Introduction
To Chinese
Calligraphy
By Kam Sang Law
Calligraphy
is a special art form which seeks to express the written version of a language
in an artistic manner. Artists have created calligraphy in Arabic, Chinese,
English and some other languages.
We
will discuss Chinese calligraphy in this short introductory article.
Since
calligraphy is based on the written version of a language, we need to have a
simple knowledge of the Chinese language before we can have an understanding of
Chinese calligraphy. However, for the purpose of this article, I will not talk
about the origin of the Chinese language and other characteristics. I will just
concentrate on the form of written Chinese here.
The
written form of Chinese is called Chinese characters which are square in shape
and monosyllabic. Each character’s pronunciation stands on its own and is not
affected or altered by the pronunciations of the character before it. Each
character or a group of two or three characters carries a meaning, but
sometimes a character or a phrase may mean more than one thing.
There
are basically six different scripts of the same Chinese character. The
characters we see printed in newspapers and most of the books belong to what is
called the songtizi, which is a typeface first used in the Ming
Dynasty but popularly attributed to the Song Dynasty. This
typeface belong to the Regular
Script. This is not the first script created for the Chinese written
language. From the animal bones and turtle shells excavated during the latter
part of the Qing Dynasty of China, ie, in the 17th
century, there is clear evidence that in the Yin period of the Shang Dynasty
(circa 1300 BC to circa 1027 BC), primitive characters based on the shapes of
animals, articles, and other natural phenomenon and also ideas and concepts
were carved on those bones and shells which were used for divination purpose.
There were diviners who were in fact officials in the imperial court trained to
make patterns on animal bones and turtle shells and then put them on fire. The
shells or bones became cracked and a diviner, acting as a medium between the
gods and human beings, was supposed to be able to interpret the cracks and
forecast the weather and the outcomes of future events and activities. After
each process, the date and the name of the diviner, the question, and the
oracle received from the gods were engraved on the bones or shells. After the
event, the actual happening was also engraved on the bones or shells.
These
characters are called Jiaguwen,
meaning Shell and Bone Script. A
sample of Jiaguwen is shown below.
Similar
writings are also found engraved on bronze vessels, utensils, weapons etc. and
they are called Jinwen meaning Metal Script.
Zhuan Shu (Seal Script)
The
Seal Script was developed in the late Western Zhou Dynasty (circa 850 BC) and
became popular in the
In
order to differentiate the styles of the Seal Script before and after
standardization, the Seal Script used during the Zhou Dynasty is called Da Zhuan meaning
Large Seal Script and the script
adopted after standardization is called Xiao
Zhuan meaning Small Seal Script.
The
reason why this script is called Seal Script is because it is commonly used for
engraving seals owing to its solemn but graceful style. The structure of the
characters written in the Seal Script is quite different from that of the
Regular Script and looks like characters of an entirely different language.
Eyes that have not been trained cannot read the script, which has fallen into
disuse. A sample is shown below.
Ba Fen, or Fen Shu or Li Shu (Clerical Script)
Because
of the regular and even structure of the Seal Script, writing it requires
tremendous efforts and time. Political and military exchanges between the
warring states in the late Eastern Zhou Dynasty rendered a lot of written work
for officials who were under pressure to do their written work speedily. Apart
from formal commemorative documents, most written work was done on wooden or
bamboo strips. Less attention was paid to the regular structure of the
characters and there are characters written with some strokes joined by a thin
line. A cursive style of seal script was developed and this was used until the
Eastern Han Dynasty (25 AD to 220 AD).
When
the Seal Script is written quickly, the strokes and the characters could not be
written as evenly like the standard Seal Script, with the result that the
beginning of a stroke might be heavier and the end of a stroke might be thicker
than an ordinary Seal Script stroke. From this was developed the Li Shu, or Clerical Script. A sample of a passage
written in Clerical Script is shown below.
It can
be seen that Clerical Script strokes are in general thicker than those of the
Seal Script and they are more stylish with more variations than Seal Script
strokes.
Cao Shu (Cursive
Script)
As
people’s communication became more frequent in the Eastern Han Dynasty, they
tended to seek a more efficient way to do their handwriting. At the same time,
paper was invented which facilitated writing. Cao Shu or Cursive Script as is seen and written today was developed and
became mature and very common in the Jin Dynasty (265 AD to 316 AD). A sample
is shown below.
This
free flowing and much abbreviated style enabled the writer who was normally an
educated person to express himself * artistically. Characters were not confined
to their respective squares and could be written as small or as large as the
calligrapher wished. Characters can be positioned leaning towards the left or the
right and strokes may have various thickness and can be joined together so as
to create as much contrast as possible yet maintaining harmony in the entire
calligraphy work.
