Chinese Calligraphy

Chinese calligraphy is an old art of writing Chinese characters with writing brushes. There exist nine different kinds of Chinese calligraphy on the way of its development, there are: oracle bone script, stone script, Chinese Bronze inscriptions，large seal script, small seal script, clerical script, cursive script, regular script,and semi-cursive script. 

Chinese calligraphy is an unique kind of visual art and Chinese characters play important roles in it, because contrast to other kinds of calligraphies, Chinese characters is the essential symbol of Chinese calligraphy.

The process of learning Chinese calligraphy can be divided into four steps.

The first step is tracing. That is, use a semitransparent paper to cover over the originals and trace them.

 

The second step is copying. That is, practice writing original forms of characters from a copybook of calligraphy on other papers.

The third step is writing from memory. That is, close the copybook of calligraphy and practice writing original forms of characters from memory.

The last but not least step is creation. That is, create your own calligraphy works based on the former three steps.

The four steps above seem simple, however, it is a very long process, as well as difficult. I once had learned Chinese calligraphy for almost eight years since I was five years old, and I am good at small seal script, clerical script, regular script,and semi-cursive script.The following works that I once learned are completely famous in the history of Chinese calligraphy.

Stele of Cao Quan is typical of clerical script.

This work is called Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection. It looks really elegant and it is the number one in the field of semi-cursive script. Unfortunately, it is a copy, the original work had been an emperor's funeral object in Tang Dynasty.