today, I want to tackle a topic that I am rather excited about: Chinese calligraphy! My personal experience as relates to Chinese calligraphy involves seven years of Mandarin Chinese classes and interim instruction in 书
Fig. 1. The Met Museum. Quatrain on Spring’s Radiance.
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Fig. 2. China Online Museum. Autobiography (自敘帖).
So – how does Chinese calligraphy work?
Materials needed include a brush and ink. In Ancient China, brushes were most often made of a bamboo (or wood) handle attached to a section of animal hair. Modern brushes often offer synthetic alternatives, but bamboo and animal hair are still used. Historically, calligraphy ink was created by the calligrapher using cakes or sticks of animal matter, water, and inkstones. A dark paste was produced with the use of all of these items.
Fig. 3. The Met Museum. Inkstone.
It is important to recognize the value of the flexibility of the brush and ink when it comes to artistic expression. These tools are highly responsible for altering the weight and visual display of each stroke of a given character. The ink just mentioned could be watered down or bolded in consistency to produce emphasis on certain parts of characters. Additionally, the easily changed state of the brush and ink allow for characters to take on different appearances. The character could appear rigid and upright or spirited and dynamically inclined. The general art form could quite literally alter the meaning of the written word if a certain effect is achieved correctly.
The easiest way for beginners to get started with Chinese calligraphy is to become familiar with some easy strokes in the Chinese language. Of course, having even a very limited knowledge of the written language would help in this artistic endeavor. Several radicals (specific strokes written together) and components can be used to build characters.
Check out these websites for additional information on strokes and radicals:
Common Chinese Radicals Explained
Fig. 4. Sapore di Cina. Chinese Radicals – Strokes.
Fig. 5. Asia Society. Radicals.
This form of visual art from Ancient China remains one of the most valued forms of art in Chinese culture. I look forward to exploring more of this branch of calligraphy in future blogs! Thank you for reading yet another week of Calligraphy Corner.
See you next time!
As someone who is currently taking Chinese classes, the familiarity of the topic of this blog made it interesting to read. At the level of Chinese that I am at currently, I mostly learn grammar and vocabulary, not cultural elements like calligraphy. I do remember having a day of 书法 in my high school Chinese class however. I don’t remember being that good at it seeing how one messed up stroke would ruin a character. I do remember writing 爱 without any major mistakes on my fifth or sixth try. Overall, this was an interesting post about a slightly familiar topic. Keep up the good work.
This is a pretty interesting post, the part that stood out to me the most was actually how the materials for this form of calligraphy were assembled. For the ink, I wonder how they figured out that you could use cakes or sticks of animal matter to help create writing. In addition to this, I think it’s cool that they were able to utilize the hair of an animal and some bamboo and then get to writing. It’s always interesting to look at the old ways of doing this like this, cool post!