*There were not that many women who were fortunate enough to have
an education in ancient
Xing Shu
(Running Script)
At
more or less the same time, ie, during the late Eastern
Han Dynasty, another script which was a hybrid of the Cursive Script and the
Clerical Script was developed. Characters written in Running Script are also free flowing
with many variations but they are not as abbreviated as the Cursive Script and
can easily be deciphered by the readers. A sample is shown below.
Kai Shu (Regular
Script)
The Regular Script evolved from the
Clerical Script and during the transition period, the two terms were
interchangeable. This script became very popular in the Wei, Jin, and the
North/South Dynasties and was widely used. On the one hand, it is as regular as
the Clerical Script, but on the other, the strokes have more variations and are
more stylish and more expressive than those of the Clerical Script. This script
is used up to the present day and a sample is shown below.
Four Treasures in the Study
Having
talked about the six different scripts of Chinese handwriting, let us discuss
how we can do Chinese calligraphy. Although in recent years, there is growing interest
in learning how to do Chinese calligraphy with a fountain pen or a ball point
pen, the traditional way of writing Chinese is to use brushes, which is one of
the four ‘treasures’ in a literati’s study.
Brush
A
Chinese writing brush consists of two parts: the stem and the tuft. The tuft is
usually made of animal hair such as rabbit or goat hair. Goat hair is softer
than other animal hair and as it is longer than other animal hair, it is
normally used to make large brushes. Other materials such as hen feather or
reed have also been used but they are not common. The stem can be made of wood,
bamboo, ceramic or other materials and is round. Brushes come in many sizes and
big brushes are used for writing large characters.
It is
the use of brushes that enables the writing of Chinese to be developed into an
art form. The elasticity of the hair used to make the brush, the tapering of
the tuft of the brush at the end coupled with the different degrees of
concentration of the Chinese ink and the absorbent nature of the rice paper
used for Chinese calligraphy all enable the strokes in a Chinese character to
be written with varied thickness in a stylish manner and in different shades of
black, bringing out the artistic nature of the writing.
Paper
Paper
used for doing Chinese calligraphy is made of bamboo, rice straw, mulberry or
hemp. The production process is a lengthy one, involving soaking the plant in
water for over a month, boiling the soaked plant fibre,
pulping and then sifting the pulp on a mesh to form a thin sheet of wet and
soft rice paper. The last and most important step is to remove the mesh from
the wet sheet of rice paper and to let it dry.
Paper
produced in this process is called Xuan paper and is
absorbent, enabling the ink applied to look washy or sandy (dry). Rice paper is
made with different degrees of absorbency to suit the artists’ requirements.
Ink
Stick
Ink
sticks are made of soot from burning pine wood or ‘tung’
oil or sesame oil, and gelatin. Ink used for Chinese handwriting is produced by
rubbing an ink stick in circles on an ink slab containing a small quantity of
water. The longer we rub the ink stick, the thicker the ink will become; the
ink can be diluted by adding water on the ink slab.
Nowadays,
calligraphers normally used prepared ink liquid for practice as producing ink
by rubbing ink sticks on an ink slab is time consuming and laborious. Ink
sticks are only used to produce ink when a calligrapher wishes to do serious
calligraphy works either for exhibition or for works that are commissioned.
Ink
Slab
Ink
slabs are made from stones with a special quality. On the one hand, the stones
should be very hard, but on the other hand their texture should be extremely smooth.
The best ink slabs are produced from the quarry in Zhao Qing in
Ink
slabs are often embellished with carving at the edges and round the trough.
Good ink slabs are extremely expensive and have become collectors’ items.
Ink
slabs are useless on their own and without ink sticks and water,
they can best be used to decorate the literati’s study. When we wish to make
ink, we pour a small quantity of water on an ink slab and then rub an ink stick
on the ink slab in circles gently and evenly.
How to Hold a Chinese Writing Brush
Holding
a brush is different from holding a fountain pen or a pencil. For beginners,
the requirement is that the brush must be maintained upright throughout the
writing process. At a later stage, the brush may be allowed to lean slightly on
one side but the tip of the tuft of the brush should ‘always’ be perpendicular
to the paper, unless we wish to produce special effects.
When
we pick up a brush, we should press (ye) the thumb gently on the stem of the
brush. At the same time, we should hold or guard (ya)
the brush with the first joint of the index finger from the finger tip, thus
exerting opposing pressure against the thumb. We should form the middle finger
into a hook (gou) and also press the first joint of
the middle finger from the finger tip gently against the brush, so that the
total pressure from both the index and middle fingers should equal the pressure
from the thumb. The ring finger should be placed behind the brush, providing
the middle finger with support (ge).
