In daily writing, calligraphy practitioners often encounter all kinds of strange calligraphy problems. The editor has compiled 10 questions on how to practice calligraphy in the background. I hope it will be helpful to everyone's calligraphy practice.
1. What should you pay attention to when starting and ending a pen?
The starting and closing of a pen are the starting and closing of a pen. In different strokes, the way of striking out is different. The control of the pen by the strength of the fingers is the key to the writing edge, and the strength control of the fingers and wrist is also the core factor that determines the writing technique. This is not only true for brushes, but also for hard pens. When practicing, you can try to write corresponding lines with different strengths to feel the impact of strength, or turn the pen in your hand so that the pen tip contacts the paper from the front and side respectively to observe the "eight sides" of the hard pen.
Solution: Perform special pen control exercises.
2. How to read the post?
You can try to improve your ability to read posts from these aspects.
The first is "meditation". When we practice calligraphy, our mind must be on writing, and we should not have too many distracting thoughts. The mind calmed down, and then came "careful observation". Use your eyes to compare the original post, whether it is a current post or an ancient post. Carefully observe the difference between the words in the original post and the words we wrote.
When you first start practicing, you can observe the angle and position of the strokes. After careful observation with eyes comes "careful thinking". We need to use our brains to think. You don’t need to think too much, think about the relationship between each stroke and why there is this relationship. Just understand these two points.
Finally, the most important thing is "practice diligently". After we have read it carefully and thought about it in our minds, we must put pen to paper.
3. How to post?
In calligraphy, we talk about copying. Copying means tracing red, and copying means writing on the notebook against the original calligraphy. The basis of post writing is reading posts. After you have read the original post, you can start writing. After writing, you should also compare it with the original post to check for deficiencies. When writing a post, you can compare your handwriting with the original post from these dimensions: stroke position, stroke length, stroke angle, pen strength, pen speed, and pen arc.
4. How to use the power of fingers?
Fingers and wrists are the core factors that determine the writing technique. This is not only true for brushes, but also for hard pens, but it is not obvious, so fewer people care. The force and position of the fingers are important factors in expressing brushwork.
You can use these postures for finger exercises:
(1) When writing in the normal writing method, the paper and pen form a writing line at about 60°;
(2) Hold the pen upright and write so that the pen and paper are at 90° to write lines;
(3) To write sideways, turn the pen sideways and use the side of the pen tip to make contact with the paper. You can take a look at the effects of these three writing angles when practicing.
5. How to use the power of the wrist?
The use of wrist strength is an important factor in demonstrating writing style. When writing longer strokes, you can usually control the pen with your wrist. Applying force on the wrist will also make the writing more stable. When practicing, you can try to draw lines on the paper with a pen, keep your fingers still, and feel the strength of your wrist.
6. What should I do if I always write a line of words crookedly?
Contemporary people mostly write horizontally. There may be many reasons why it is difficult to write a line straight. The center, center of gravity, and internal structure of the words are not smooth, the line spacing is not obvious, the line spacing is inconsistent, and there is no unified writing style, etc., which will make it difficult to write a line of handwriting neatly. Too many bad factors will not only make the handwriting uneven, but also make the handwriting look messy.
Among many factors, the influence of horizontal painting is the most important. In daily writing, the single character is most beautiful when the horizontal stroke is between 0° and 12°. If it exceeds or is smaller than this angle range, the center of gravity of the words will move up or down, and the rows of words will naturally not be able to remain horizontal.
Solution: Carry out special exercises for horizontal drawings; use force when writing to ensure stable handwriting; horizontal drawings may not be horizontal, but vertical drawings must be written straight to ensure stable single characters.
7. My handwriting becomes messy as soon as I write it. What should I do if I can’t write well without the copybook?
Under the premise that the level remains unchanged, it is difficult to balance well and write quickly. If you want to write well and quickly, you can only improve your writing skills. So it is very normal for your writing to become messy soon.
Solution: On the basis of good structural control, you can try to practice running script and cursive writing.
If you can't write well without a copybook, you must first look at how you practice calligraphy. The commonly used method of practicing calligraphy is copying. Copying is to draw red, and copying is to write on the notebook according to the copybook. Lin Tie can be divided into opposite Lin and back Lin. Confrontation means looking at the original post and writing it in the notebook, experiencing the subtlety of the calligraphy and learning the structure of the calligraphy. While experiencing, you must also understand and remember. Posting on the back is based on memory. If you can't write well without copybooks, it means that you didn't copy carefully, but just practiced calligraphy casually, and did not achieve deep understanding and memory.
Solution: Strengthen the practice of reading and writing posts.
8. What should I do if I practice a lot of words but have no effect?
Writing more and being less efficient is often due to the lack of correct practice methods. If you practice in the correct way, you can get twice the result with half the effort.
Solution: Examine your existing practice methods and replace them with new ones.
9. Can I practice running script if I have never practiced regular script?
From a calligraphy professional perspective, regular script and running script are closely related. But as far as non-professionals are concerned, the correlation between regular script and running script is weak. If it is only for daily use by adults, you can directly practice running script. But school-age children must start with regular script when practicing calligraphy. Because the child's understanding ability is not enough, writing regular script is not only conducive to the proper composition of writing strokes, but also conducive to the stability of character growth.
10. How to practice regular script, regular script and running script?
First of all, you should decide which calligraphy style is suitable for you to practice. When practicing calligraphy for the first time, the practice methods of the three types of fonts (block script, Xing Kai, and running script) have both commonalities and differences. No matter which calligraphy style you practice, you do not need to be fast in the early stage of writing the calligraphy. Instead, you should focus on comparing the original calligraphy, and at the same time pay attention to the rhythm (modern calligraphy) and charm (ancient calligraphy) of writing. The difference is that regular script is more peaceful, while regular script and running script are more vivid. Therefore, the practice of regular script tends to be upright and rigorous, while the practice of regular script and running script tends to be round and elegant.
