- Appreciating Chinese Calligraphy
- Introduction and History
- What is good calligraphy?
The 5 main scripts for Chinese calligraphy are:
- Zhuan Shu, Seal Script, divided into:
- large seal script, pre-Qin archaic scripts, found on bronzes and oracle bones
- small seal script, devised by Li Si for the First Emperor Qin Shi Huang.
- Li Shu, Clerical Script, or Han Official. Northern Wei is a variant of li shu.
- Kai Shu, standard or regular script.
- Slender Gold, the elegant script devised by Emperor Huizong, is a variant of standard script.
- Xing Shu, “running” or semi-cursive script
- Cao Shu, cursive script (sometimes called “grass” script)
Minority scripts include Nushu and the Naxi script Dongba. I used dongba on my seasonal cards one year.
About calligraphy:
- Wikipedia Chinese Calligraphy including materials
- Encyclopedia Britannica
- China Online
The most famous piece of Chinese calligraphy is the Orchid Pavilion Preface. This is poems written by Wang Xizhi at a drinking party at the Orchid Pavilion in 353. Those present composed poems, and asked Wang to write an introduction (translation). There are now several copies and rubbings of this xing shu work, but the original has disappeared. It is still copied and studied.
Famous calligraphers:
- Cangjie, legendary inventor of calligraphy
- Wang Xizhi (Eastern Jin)
- Wang Xianzhi (Eastern Jin)
- Ouyang Xun (Tang)
- Yan Zhenqing (Tang)
- Liu Gongquan (Tang)
- Chu Suiliang (Tang)
- Huaisu (Tang)
- Emperor Huizong (Song) – inventor of the elegant slender gold style: how-to video
- Su Shi (Song)
- Mi Fu (Song)
- Huang Tingjian (Song)
- Zhao Mengfu (Yuan)
- Dong Qichang (Ming)
- Deng Shiru (Qing)
Some videos:
- Four Masters of standard script
- Demonstration of different scripts.
- Demonstration of Xing Shu (“running script”).
- Demonstration of Xing Shu in the style of Mi Fu.
- Introduction to Chinese Characters – a simple starting point to the structure of characters.
- Basic Stroke order
- How to write Standard Script (Kai Shu) – correct brush hold and brush action
- Standard script in gold ink How-to video
- An introduction to calligraphy, by the Fang Family: endearing video of still photos and pleasant music, plus a demonstration of Standard Script
- Demonstration of Running Script – but the brush hold does not look traditional to me
- a few characters in Slender Gold, and more.
- Interesting demonstration and information about Kai Shu “Bei Wei” style
Note that there are some how-to videos that do not show correct brush hold or method.