The small finger should be just beneath the ring finger, also providing support
for it (di).
The
whole idea of holding the brush in this manner is to surround the brush with
even pressure from all directions so that the brush can remain in a steady and
upright position.
While
we are holding the brush, we should pay attention to the following points:
a.
there should be as little gap as possible
between the fingers.
b.
the palm should be hollow as if it is holding
an egg and should be kept more or less upright but the forearm should be
parallel to the desk.
c.
when we are writing characters larger than
three inches square, we should not let the forearm touch the desk, neither
should we rest the elbow on the desk. When we are writing smaller characters,
we can let the forearm rest on the desk.
d.
the brush should be maintained in an upright
position, especially when we are doing Seal, Clerical or Regular Scripts.
e.
the motion of the brush is caused by the
rotation of the wrist and the movement of the arm. Under no circumstances
should we move our fingers in order to move the brush.
f.
we should keep the arm and the hand holding
the brush in a relaxed state; do not squeeze the brush.
There
are a number of other ways of holding the brush, for example, holding the brush
with all the fingers on the same side acting against the thumb, or holding the
brush with the thumb and the tips of only the index and middle fingers.
However, the way I have described above is the most common and easiest to learn
and master.
How to Write Different Strokes in Chinese
Characters
It may
have been noticed that the strokes in the Seal Script comprise basically
horizontal, vertical and semi-circular strokes which are regular and evenly
spaced. There are no dots or strokes that taper off at the end like those in
the Regular Script. It was suggested by past masters that the following
character (Yong) consists of all the different strokes in Chinese characters (this
is disputed because it does not contain at least two other stroke forms – the
angle or bend and the right falling circular stroke with a hook) and each
stroke is given a name as follows:
1. Ce - dot
2. Le - Horizontal stroke
3. Nu - Vertical stroke
4. Ti - Hook
5. Ce - Left rising whip
6. Lue - Left falling sweep
7. Zhuo - Peck
8. Zhe - Right falling slice
When
one looks at the strokes in the above character, one may think that if one were
to follow the strokes, one should be able to write the character. This may be
true with ordinary handwriting. However, if we were to do it properly and
artistically, we would need to move the tip of the brush according to the
directions as shown within the strokes in the figure below:
At the
beginning, we may not find it easy to follow the directions and move the brush
forward and backward within the small space of a dot or when we start writing a
horizontal or vertical stroke. The secret is that when we start writing a
stroke, we should use the tip of the brush to follow the directions as shown
above. After we have finished the ‘start’ of a stroke, we may then press the
brush slightly to complete the stroke.
There
are several other essential points that should be borne in mind when we do
Chinese calligraphy. We should have a feeling that something is holding back
our brush while we are moving the brush in the direction of our choice. By
injecting this feeling into our hand movements, the strokes will become
powerful and robust.
If we
wish to write a horizontal stroke from left to right, we should start the
stroke by moving the tip of the brush from the right and then move it to the
left before we actually start the stroke from left to right. The same applies
if we wish to write a downward vertical stroke, ie,
we should move the tip of the brush upwards before we move the brush downwards.
We
should hold the brush just tightly enough so that it does not fall on the desk.
By holding the brush lightly and tenderly, the weight of our arm and the weight
of the brush will enable the brush to have contact
with the paper. Writing of course involves the brush touching the paper,
but ‘touching’ only will bring about weak and insipid strokes. We should avoid
such strokes.
In
this context, touching is quite different from contact which involves control
and feeling and enables the brush to ‘speak’ with the paper.
Before
we start writing a character, we should first of all have an image on the paper
of the character we wish to write and then follow the image. An image can be
changed many times and improved upon but once a stroke has been written, it
cannot be altered.
Sequence of Writing Strokes in a Chinese
Character
Most
Chinese characters consist of more than one radical and several strokes. Past
scholars have from their experience suggested that the radicals and strokes in
a character be written in the following sequence so as to enable us to achieve
better balance and better spacing of the strokes in the characters:
n
From top to bottom
n
From left to right
n
Horizontal strokes first, then vertical strokes
n
(3 radicals) Centre first, then first left and then right
n
Border first, then strokes inside border
n Upper border first, then
strokes inside, bottom stroke last.
Conclusion
Learning Chinese calligraphy appears to be
a formidable undertaking at first. However, I can assure you that once you have
started learning, you will find untold enjoyment and contentment in the practice
and in the creative process at a later stage.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with
a first step of our feet.