Chinese calligraphy : an introduction to its aesthetic and technique : with 6 plates and 155 text illustratons

TRAINING

At school, pupils over the age of ten are made to write from ten to twenty middle-sized characters and fifty or more small characters every day; under ten, the middle-sized characters are required but not the small ones. The models for the middlesized characters are changed about every ten days.

By the time the pupil has passed the ‘ squared paper ’ stage he will have learned to raise his wrist in making a stroke, and a little later he is taught to raise the elbow also. This is very important when medium-sized or larger characters are to be written, and it has to be practised assiduously. The raising of the wrist and elbow enables the writer to achieve great swiftness and beauty of stroke. The wrist and elbow should be level with one another and maintained at a height not much below the shoulder. When a pupil has practised for some time, the tutor places on his elbow-joint a flat weight of some kind. The weight is not fastened to the elbow in any way and has to be balanced while the writing is executed. This exercise has the effect of strengthening the muscles of the arm and intensifying the writer’s control over the brush, so that his hand ceases to tremble when making a stroke and his constructions become sure and steady. If he perseveres with the weight he will find that afterwards, without it, he can write much better and more fluently than he could formerly.

Our calligraphy has, as I have already shown, many styles. In practising writing we always start with K ‘at-Shu, not merely because its characters are more ‘orthodox’ than those of Hsing-Shu and Ts‘ao-Shu, nor wholly because it provides such fine training in the making of beautiful patterns, but primarily because it opens the door, as it were, to those later styles. Strictly speaking, Ts‘ao-Shu was invented before K‘ai-Shu, but

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